Hello from Dallas where it’s a tad hot. Here are more great unsold pilots. From the unsold pilot book by Lee Goldberg. And remember, these are all for real.
TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER ABC-1964 -- Two aliens from Venus come to earth, meet an inventor, and go into business with him selling to unknowing earthlings products created for another planet.
13 THIRTEENTH AVENUE CBS-1983 – Similar to one of yesterday’s entries, this one features a widower and his son who move into a Greenwich Village apartment building inhabited by a model who’s a witch, a C.P.A. who’s a werewolf, a lawyer who’s a vampire, a superintendent who’s a troll, and their psychiatrist.
WHERE’S EVERETT? CBS-1966 -- Alan Alda (of all people) as a young father who goes to get the morning paper and finds that aliens have left an invisible baby on his doorstep. (Oooh, if only I knew about this when I worked with him on MASH…) YAZOO NBC-1984 -- William Conrad (the Fat Man from Jake &) is a widowed journalist who goes fishing one day, falls asleep in the boat, and wakes up in a magical world called Yazoo, populated by the Peppercorn Puppets. (I can't believe this one didn't go.)
AFTER GEORGE CBS-1983 – Susan Saint James as a widow who discovers her late husband programmed his personality into the computer that operates their house. (MY HUSBAND THE HARD DRIVE)
JUSTIN CASE ABC-1988 – One of the 12,000 ghost pilots but this one featured the great George Carlin as a ghost private eye.
WHO GOES THERE? CBS-1965 – Two troublesome ghosts haunting a southern California tract house materialize as General Custer and Indian Chief Running Dog. (Tract house or crack house?)
IT'S A DOG'S LIFE NBC-1979 – From the people who brought you ALL IN THE FAMILY comes this tale (tail?) of actors dressed as dogs. (Long before WILFRED)
K-9000 Fox-1989 – A loose cannon on the LAPD has a microchip implanted in his brain by a hot woman scientist allowing him to talk telepathically with his new partner, a genetically-enhanced German shepherd.
POOCHINSKI NBC-1990 – Dog pilots were also big. Stanley Poochinski is a tough, ill-mannered cop who has been gunned down in the line of duty and reincarnated as a talking, flatulent English bulldog.
MURDER IN MUSIC CITY NBC-1979 – I saved the best for last. Sonny Bono as a Nashville songwriter who becomes a detective. (When he caught the bad guy did he say, “I got you, babe!”?)
A very special treat tomorrow. I will be showing you one of these unsold pilots. Y'all come back now, ya heah?
