“The Best TV Shows That Never Were”… Will Be

GoldRetroLogoOn Monday, Aug 16 at 8 pm, ABC will air the one-hour special “The Best TV Shows That Never Were.”

For the last two years, I was convinced the show would live up to its title.

The special, which I wrote and produced with Bill Rabkin and Steve Gerbson, is based on my book Unsold Television Pilots and is a collection of clips of memorable samples episodes of proposed series from the last twenty years.

We delivered the show for May sweeps two years ago… and then ABC sat on it. They never told us why. Anyway, now it’s finally airing…and you can see clips from such memorable bombs as “A Dog’s Life,” “Samurai District Attorney,” “Higher Ground,” “Mandrake,” “Fuzzbucket,” and “The People.”

Don’t miss it!

UPDATE: Here’s an old announcement for the show…from Morty’s TV Archive.

ABC to Air Unseen Pilots!

[June 11, 2002] This fall ABC will air a special called “The Best TV Shows That Never Were,” a collection unseen TV pilots. It’s actually the second edition of “TBTVSTNW,” the first aired in the 90’s. This collection will feature “Great Day,” starring “Happy Days'” Al Molinaro, “about what fun it was to be a skid row bum in New York City,” an Aaron Spelling TV show called “Velvet,” about four aerobics instructors who are really only working for “Polly Bergen’s Velvet International” health spas as a cover for their jobs as secret agents and “Shivers,” about a divorced man (“Beverly Hills, 90210” dad James Eckhouse) who, with his two children, moves into a house haunted by a Revolutionary War-era troublemaker and his girlfriend. The special, which according to an ABC source may turn into a series, is based on author and entertainment writer Lee Goldberg’s book Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw , an addictive collection of the “best” of the bad high-concept TV pilots that, in most cases, never saw screen time. No date has been announced yet.
Now as much fun as all this sounds, my problem with it is that it’s a clipfest, and I want to see the whole show. Let’s hope it does become a regular series. There are thousands of hours of unaired pilots, and ABC has nothing exciting to run anyway, so why not show a different one each week? Ever see Bette Davis in “The Decorator?”

7 thoughts on ““The Best TV Shows That Never Were”… Will Be”

  1. I’ll be watching! I wonder if the things Trio Television have been running have something to do with ABC’s sudden airing. Their “Brilliant but Canceled” stuff has been really enjoyable. And I admit to having watched the “Cop Rock” marathon this month for their “Flops” theme.

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  2. I’ll be watching! I wonder if the things Trio Television have been running have something to do with ABC’s sudden airing. Their “Brilliant but Canceled” stuff has been really enjoyable. And I admit to having watched the “Cop Rock” marathon this month for their “Flops” theme.

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  3. One of those “Brilliant But Cancelled” programs was another pilot special I did… “The Greatest Shows You Never Saw.” They’ve rerun that on Trio about a thousand times.
    I don’t think it was the Trio programing that prmpted ABC to finally air out special…but rather they had nothing new they wanted to sacrifice against the Olympics…except a special they’ve had on the shelf for nearly three years!

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