The Pilot Thread

[Paul Raven]

Let's share info and clips if you can,  on pilots over the years, maybe featuring soap names (or not) always interesting to see what shows might have made but just missed the mark. Literally hundreds to choose from.

To begin

Almost Heaven ABC aired Dec 28 1978(after Mork & Mindy so probably rated well)

Starring Robert Hays, Eva Gabor, Richard Roat (original cast member of The Doctors) also guest star Laurie Heinman (Sharlene AW)

At the Heavenly Crisis and Conscience Center a team of angels must perform good deeds to earn their wings.

[DRW50]

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It's not great (and has the inevitable struggle of a wacky sitcom trying to address topics like suicide), but definitely interesting. 

[Paul Raven]

@DRW50 thanks for posting. Like so many pilots, an interesting idea that just doesn't come off.

I wonder why the networks never went back to the more promising pilots and try to retool them into something more? Guess it's that old showbiz thing of 'once a flop...' 

[slick jones]

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Sam Groom, Tom Hallick, Booth Colman, Francine York, Trish Stewart, Walter Brooke and Dort Clark.  This Irwin Allen pilot with two soap opera leading men portraying doctors traveling through time retrieving lost remedies and interacting with the past -- while trying their best not to alter history.  Guest starring Richard Basehart (Admiral Harriman Nelson of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA), lead of one of Allen's 1960s successful series.  I watched it while researching Booth Colman for his profile. I thought it was fairly good. 

[Paul Raven]

The whole pilot process seemed an enormous waste of time, talent and money.

Networks would commission 30 plus pilots each and only a handful would be bought and then most were cancelled quickly. There had to be a better way, but nobody wanted to rock the boat.

Look at Fall 79 in the midst of the Fred Silverman era at NBC

The shows that made it to air

Lobo-a BJ & the Bear spinoff

Buck Rogers - apparently it had been in the works for years

Shirley -only because P&G were financing it

Man Called Sloane- Silverman contacted Quinn Martin to resurrect an idea from years before.

So not one of the scores of pilots NBC commissioned even made it to air.

 

[Paul Raven]

Beach Patrol ABC aired as a TV movie May 79.

4 police officers keep the peace at a stretch of California beaches.

Starring Robin Strand (Keith Timmons temp on Santa Barbara) Jonathan Frakes (ex The Doctors) Richard Hill (who went to Days in 81)and Christine DeLisle( later Pam Warren on Y&R)

ABC decided to go with a similar show -240 Robert- in it's Fall schedule.

[Paul Raven]

Marie ABC TV aired Sat Dec 1 1979

Cast Marie Osmond, Telma Hopkins, Zan Charisse,Ellen Travolta

Concept Aspiring actress from Nebraska comes to NY to pursue her dreams, sharing an apartment with 2 other women (Hopkins/Charisse). Ellen Travolta is  her dance instructor.

[te.]

To be fair, sometimes networks do end up retooling and re-filming pilots, but a lot of the time pilots either get passed on because they have a limited amount of spots for a certain type of programming (ie before ABC hit paydirt with Desperate Housewives they had several soapy pilots in development), or it just doesn't fit into their schedule (like the proposed Cruel Intentions show on NBC, despite executives raving about it) or it's simply too expensive to make it sustainable (like Mockingbird Lane, whose pilot got an airing on NBC). 

I miss this sort of pilot season tbh as it was very exciting, but yeah, it's been done away with pretty much with year-round development and fewer pilots making it to filming. 

[Khan]

Remember when the networks would "burn off" the unsold pilots during the summer or whenever there was a hole to fill in the schedules?  I think it was Ken Levine ("Cheers," "M*A*S*H") who referred to it as "Failure Theatre," lol.  Anyways, here's one notorious pilot with a convoluted backstory you'd have to read to believe:

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[DRW50]

Thanks. Never seen that. I think CBS used to have those (maybe the last network who did). Danny Thomas back in the '60s had a number of burnoff pilots. One used to be on Youtube, uploaded by the actress who was in the title role (her brothers are obsessed with marrying her off - you think it's going to end with her actually falling for the guy they want her to marry but then they decide they hate him because he's not from their village and they kick him out - very sour ending for a comedy).

[Paul Raven]

I think all the networks  ran their sitcom pilots under umbrella titles like 'Comedy Playhouse' in the Summer in the 60's and 70's. Later they just played as one offs jn Summer or like 'Marie' mentioned above, in a less important ratings period to fill in a timeslot.

Found this comment on Where's Rodney?

The awful, awful premise of Where’s Rodney? is that horrible blonde mullet-sporting protagonist Young Rodney can make his hero Rodney Dangerfield magically appear to lend him guidance when he needs it most. 

This in itself is idiotic. The Rodney Dangerfield brand was, if anything, too well established in 1990. It was rooted in sadness. It was rooted in failure. It was rooted in rejection. It was rooted in being the underdog, the little guy, the loser, the schmuck. It was most assuredly not rooted in being a font of wisdom, giving sound advice and helping other people succeed. 

Why on earth would anyone call upon one of comedy’s biggest, most poignant losers for timely advice on how to be a winner? 

[Khan]

IIRC, Rodney Dangerfield didn't want to do a sitcom, so he and/or his team negotiated some kind of arrangement where, if WR? had been picked up for series, he'd appear only in a scene or two in each episode.

As you can see, the entire premise was just stupid.  (What '90's teen is gonna stop and ask, "What would Rodney Dangerfield do in this situation?") Add the fact that the other characters were stock sitcom characters and you can see why Phil Doran and Sy Rosen, who created the series and wrote the pilot, were so embarrassed by it that they actually used pseudonyms on it, lol.

[DRW50]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEh388O1Kyc

The pilot for Coming to America, via Eddie Murphy's production company. 

Apparently this was written by people from Diff'rent Strokes and Webster, which...makes sense.

Tommy Davidson, a few years before hitting it big with In Living Color, adopts a dubious Jamaican accent, but his high energy and charisma is the best part of this, along with seeing underrated actors like Hattie Winston and John Hancock (who passed only a few years later).

[Khan]

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[Franko]

I wanna contribute. Bigshots in America, which failed to make NBC's fall schedule in 1985. Starring Joe Mantegna, Keith Szarabajka, Dan Vitale and Helen Hanft, with featured guest star Christine Baranski. Produced by Lorne Michaels, directed by James Burrows and written by Alan Zweibel. As the folklore goes, Zweibel vowed never to work again with Michaels after this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGFFW9HJMU

Edited June 19, 2024 by Franko