Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

         "Mockingbird Lane" premiered on NBC in 2012 on October 26. It was developed by Bryan Fuller, who had previously done the darkly comic tv series "Pushing Daisies". A couple of months ago I showed how the original pilot for the original 1960s series had characters that looked different. However, in all the different incarnations Herman Munster has had on television, whether played by Fred Gwynne, John Schuck, Edward Herrmann or Sam McMurray, (even Jeff Daniel Phillips in the Rob Zombie movie) the character has the same look based on Boris Karloff's Frankenstein. In Fuller's version Jerry O'Connell plays Herman and he looks like...well, Jerry O'Connell with a gnarly scar on his neck. Eddie Izzard's version seems to be based on Gary Oldman's Dracula as opposed to Bela Lugosi. The pilot offers a modern, darker twist on the old series. It was ambitious and if the series had been picked up might have sparked to life to the Munsters. MOCKING...

        The Munsters  was a hugely popular monster-comedy tv series in the sixties and re-runs. It had many remakes through the years, including a movie made by Rob Zombie, where he (of course) cast his wife, Sheri Moon Zombie) in the role that Yvonne De Carlo played in the television series. However, De Carlo was not originally cast as Herman's wife, Lily, in fact the matriarch wasn't originally named Lily.        The pilot that was originally filmed was quite different, indeed. Joan Marshall played Phoebe Munster and looked a lot like Morticia Addams, son Eddie was much more of a snarling wolf boy and was played by Happy Derman before being replaced by Butch Patrick. Fred Gwynne was Herman Munster from the start as well as Al Lewis as Grandpa. Beverley Owens from the series was also in the original pilot but was replaced part way through the first season. The recognizable theme music by Jack Marshall was not used originally used, the house ...

       The original IT Crowd show would be hard to duplicate. The American network NBC, however, tried in 2006. The pilot recruited Richard Ayoade to reprise his role as Moss and Joel McHale was cast as Roy, the part originated by Chris O'Dowd. I like Joel McHale, he was great on Community , but as loser nerd Roy? The original script was used for the American pilot and it suffers from comparison. I felt the same way about the American version of The Office , and yet as the show went on, they let characters grow and change into something different that worked for their cast. Maybe the same would have happened with The IT Crowd but it didn't make it past a pilot, There was also a German adaptation in 2008 that lasted six episodes.

     Quentin Tarantino's movie  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows the career of an actor named Rick Dalton, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio. His early break a tv western called Bounty Law . It is similar to Steve McQueen's series Wanted: Dead or Alive. A s an aside, Damian Lewis has a cameo as Steve McQueen in the movie. Tarantino has said he would be interested in making an actual tv series of Bounty Law  and has already written five episodes. Until that happens, you'll have to make do with this DVD cover from a dimension where Rick Dalton really was a star.     

     In 2006 the tv series Smallville was a big hit. Its creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, tried an adaptation of  Aquaman. I remember it was originally going to be called Tempest Key then changed to Mercy Reef (sticking to the Smallville title template). The pilot was filmed in sunny Florida (although if the series was picked up I wonder if Vancouver would stand in for FLA) with famous names like Ving Rhames and Lou Diamond Phillips, as well as some actors that had appeared on Smallville . Even though Aquaman had appeared on Smallville played by Reacher star Alan Ritchson, they cast Justin Hartley in the lead. The series was not picked up but the producers liked Hartley and cast him as the Green Arrow on Smallville . Even though the pilot didn't air, it was released as a download on iTunes and I got it as a bonus with Smallville Season Five from Best Buy.       So, the DVD cover and outer case I made are if the series had been made. N...

       A lot of fans of the NBC television series Community have been wondering why we haven't gotten the movie yet. I want to know why we haven't gotten Shirley's spin-off yet. At the beginning of season six, Abed notices Shirley is missing and wonders if she "spun off". During the end credits is a commercial for the supposed show. I assume it would be like Trapper John, M.D.  or Lou Grant where a character gets their own series that is totally different from the originating show and like Joey and  Lou Grant  none of the other characters we knew and loved would appear or be mentioned.      As a bonus I included one of those ad inserts that would be in DVD cases for tv shows. Three of the "shows" and from the last episode of season five of Community and one is from the ninth episode of season six.

