The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

It's back to school week!  We start this week talking about why some movies should not make the transition to TV shows.  Ferris Bueller had very little in common with the movie, and the title character makes that known in the first 2 minutes of the pilot.  But it did have Jennifer Aniston.

In 1997, CBS took the bold steps of putting together a 2-hour comedy block on Friday nights versus ABC's TGIF, and even took two of TGIF's stalwarts in the process.  The two former TGIF shows were on its last legs.  We're here to talk about the two original shows to the Block Party--Meego and The Gregory Hines Show.

UPN tried throwing almost anything on their schedule in the late 90s.  Shasta McNasty is no exception.  It was so bad that the title was cut in half to just Shasta during the show's run.  Even cross-promotions with WWF Smackdown couldn't lure viewers. This was basically the most 1999 TV show that ever 1999'd.

In episode 61, we talked about the season when NBC owned and operated stations had primetime starting at 7:30.  We talked about one of those 5 shows, We Got it Made, in episode 66.  Another show from that experiment is this show's focus.  Marblehead Manor follows the antics of a wealthy family and their staff at their palatial residence.

In anticipation of the upcoming Amazon Prime series, this episode takes a look at the "blink and you'll miss it" television version of one of the breakout movie hits of 1992.  A League of Their Own had a handful of characters reprising their roles in one-off appearances and its TV fate may have been set in stone by a certain organization.

Norman Lear's 100th birthday celebration continues with possibly his most obscure series, airing for just 5 episodes in 1977.  A Year at the Top followed the Faustian formula of selling one's soul to the devil for instant success.  Audiences gave it a month at the bottom of the ratings.

This week, we're celebrating Norman Lear's 100th birthday by looking at two of his less successful shows.  We start with Lear's adaptation of a play about a seedy hotel with even seedier residents, Hot l Baltimore.  Most of the players were relative newcomers, and three went on to much greater success in the decades that followed.

What if Merlin the Magician lived in the 20th Century instead of during Arthurian times?  In 1981, CBS gave us an answer to that question when Merlin lived in San Francisco and owned an auto repair shop.  It appears CBS had faith in the series, but it went up against difficult competition from the start.

The Fourth of July is coming early next week.  To celebrate, we look at one of our favorite episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the gang puts on a wrestling event with a little support from Rowdy Roddy Piper's character.

Another Marvel movie will be released soon as we celebrate the return of Thor, so it's time for more entries related to actors and actresses in the MCU.  We go back to 1980 for Stephen J. Cannell's first series, with Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen playing detectives in the short-lived but fondly remembered Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.