NBC found that out the hard way when they introduced a hero who was a real mama's boy---Captain Nice. Buck Henry, who co-created Get Smart with Mel Brooks a year and a half earlier, gets sole creative credit on this farce, which lasted 8 months, debuting in January 1967. Now, I never saw the show, so there won't be a rating.
William Daniels starred as chemist Carter Nash, who was more of the definition of meek & mild mannered than Superman's alter ego of Clark Kent was at the time. Alice Ghostley played his mom, who encouraged and enabled her son's moonlighting----by designing his costume. Yeah, it gets worse from there, doesn't it? Henry served as executive producer, and would recover nicely from this failure, resurfacing as an early contributor to Saturday Night Live nearly a decade later. As we already know, Alice Ghostley would turn up next on Bewitched & Mayberry RFD. Daniels, thankfully, also recovered pretty well. You might remember him better for his star turn as John Adams in "1776", and then achieving iconic status in the 80's as the voice of KITT on Knight Rider, while at the same time starring on St. Elsewhere, with both series airing on NBC, and following that with a stint on ABC's Boy Meets World.
Following is the intro:
Don't ya think the Greatest American Hero could've learned how to fly by not learning from Captain Nice? Just a thought......
I heard about this and I remember catching an episode online somewhere. It had potential but the execution wasn't quite right.
ReplyDeleteThe theme song though was pretty catchy though!
I wonder if Daniels ever had to live this one down?
Considering that he latched onto three hit shows years later, I doubt it.
ReplyDelete