Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw

by Lee Goldberg

  Greg Maday, now. developing programs for Warner Bros., thinks demos are useless. "They simply aren't indicative of what the series will be

  "It's a vicious circle," says veteran producer William Blinn, whose credits include Our House, Fame, and Roots. "You can't say demos are wrong because they have highlights and that two hours are wrong because the series won't deliver what the pilot did."

  Selling the pilot, in whatever form, as a series is a feat every producer tries to achieve in April, when the networks huddle in New York in boardrooms, restaurants, hotel suites, and limousines to devise their fall season programming strategy. And the producers are there to help them along—they are there for questions, drinks, dinners, plays, and schmoozing, especially schmoozing, That ritual, too, is questioned by producers.

  "It's all a nice convention, part of salesmanship, but I don't think wining and dining the executives is a decisive factor," says McAdams. "There might be a few borderline cliffhanger situations where it might help. But if I were a network executive, I would look at the producer's abilities and the pilot and not be influenced by a filet mignon."

  "A producer's enthusiasm for his product is infectious, that's something the networks listen to," Jeff Sagansky admits. "Is it a deciding factor? In the end, the program has to speak for itself." Yet most pilots die, whether it's in a scheduling meeting or over lobster at Sardi's.

  "A lot of good scripts and pilots die because New York didn't understand them," laments David Gerber. "Or everybody on the West Coast loved it but somewhere over the Rockies somebody with a death ray beam hit the plane and the pilot show landed as dust in New York. You just sit there and wonder 'What happened to my film?' "

  What happens to the flop pilot? Occasionally another network will pick one up. A few, like the disastrous Marblehead Manor and She's the Sheriff, get a second chance in first-run syndication. And still others end up gathering dust at your local video store.

  Those are the exceptions. Unsold pilots are rarely exhumed by anyone.

  "It's dead, on my shelf, and late some night I might get stoned and I. might look at it," says Family Ties producer Gary David Goldberg. "Or it will show up in one of those 'Shame Theatres,' Failure Playhouses,' or four-in-a-row specials when America doesn't know what hit 'em late one night."

  The networks are in the entertainment business and, lucky for us consumers, even the business-behind-the-business is entertainment. Pilots may be lunacy, but as long as they make them, as long as they sneak them into prime time, we can all pretend we can run a network.

  HIGH CONCEPTS

  The Flying Nun. Fantasy Island. My Mother, the Car. Supertrain. Me and the Chimp. The Six Million Dollar Man.

  The titles say it all.

  These shows were "high concepts," outlandish ideas designed to grab network executives and captivate viewers. Some work, like The Flying Nun, while others, like My Mother, the Car, are ridiculed, and forever epitomize network insanity.

  Despite the risks, "high concepts" are coveted. No idea is too wild, too offensive, or too crazy to be considered. CBS once contemplated the story of an unjustly disgraced policeman who is fired from the force, secretly undergoes a sex change operation and re-enlists as a policewoman to clear his/her name.

  Inane? Laughable? Unthinkable?

  Maybe.

  But is it any crazier than a man who fights crime with his talking car? A half-man, half-robot secret agent who runs in slow motion? An astronaut who marries a genie-from-a-bottle? A sewer-dwelling beast who battled evil with his above-ground lover, an attractive big city district attorney?

  As absurd as they sounded, Knightrider, The Six Million Dollar Man, I Dream of Jeannie, and Beauty and the Beast were still hits.

  Most high concepts simply take a new twist on a typical television format (two cops—and one is an alien!) or exploit a familiar character (Merlin the Magician is a San Francisco auto mechanic!) or are built around a unique, audience-pleasing special effect (his truck becomes a laser-firing helicopter).

  The execution of the idea is everything. Can it be done with credibility? Will the viewers suspend their disbelief? Do the creators take their own idea seriously? What sounds really stupid on paper could look great On film and demolish the competition—or it could become an infamous, costly, and embarrassing, career-damaging failure.

  Here are some that didn't make it. How would these proposed series have been remembered? You be the judge. And while you're deciding, ask yourself if you would have bought The Flying Nun ...

  DRAMAS

  I. The Annihilator. NBC 4/6/86. 2 hours. Universal Television. Director: Michael Chapman. Executive Producer: Roderick Taylor. Producer: Alex Beaton. Writers: Roderick Taylor and Bruce Taylor. Music: Sylvester Levay.

  Newspaper publisher Richard Armour discovers that Angela Taylor, his reporter girlfriend, and all passengers of a commercial jetliner on which she was flying, have been eliminated and replaced by alien-created robots. He kills "her" in self-defense and is hunted both by the police (who want him for murder) and the aliens (who don't want him ruining their plans for world domination). Mark Chapman, star of the pilot and prospective star of the series, was to have portrayed John Lennon in the 1985 TV movie John and Yoko: A Love Story but was persuaded to give up the role because he had the misfortune of having the same name as Lennon's killer.