       Glenn Frey has been featured on this blog as a musician before (such as last week's post) but this week is Glenn Frey: Actor. He made a mini-movie music video for his song "Smuggler's Blues" which, essentially, got turned in an episode of Miami Vice  called "Smuggler's Blues" with Frey cast in a featured role. In 1986 he was in Let's Get Harry  with Robrt Duvall and Gary Busey, directed by Alan Smithee (who was also featured on this blog before). In 1989 he was in seven episodes of the series Wiseguy . The 1993 series South of Sunset looked like his big acting break. He was cast in the lead as a Beverly Hills detective. Aries Spears (of MadTV and Josie and the Pussycats ) was his co-star. It looked like they were trying to get a  48 Hours  kind of vibe. Spears even does a variation of Eddie Murphy's routine about the first black president.       Ironically the pilot was not scene where the series took place because it w...

      I have been doing a lot of DC comic characters so here's one for the Marvel fans. In 1977 CBS aired a pilot movie of Spider-Man that turned into a series that lasted two seasons. They aired two pilot movies of the Incredible Hulk that became a series lasting five seasons. They tried again in 1979 with Captain America. Two pilot movies were made with Reb Brown as the titular character, but it was not picked up as a series. Here is the DVD cover of the series that could have been.

      Before January was through, I wanted to add one more pairing of the World's Finest. Sadly, we could have never had a meeting of the television versions. George Reeves played the title character in The Adventures of Superman from 1952 to 1958. Adam West was Batman on the television series from 1966 to 1968. As fun as it would have to see these two paragons of virtue join each other, Reeves died seven years before the West series started.       Apparently, I'm not the only person to think about this. Look at Alex Ross' interpretation of the meeting.   

      This is a special multiple "what if" this week. What if Ed was released on home video and what if they kept the original casting. Ed ran on NBC for four seasons starting in 2000. I first tuned in because it had Julie Bowen from the WB series Three (see my blog from July 13, 2024 to learn more about that.). During the first episode I also saw Justin Long who I had enjoyed in Galaxy Quest the previous year. I became a fan of the lead actor, Tom Cavanagh, because of this show. All three have done well since the series went off the air so I was surprised it was never released on video. Apparently, music rights and two different production companies making the series are the reasons for that.      The commercials for the series before it aired had Donal Logue, who I had just seen in The Tao of Steve . When I tuned in for the first night, I was surprised to see Michael Ian Black doing scenes that the commercials had Logue in. The show was originally to ...

       Archie has been in comics since 1941. The character was popular enough to get a radio show starting in 1943. Cartoons of Archie and the gang ran from 1968-1978. There have been a few live-action pilots that went nowhere. Then in 1997 the CW network had a grim take with their series Riverdale that lasted seven seasons. In 1976, however, ABC put on a "special" of Archie . It featured short sketches and musical interludes. It wasn't picked up as a series but two years they tried again with The Archie Situation Comedy Musical Variety Show . It had the same cast and again did not make it to series.       Dennis Bowen, who played the title character, was also a student at Buchanan High in five episodes of Welcome Back Kotter . Deryl Maury (Jughead) was part of The Massacre at Central High . Hilarie Thompson was on the tv series of Operation Petticoat  after she was Veronica. Audrey Landers, who was Betty Cooper, had better success on the series D...

       In 2011 Warner Brothers Television hired David E. Kelley to write and produce a new Wonder Woman series for NBC. He was the man behind audience and critic favorites like "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Legal". In the pilot Wonder Woman was a superhero who was also publicly known as Diana Themyscira, the head of Themyscira Industries in L. A. but she was also Diana Prince, the bespectacled average woman who lived with her cat and was unlucky in love.  Adrianne Palicki played the lead role. Pedro Pascal played a police inspector, he recently played Mister Fantastic in Fantastic Four: First Steps (he also played Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984 ).       The pilot was hyped but early reviews from critics were bad and it never aired. An early cut was leaked online and bootleg copies were sold at comic conventions. Who knows what the series could have been. Above is my interpretation if it did get a full season.

       Back in April I posted a soundtrack of the tv series Moonlighting for seasons one and two. I had been disappointed that the official soundtrack was missing certain songs. In choosing songs for the previous volume and this volume I realized how hard it is to choose what should be included considering the depth of great music used on the show. The original soundtrack had "Since I Fell for You" which, I believe, was recorded for the series and is used in a pivotal scene. However, I was surprised that Billy Joel's "Big Man on Mulberry Street" wasn't included since it was not only used as a centerpiece in an episode, but the episode was even named after it. I also wanted to include Sam the Sham and Pharaohs' "Wooly Bully" which was humorously used in the last scene of the final episode of season four. Moonlighting music from seasons 3 & 4 - YouTube

       The Big Bang Theory show started on CBS in 2007 and lasted twelve seasons. The original pilot was different than the pilot that aired. Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons were always cast as Leonard and Sheldon but instead of meeting struggling actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, as their new neighbor, they meet Katie, played by Amanda Walsh, who is left homeless after breaking up with her boyfriend and Leonard offers their guest room to her. We are also introduced to Gilda, played by Iris Bahr, a fellow nerd and lab partner to Leonard who is jealous of Kate.      The character of Katie comes off as quite harsh, but I presume it would be softened as the show went on and she probably would have moved out of the guest room and across the hall from the boys. Katie was much like Sara Gilbert's character, Leslie Winkle, from the first couple of seasons. Who knows, if the original pilot was picked up the show might still have not been that much different...

