The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

It's Lost in Translation time.  We're going down under for this installment, with a series that really pushed the envelope in Australia for most of the 70s, but barely made a whimper in the United States.  Was it because the American version didn't have the edginess?  Was it due to scheduling?  Could there have been too much going on?  Could it have been due to similar but more popular shows on other networks?  (Yes times four.)

We visit a late 70s obscurity from NBC, where a recent podcast favorite played a playboy who got framed for a crime he didn't commit, spending three years behind bars.  Upon his release, he went for revenge.  His calling card was literally a playing card.  The show went on a lengthy hiatus before airing one final two-hour episode, when NBC dealt one final blow--cancellation.

Our first foray into war dramas takes us to one of the more popular failures in television history.  The name in season 1 could have been misleading, costs certainly were high between aircraft and personnel, and the ratings were low.  Despite all that, the show has lived on in reruns for well over a decade every weekend.

We return to our now-regular weekly schedule with a show we have wanted to talk about for years, but there was no footage of it in English...until a few weeks ago.  What happens when three people in a large American city are given a life-changing sum of money?  It isn't always sunshine and rainbows.  It is, however, incredibly redundant.

In the second of our two birthday honorings this week, we celebrate what would have been Kevin Dobson's 83rd Birthday by looking at this short-lived 1981 CBS cop show. Kevin Dobson plays a widowed single father who moves from the NYPD to San Francisco. The ratings for this wouldn't be good, but better things would come for Kevin in the following year thanks to a cast opening on another CBS drama.

Continuing with the magic theme from the last installment, our birthday boy Chico has selected this show as his annual Money in the Bank.  Instead of Bill Bixby as a master magician/crime solver, it is Hal Linden.  The results were similar--one season and done, but this has a place in our hearts.

To start 2026, we look at a show which many consider one of the best one-season wonders in television history.  What happens when you get a playboy who lives in a plane and drives a white Corvette, performs magic, and solves crimes?  You get The Magician, an enjoyable series from 1973-4.

Happy holidays!  Our gift to you this holiday season is a television movie from 1977, which was a carbon copy of the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life, but gender-swapped.  Included in the cast is one of our favorite names, as well as the person Warren Beatty said is the best in Hollywood at something.

Last year, we went over TV Guide's 50 Worst Shows of All-Time list from 2001 and thought about which shows should be removed from the list and what shows we would add from the last 20+ years since the list was released.

This year, Mike, Greg, and Chico present their re-rankings of what they think are the 50 Worst Shows of All-Time based on what they kept from TV Guide's 2001 list and what shows they added from Part 1.

For new listeners, you can listen to Part 1 of this special from last year at this link. - https://www.itwasathingontv.com/e/it-was-a-thing-on-tv-presents-tv-guides-50-worst-shows-of-all-time-list-part-1/

As happens in the TV business, having a successful TV movie equates to a run as a series.  This is no different, holding its own versus some huge 1985 competition.  The later series?  Not so much, against that same competition.  Robert Blake starred as a tough but fair priest in a tough and not-so-fair portion of Los Angeles, trying to make Hell Town not so hellish.