  Cast: Mark Lindsay Chapman (as Richard Armour), Catherine Mary Stewart (Angela Taylor), Susan Blakely (Layla), Lisa Blount (Cindy), Earl Boen (Sid), Geoffrey Lewis (Alan Jeffries), Nicole Eggert (Elyse), Brion James (Alien), Barry Pearl (Eddie), Paul Brinager (Pops), Channing Chase (Susan Weiss), Barbara Townsend (Celia Evans), Glen Vernon (Henry Evans), Biff Yeager (FBI Agent), Richard Partlow (FBI Agent #2), Toni Attell (Patti), James Parks (Policeman), Roger LaRue (Man in Coat), Stanley Bennett Clay (Cammie), Gregg Collins (Policeman).

  2. Assignment: Earth. NBC 3/29/68. 60 minutes. Desilu. Director: Marc Daniels. Producer: Gene Roddenberry. Associate Producer: Robert H. Justman. Writer: Art Wallace, from a story by Art Wallace and Gene Roddenberry. Music: Alexander Courage.

  Aired as an episode of Star Trek. Robert Lansing plays a benevolent alien who comes to earth to protect us from destroying ourselves. He's aided by a scatterbrain (Terri Garr) and a magical cat named Isis. He also brings with him a wide array of strange devices and his own version of a "transporter room." In the pilot, he tries to stop the launching of a satellite-come-nuclear bomb and clashes with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, which has journeyed into the past on a routine historic research mission. At the end of the episode, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) examine their computer's history banks and tell the two that they have "some interesting experiences" awaiting them. Unfortunately, TV viewers never got to see these experiences.

  Cast: Robert Lansing (as Gary Seven), Teri Garr (Roberta Lincoln), James Keefer (Cromwell), Morgan Jones (Col. Nesvig), Paul Baxley (Security Chief), Bruce Mars (First Policewoman), Ted Gehring (Second Policeman).

  3. Badlands 2005. ABC 8/29/88. 60 minutes. Lizard Productions, Hoyts Productions, and Columbia Pictures Television. Director: George Miller. Executive Producer/Writer/Creator: Reuben Leder. Music: Bruce Rowland.

  The story of a U.S. marshal (Lewis Smith) and his Cyborg partner (Miguel Ferrer) who patrol the now-barren American West in a high-tech car for a tough female boss (Sharon Stone). The pilot opened with the crawl: "In 1995, a severe drought forced Americans to flee the West for the cities. Water became more precious than gold. Now, in 2005, settlers are coming back, meeting new challenges, and age-old adversaries." And age-old plots—in the pilot, titled Brides of Lizard Gulch, the hero must escort mail order brides through dangerous territory.

  Cast: Lewis Smith (as Garson MacBeth), Miguel Ferrer (Rex), Sharon Stone (Alex Neil), Debra Engle (Joanie Valentine), Caitlin O'Heaney (Sara Gwynne), Lloyd Alan (Johnny Cantrell), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Moondance), Gus Mercurio (Stubbs), Robyn Douglass (Sue Cantrell), Marc Cales (Engineer), Steven Kuhn (Delaney), Justi
n Mongo (Braggo), Dave Arnett (Technician).

  4. Baffled. NBC 1/30/73. 2 hours. Arena Productions and ITC Entertainment. Director: Philip Leacock. Executive Producer: Norman Felton. Producers: Philip Leacock and John Oldknow. Writer: Theodore Apstein. Music: Richard Hill.

  Leonard Nimoy stars as a race car driver who, after being injured in a crash, acquires amazing psychic ability and is called upon to help police and government agencies. He's helped by a female psychiatrist (Susan Hampshire) who specializes in the occult, and, by his chauffeur (Ewan Roberts). Although shot in England, had this gone to series, it would have been produced in Hollywood.

  Cast: Leonard Nimoy (as Tom Kovack), Susan Hampshire (Michelle Brent), Ewan Roberts (Hopkins), Rachel Roberts (Mrs. Farraday), Vera Miles (Andrea Glenn), Jewel Blanch (Jennifer Glenn), Valeria Taylor (Louise Sanford), Ray Brookes (George Tracewell), Angharad Rees (Peggy Tracewell), Christopher Benjamin (Verelli), Mike Murray (Parrish), Milton Johns (Dr. Reed), Al Mancini (TV Interviewer), John Rae (Theater Doorman), Patsy Smart (Cleaning Woman), Shane Rimmer (Track Announcer), Roland Brand (Track Mechanic), Bill Hutchinson (Doctor), Michael Sloan (Ambulance Man), Dan Meaden (Policeman).