       I originally saw this pilot movie years ago and it stuck with me. Years later I tried to find the name of it using the actors names I remembered. With the help of the imdb I found the name was High Risk. I tried to find it on DVD but the search kept bringing up the 1981 movie with Lindsay Wagner and the Jameses, Brolin and Coburn. After many more years of searching I found on Amazon a DVD of High Risk starring Buono and Cameron, ordered it immediately and when it arrived it was the 1981 movie. Then a few months ago I checked YouTube yet again and found ffernan312 had recently uploaded it.      I figure if it had been turned into a series it would have storylines like a wife trying to help her wrongfully convicted husband, someone from Walker-T's past calls him about a problem and the group finding out their boss has been kidnaped. For anyone who has read this far, I have an offer: if enough people are interested, I will write one of those storie...

  In July of 1987 ABC aired a movie based on Will Eisner's comic The Spirit. It starred Sam J. Jones as the title character and Nana Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as love interest Ellen Dolan. Trivia: 28 years later the two actors appeared in Seth MacFarlane's  Ted 2 . The sidekick in the comics was a racial stereotype called Ebony, in this production he was renamed Eubie and played by Bumper Robinson. The movie leaned more towards camp, as was the way comic productions were handled then. It was meant to be a pilot, with more episodes already written, but was never picked up. Who knows, if the series was picked up it might have been a more accurate representation of Eisner's work than the Frank Miller movie. Preview Clip | The Spirit | Warner Archive

        While filming the final season of the series "Parks and Recreation" Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, Katherine Hahn and Paul Rudd posed for a photo. They decided it looked like a David E. Kelley legal drama and was named "Philly Justice".  They soon gave their "characters" names and back stories. Between shooting scenes for their actual series, they would shoot scenes for their fake series. Writers worked on a script, props were made and Dylan McDermott (who wasn't part of "Parks and Rec" joined in the fun.  https://youtu.be/wUBYnswJUks?si=d21FZ8AHddB1dY-J

       In 1974 ABC Television aired a tv movie of Wonder Woman starring Cathy Lee Crosby. A year and a half later ABC tried again with Lynda Carter. This version was more like the comics and took place during WWII. It was picked up as a series and ran on ABC from April 1976 to February 1977. Then CBS picked it up for two more seasons, made it modern and now she worked for an intelligence agency like the 1974 pilot.       I have wondered what the series would have been like if they stuck with Crosby version. I imagine the rogue Paradise Island friend of Diana's would come back having been experimented on with Cheetah blood and become a powerful nemesis. As the show went on, they would probably incorporate more from the comics.       Above is sleeve for the DVD case and the outer slip sleeve case for this imagined series.       There was another proposed Wonder Woman series in 1967. Whenever you pick on an adaptati...

             The show Moonlighting  had some great music. MCA Records put out a soundtrack with some expected songs: the theme, a couple of songs from star Cybill Shepherd, one a cover of song from 1948 and "Blue Moon", (she had released an album in 1974 that was covers of Cole Porter tunes) and a cover The Rascal's song "Good Lovin'" from star Bruce Willis,  (which would have fit right in with the other songs on his 1987 album "Return of Bruno"). The soundtrack had a lot of great songs heard in the show, but I was still hoping for some others. How was Mitch Ryder's "Devil with a Blue Dress On" not included considering how it was featured in the last episode of season two.       So, what if they had a slightly more thorough soundtrack? I concentrated on only the first two seasons. This is not all the songs, but I think it is a better representation of what was heard on the show. Moonlighting music from season 1 & 2 - YouTub...

  Quinn Martins was all over the television in the 1970s. He produced "Streets of San Francisco", "Barnaby Jones", "Cannon" and many more show about crime solvers. In 1978 he teamed up Brian Clemens who had been working on the British series, "The Avengers". Together they tried to make an American version of John Steed and Mrs. Peel. The pilot was a "movie of the week" on CBS. It did not do well enough to get a series. I would have been curious to see where it would have gone. If you are curious, the pilot can be viewed here; CBS Network Special - Escapade - WBBM-TV (Complete Pilot Broadcast, 5/19/1978) 📺