If you take a look back at the track record of DC Comics' properties adapted for primetime television, you'd find that the recently concluded Smallville is the most successful series to date, having logged 10 seasons on the air. In fact, the top three DC live-action series are all tied to Superman.
In 1990, producers Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo picked up an option to adapt The Flash into a weekly series that aired on CBS. That was the good news. The bad? It aired on Thursdays, opposite NBC's top-rated The Cosby Show. CBS, you see, was trying to find a tentpole on Thursdays to replace Magnum, P. I., but Flash wasn't it. Not by a long shot.
Soap star John Wesley Shipp, already known to CBS audiences from The Young & The Restless, was cast as police scientist Barry Allen. Instead of bleaching his hair blond to match Allen's look in the comics, Shipp was allowed to retain his dark hair. Creative license? I suppose, but I believe Shipp was also still on Restless at the time, which would explain his reluctance to change his hair color. Amanda Pays (ex-Max Headroom) played Tina McGee, who was actually a supporting character in the comics at the time, but the anomaly was that Allen's nephew, Wally West, was the comic book Flash at the time, and Tina was having an affair with him, if memory serves me correctly.
Comics veteran Howard Chaykin and relative newcomer John Francis Moore were the principal writers for the show, with cartoon veteran Michael Reaves, who had previous written for Super Friends & He-Man & the Masters of the Universe, among his myriad of toon credits, writing the teleplay for the episode, "Shroud of Death".
Edit: 4/7/14: "Shroud of Death" has been deleted by YouTube due to copyright issues. In its place, we serve up the open. If the music sounds familiar, well, I think Danny Elfman was the show's musical director........
Co-star Alex Desert would return a few years later in the sitcom, Becker, opposite Ted Danson, and that lasted at least two seasons, as opposed to Flash checking out after 1. Unlike Warner Bros.' last adaptation for TV, Wonder Woman, we would get to see at least a couple of the Scarlet Speedster's enemies, including The Trickster and Captain Cold. Not that it helped, as a better time slot would've done that.
Rating: B-.
2 comments:
I was one of those who enjoyed this show back in the day.
I think it could have had a good run if network honchos had given it a better chance. Personally I welcomed the Thursday broadcast because I was sick of the Cosbys by that point!
Shipp also turned up later on "Dawson's Creek" as the father of one of the main characters.
He and Flash came full circle on "Batman, The Brave & The Bold" a few years back when he voiced Flash's nemesis, "Dr. Zoom" in "Requiem For a Scarlet Speedster". Did an swesome job of it too!
Flash would've had a better chance, as I said, if it was on a night other than Thursday. I'm trying to figure out what night might've been most appropriate, though.
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