5 TV Shows We Can’t Believe Got Made
Sometimes, you find yourself watching a tv show thinking “how on earth did this get made? Someone pitched this to a tv exec, and they went ‘Sure! That sounds great!'”. This is a list of those shows.
My Mother the Car
For this first one, we head back to the 60s, and involves a man and a car… who happens to be his reincarnated dead mother… Attorney David Crabtree (Jerry Van Dyke) is out shopping for a new automobile when he hears a woman’s voice call to him from a dilapidated “1928 Porter” touring car. Gladys (voiced by Ann Sothern) talks to David via the radio, and he realises it is the voice of his deceased mother. As he manages to purchase the car from under the nose of fanatical collector Captain Manzini (Avery Schreiber), the “shifty villain” Manzini spends the rest of the series trying to acquire the vehicle… Amazingly, it ran for 30 episodes before being cancelled.
Naked Jungle
A somewhat infamous Channel 5 game show, which rather set the tone of things to come. The (thankfully) one-off game show was hosted by Keith Chegwin, and featured 5 naturist couples who took on a series of physical challenges to win fig leaves which added to the time they had in the final challenge. It’s basically ‘The Crystal Maze’, but in a jungle setting… and everyone was naked… including the host… If you prefer your games fully clothes, head over to all-bonus-codes.co.uk for a chance to play online (although, as you’re doing it from home, I guess clothing is optional!)
Heil Honey, I’m Home
So… we’d had ‘Allo Allo’, which was a popular sitcom set in WWII, but some bright spark decided Hitler was the “comedy gold” they were missing, and so we have ‘Heil Honey, I’m Home’. Set in 1938, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun live in Berlin, next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein, in a spoof of old US sitcoms such as ‘I Love Lucy’. It aired one episode in 1990 before being yanked off the air after complaints from Jewish groups, the public, and anyone with any taste.
Who’s Your Daddy?
We’ve seen some pretty horrific ideas for reality-based game shows over the year, but this one is truly terrible. Take one woman, who had been put up for adoption, and never met her biological father. Then, rather than a loving reunion with her dad, put her in a room with 25 men and ask her to pick out her father to win $100,000 in cash… Oh, and if she picked the wrong guy, that person got the money instead… One episode aired on FOX before it was pulled after a mountain of complains from the public and adoption rights organisations.
Cop Rock
I don’t know what they were thinking when this was commissioned, but it is the most bizarre idea, and truly awful. If you’ve ever wondered “what would ‘Hill Street Blues’ be like as a musical”, then ‘Cop Rock’ is the show for you! It has all the plotlines of your normal police procedural, except everything is sung, with full-on choreography and musical numbers. This includes the memorable scene above, featuring Dennis Cockrum (of ‘Shameless US’ fame) singing about being a “baby merchant” who can acquire and sell children. Astoundingly, the person behind the show was Steven Bochco, the man who developed ‘Hill Street Blues’, ‘L.A. Law’, ‘Doogie Howser, M.D.’, and ‘NYPD Blue’!
