Aaron Spelling made a brief alliance with Screen Gems, resulting in a short-lived 1970 series for ABC, The Young Rebels, one of three freshman entries Spelling produced for the network that year. The others were through his own production company, The Most Deadly Game & The Silent Force, and both also bombed out.
Set in the time of the Revolutionary War, The Young Rebels features a young Louis Gossett, Jr., in one of his earliest roles. Gossett would later guest on The Partridge Family, another Screen Gems series, after Rebels was cancelled.
So where did it go wrong? How about on the wrong night? It aired on Sundays as a lead-in to The F. B. I., but had to be slotted opposite The Wonderful World of Disney. Game over. Seems folks weren't too keen on a historical drama on a Sunday, and wouldn't be for a while.
Here's the intro:
This might explain why Sony would later obtain the rights to some of Spelling's other creations, like Charlie's Angels and Fantasy Island, although Columbia Pictures Television did co-produce the latter, for video distribution.
My memory is hazy on Young Rebels (I was 7 at the time, after all), so there won't be a rating.
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