  5. The Bakery. CBS 7/20/90. 60 minutes. GTG Entertainment. Director: Peter Levin. Executive Producers/Writers/Creators: Brad Kern and John Wirth. Producer: Mel Efros.

  An exceptionally well-made, innovative twist on the conventional cop show, developed for CBS for the 1989-90 season. Each episode of the proposed series would frequently time-shift between decades while following a core group of police officers through the 1960s, the 1990s, and the early part of the twenty-first century. In the mid-sixties, the precinct where Officer Mike Kelly works has been relocated temporarily to an abandoned bakery. The city's racial tension has seeped into the precinct cops, who are rebelling against the arrival of Charles Slater, a black officer who is teamed with a draft-dodging rookie, Buck Bradford. In the nineties, the precinct still is "temporarily" housed in the bakery, Kelly is now the captain, and Slater has risen to detective and is teamed with his long-dead partner's daughter Dana Bradford. But by the year 2000, whites are in the minority in L.A., Kelly has been demoted to sergeant and has a partner named Hotshot Williams, a cowboy-ish cop who flaunts the rules—to the consternation of the new captain, Dana Bradford, who is having a secret affair with Kelly. This remarkable pilot, in the Hill Street Blues/St. Elsewhere mold, was passed over by the network, which didn't have a late-night slot for it. CBS made a mistake.

  Cast: David Dukes (as Mike Kelly), Clevant Derricks (Charles Slater), Stephen Eckholdt (Buck Bradford), Kate McNeil (Dana Bradford), Perry Lang (Hotshot Williams), also David Kagan, Kim McArthur.

  6. Band of Gold. CBS 3/19/61. 30 minutes. MCA. Director: Bud Yorkin. Producers: Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin. Writers: Dale and Katherine Eunson.

  Aired as an episode of G.E. Theatre. This was a pilot for a series of unrelated, thirty-minute stories dealing with marriage and all starring James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette as a different couple each week.

  Cast: Suzanne Pleshette (as Renee Fontaine), James Franciscus (Bill Taylor), Jack Weston (Freddie Pringle), Fill D'Orsay (Simone), J. Pat O'Malley (Cabbie), Mary Ellen Smith (Girl).

  7. Battles: The Murder That Wouldn't Die (aka Battles). NBC 3/9/80. 2 hours. Universal Television and Glen Larson Productions. Director: Ron Satlof. Executive Producer: Glen A. Larson. Producer: Ben Kadish. Writers: Glen A. Larson and Michael Sloan. Music: Stu Phillips and Glen A. Larson.

  William Conrad as a cop-turned-college security chief and part-time football coach at a Hawaii university who also dabbles in crime-solving. The concept was designed to both provide room for young storylines (and engender youth appeal) and more traditional action/adventures plots (and appeal to adults). Six episodes were written, but the series never materialized.

  Cast: William Conrad (as William Battles), Lane Caudell (Joe Jackson), Robin Mattson (Shelby Battles), Marj Dusay (Dean Mary Phillips), Tommy Aguilar (Tuliosis), Roger Bowen (Jack Spaulding), Edward Binns (Alan Battles), Don Porter (Rocky Jenson), John Hillerman (Paul Harrison), Kenneth Tobey (Chuck Parks), Ben Piazza (Dr. John Spencer), Sharon Acker (Jill Spencer), Mike Kellin (Capt. Ames), Jose Ferrer (Jeff Briggs).

  8. Beach Patrol. ABC 4/30/79. 90 minutes. Spelling/Goldberg Productions. Director: Bob Kelljan. Executive Producers: Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. Producer: Philip Fehrle. Writers: James D. Buchanan and Ronald Austin. Music: Barry DeVorzon.

  A female narcotics cop (Robin Strand) is transferred to an elite police squad of three (Christine DeLisle, Richard Hill, and Jonathan Frakes) that patrols the California beaches and, in the pilot, she is targeted for assassination after spotting a fugitive mafioso.

  Cast: Robin Strand (as Russ Patrick), Jonathan Frakes (Marty Green), Christine DeLisle (Jan Plummer), Richard Hill (Earl "Hack" Hackman), Michael Gregory (Sgt. Lou Markowski), Paul Burke (Wes Dobbs), Michael V. Gazzo (Banker), Panchito Gomez (Wild Boy), Mimi Maynard (Wanda), Princess O'Malley (Tall Girl).

  9. Braddock. CBS 7/22/68. 60 minutes. Twentieth Century Fox Television. Director: Walter Doniger. Producer/Writer: Paul Monash. Music: Lalo Schifrin

  A science-fiction/adventure about a private eye, played by Tom Simcox, who works in Los Angeles in 1977 and uses such futuristic devices as a Viewphonc. It was shot on location at U.C.L.A.

