Obscure TV Shows Aired on TV Land

My post last week “celebrating” TV Land’s 17th anniversary and lamenting its shift away from classic television got me to thinking about some of the more obscure shows the cable channel has aired over the years. Certainly, the bulk of its schedule always consisted of more famous, big name shows like Green Acres, Mr. Ed, I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best.

It also aired one or two season wonders like Angie, Tabitha, The Westerner, Honey West and My Mother the Car. And occasionally, as part of marathons or special programming blocks, TV Land aired random episodes of rarely or never syndicated shows like Coronet Blue, Lucas Tanner, The Young Lawyers and Mr. Terrific.

Do you remember watching any other obscure or unusual shows on TV Land?


Related Posts

Become a Patron Today

Are you a fan of obscure television? Please support Television Obscurities on Patreon by becoming a patron today.

19 Replies to “Obscure TV Shows Aired on TV Land”

  1. The most obscure show I watched on early TV Land was Mannix.

    I miss the days when the network was programming more odd stuff. I loved the Spin Cuts interstitial series they did for a short term.

  2. They apparently ran an episode of The Great Adventure, “the Raiders”, about John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry.
    Incidentally, after you do the article on Channing, you might consider doing one The Great Adventure. !963 was agreat year for “one- season wonders”, especially if you also throw in East Side/West Side, The Richard Boone show, and The Travels of Jamie McPheeters.

  3. In 2003 and 2004 during the summer, every Friday and Saturday night at midnight, they had a programming block called “The TV Land Kitschen” (yes, it was spelled that way) that was dedicated to showcasing what they called “retro rarities”, I believe in 2003 it was hosted by Martin Mull and Fred Willard.

    The 2003 TV Land Kitschen had WELCOME BACK, KOTTER; WKRP IN CINCINATTI; SQUARE PEGS; and TABITHA.

    The 2004 TV Land Kitschen was dedicated to various Sid & Marty Krofft shows, but they most played H.R. PUFNSTUF since it’s their better-known and more-successful series.

    Then, of course, as far as other one and two season wonders go, TV Land also occasionally played both THE MUNSTERS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

  4. I didn’t get to see it myself, but I was told by a few different people that in the 1990s, TV Land’s ‘Museum of TV & Radio Showcase’ ran the FORD STARTIME episode ‘Incident at a Corner’ (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which was his only color TV work, shot a week after finishing PSYCHO, with Vera Miles and the same production crew.

    I recall that one or more vintage Christmas specials also ran on TV Land for Christmas back then (late 1990s), I think featuring Judy Garland. I didn’t watch them, but I remember seeing promos for them.

  5. We, in the Boston-Providence area got TV Land in either the late ’90s or early ’00s.It was before our cable company provided access to the DVR feature so I was still fooling around with a VCR. I well remember recording an entire Saturday afternoon of rather obscure Westerns for a friend. Stagecoach West with a very young Wayne Rogers, Johnny Ringo, Overland Trail, Bronco and I think Have Gun Will Travel.Great stuff! Really enjoyed the retromercials,too!Nowadays we get ME-TV.They’re showing Mr. Lucky,which is kinda obscure itself!

  6. I remember that they aired at least one episode of the 1992 Fox sitcom Stand By Your Man with Melissa Gilbert and Rosie O’Donnell. This was back when Rosie’s daytime talk show was popular.

  7. During a Norman Lear marathon celebrating (I think) the 35th anniversary of ALL IN THE FAMILY in 2006, episodes of GRADY, the short-lived SANFORD AND SON spinoff, and SUNDAY DINNER, a six week summer series from 1991 starring Robert Loggia and a young Teri Hatcher, aired.

  8. Back in 1998/99, TV-Land would occasionally run random episodes of some (now) rare 1950s CBS series (it wasn’t considered rare back then, or even in syndicated reruns in the 1960s-era), such as Our Miss Brooks, December Bride, The Millionaire, The Lineup, half-hour B&W Gunsmoke (Marshall Dillon), Have Gun Will Travel, and the western “Trackdown”. CBS/Viacom/Paramount does own all of these shows (and TV-Land is itself owned by CBS/Viacom), and at least SOME of these shows have been issued on DVD by CBS, such as Have Gun Will Travel and all of the half-hour Gunsmoke ep’s (and most-but-not-yet-all of the B&W hour-long early 60s Gunsmoke ep’s). And back then (1998/99), TV-Land also ran a lot of 1950s/60s Warner Bros. dramas and westerns (Hawaiian Eye, Maverick, The FBI, etc). Thankfully, Warner Archives is in the process of coming out with DVDs of these (and other) classic WB westerns/dramas. I just wish that more 1950s/60s TV would all come out on DVD!

  9. On Saturdays and Sundays they would air TVLand box sets, 4 episodes of various shows with ether an actor or a common plot line which sometimes featured episodes of short run shows. They also had The Wonders of TVLand which showed oddball shows. One month ( probably around the time of the second BB movie ) They had The Wonders of Brady featuring 3 hour marathons of reboots “Brady Kids”, “Brady Brides”, and “The Bradys”
    For awhile there I watched (and thankfully recorded) TVLand and GameShow Network. Sometimes they seemed to go hand in hand. Watch a few episodes of “Hogan’s Heroes”, switch the channel and watch Bob Crane play “Password”.

    1. TV Land had a block of cartoons on Saturday Mornings called Super Retrovision Saturdaze. They reran: Brady Kids, Fonzie and the happy days gang, etc.

  10. I liked the show, “Hi Honey, I’m Home.” The movie “Pleasantville” reminds me of it. They also ran “Car 54” which was very funny.

      1. Nick At Nite did run “Car 54,” though. “Hi Honey, I’m Home” also aired on Nick At Nite. It’s easy to understand the confusion, since TV Land spun off from Nick At Nite.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.