Bad from Birth

There have been so many dumb series on television over the years, that separating out those which were obviously doomed from the outset by their central premises demands some pretty serious consideration. Fortunately, the folks over at the Television Obscurities site have done the culling for us, compiling their list of the “10 Most Outlandish Television Concepts Ever.”

Only two crime-related shows appear on the site’s roster. The first is Holmes & Yo-Yo (1976-1977), which starred Richard B. Shull as a klutzy, disheveled police detective who was prone to injuring his partners, and John Schuck (somehow enticed away from McMillan & Wife to participate in this turkey) as his new, freakishly strong android partner. The second is Cop Rock, a much-hyped but short-lived Steven Bochco series that melded the police drama with musical theater. (“Within the course of the premiere episode,” TV Obscurites explains, “viewers witnessed a jury breaking into a gospel song about finding a man guilty, a young mother giving away her baby for $200 [and singing about it], and a police officer gunning down a cop-killer in cold blood.”)

Also making this “Outlandish” roster, but not crime-fiction-related, are The Second Hundred Years (about a man who’s frozen in 1900 and thawed out almost seven decades later), Woops! (a FOX sitcom set in the “aftermath of accidental global nuclear war, started when two boys playing with a toy at a parade set off a nuclear missile”), and the inevitable My Mother the Car, which starred Jerry Van Dyke as a guy whose dead mom is reincarnated as a 1928 “Porter” touring car. According to Wikipedia, Van Dyke passed up the title role in Gilligan’s Island (ultimately filled by Bob Denver) in order to make this Mother, believing Gilligan would be roundly and prompty rejected by TV audiences. Speaking of woops!