  Cast: Tom Simcox (as Braddock), Stephen McNally (Tratner), Karen Steele (Louise Tratner), Lloyd Bochner (Lawrence), Kathy Kush (Marie), Torn Reese (Mongol), John Doucette (Lt. McMillan), Colette Jackson (Beverly), Arthur Adams (Hitchess), Don Marshall (Gilmore), Laura Lindsay (Victoria), Robert Sampson (Policeman), Charles Macauley (Man).

  10. Chain Letter. ABC 8/5/89. 60 minutes. Indic Production Company and Phoenix Entertainment. Director: Thomas J. Wright. Executive Producers: Bruce J. Sallan and Daniel Melnick. Producer: Iry Zavada. Writer: Bill Blcich. Music: Brad Fiedel.

  Ian McShane is The Messenger of Death who sends out chain letters to mortals that offer temptation—and those who give in could die. His adversary is Miss Smith (played by Leslie Bevis), who believes that people are basically good, and who tries to steer people away from temptation—and doom. The critics were not kind. Variety called it "utter hokum ... this is one of those dumb pilots that should never have been made."

  Cast: Ian McShane (as Messenger of Death), Leslie Bevis (Miss Smith), Mary Page Keller (Janet Coulter), Merritt Butrick (Raymond Maston), Granville Van Deusen (John Hastings), Nancy Cartwright (Margo), John Hostetter (Lt. Harris), Sam Melville (Tom), Mike Tino (Nick), Bruce Newbold (Cop), Margot Rose (Lois), Toni Spackman (Patrolman), Edgar Small (Sammy Cofwin), Mark Phelan (Lt. Miller).

  11. Clone Master. NBC 9/14/78. 2 hours. Mel Ferber Productions and Paramount Television. Director: Don Medford. Executive Producer: Mel Ferber. Producer/Writer: John D.F. Black.

  Art Hindle is a government scientist who makes thirteen clones of himself, each sent out to fight evil and each of whom would become the focus of a different episode of the proposed series. If the series had continued past thirteen weeks, presumably the scientist would clone thirteen more of himself.

  Cast: Art Hindle (as Dr. Simon Shane), Robyn Douglass (Gussic), John Van Dreelen (Salt), Ed Lauter (Bender), Mario Roccuzzo (Harry Ticzer), Ralph Bellamy (Ezra Louthin), Stacey Keach, Sr. (Admiral Millus), Lew Brown (Fire Chief), Bill Sorrel's (Reporter), Robert Karnes (Trankus), Betty Lou Robinson (Alba Toussaint), Vernon Weddle (Pine), Steve Eastin (Huberman), Philip Pine (Commander Tiller), Kirk Duncan (General), Ian Sullivan (Pat Singer), Trent Dolan (Schnerlich), James O'Connell (Sands).

  12. Condor (aka Cobra). ABC 8/10/86. 90 minutes. Orion Television and Jaygee Productions. Director: Virgil Vogel. Executive Producer: Jerry Golod. Producers: Peter Nelson, Arnold Oroglini, Len Janson, and Chuck Menville. Writers: Len Janson and Chuck Menville. Music: Ken Heller.

  Set in the 1990s, this action pilot followed the exploits of an ace secret agent (Ray Wise) and his robot partner (Wendy Kilbourne), working for an elite, high-tech espionage agency
run by Craig Stevens.

  Cast: Ray Wise (as Chris Proctor), Wendy Kilbourne (Lisa Hampton), Craig Stevens (Cyrus Hampton), Vic Polizos (Commissioner Ward), James Avery (Cass), Cassandra Gaya (Sumiko), Carolyn Seymour (Rachel Hawkins), Shawn Michaels (Watch Commander), Mario Roccuzzo (Manny), Catherine Battistone (Lieutenant), Barbara Beckley (Water Controller), Diane Bellamy (Opera Singer), Gene Ricknell (Bartender), Myra Chason (Pirate Pete Waitress), Tony Epper (Cop), Brad Fisher (Man), Phil Fondacaro (Quaid), Mike Freeman (Technician), Karen Montgomery (Monique).

  13. Cover Girls. NBC 5/18/77. 90 minutes. Columbia Pictures Television. Director: Jerry London. Executive Producer: David Gerber. Producers: Charles B. FitzSimons and Mark Rodgers. Writer: Mark Rodgers. Music: Richard Shores.

  Cornelia Sharpe and Jayne Kennedy are globetrotting fashion models who are actually secret agents working for stone-faced Don Galloway. George Lazenby, who once played James Bond, and Vince Edwards, Ben Casey of yore, guest star.