Q & A: Monsters, "Young Guy Christian"
I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me about television shows, made-for-TV movies or miniseries they remember from years or decades past. I try to answer each question as best I can. Every now and then I like to dig through my inbox and pull out a few choice e-mails to answer here at Television Obscurities for everyone to read. Keep reading for today's questions and answers.
There was a show that came on in the late 80s to early 90s (I think), it started with a family of monsters watching television in their living room. I think it was kind of like a Tales From the Darkside show. Do you remember the name of it?
-Amy
Monsters was a half-hour anthology horror series that aired from 1988-1991 in first-run syndication. The opening credits spoofed the idea of the traditional nuclear family (father, mother and daughter) gathered in the living room to watch television. Only in this case the family was made up of monsters (like The Munsters). Over the course of three seasons a total of 72 episodes were broadcast, starring the likes of David McCallum, Soupy Sales, Wil Wheaton, Deborah Harry, Richard Belzer, Steve Buscemi, Matt LeBlanc, Barbara Billingsley, Frank Gorshin, Robert Lansing, Abe Vigoda, Karen Valentine and Meat Loaf. Several episodes were released on VHS in the late 1980s/early 1990s but are long out of print. The series occasionally airs on NBC Universal's specialty cable channel Chiller.
Young Guy Christian. Does this pilot that spoofs spy TV shows and 007 still exist in an archive somewhere?
-Dave
UCLA's Film & Television Collection has a print of this half-hour, unsold ABC sitcom pilot starring Barry Bostwick, Pat Morita and Shelley Long. It was broadcast on Thursday, May 24th, 1979. The plot of the pilot involved the inept Guy Christian (Bostwick) attempting to save six lovely contestants in the Miss Planet pageant after they're kidnapped by the fiendish Dr. Gasss, who will only release them in return for the components to a hydrogen bomb! Morita played Guy Christian's boss, Professor Mishugi and Long played Mishugi's daughter, Mia. Surprisingly, the pilot ranked 15th for the week. Les Brown of The New York Times, however, attributed the strong showing to the fact that the pilot followed an episode of Mork & Mindy.
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