Thursday, June 28, 2018

Forgotten TV: The Best of Times (1981)

ABC must not like George Schlatter much.

The man who gave us Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In & Real People, two bonafide hits, for NBC, struck out in 2 attempts with ABC. Turn-On was one-&-done in 1969. 12 years later, ABC decided they wanted to work with Schlatter again, this time developing a teen-oriented comedy-variety show that they thought might complement, say, for example, Happy Days.

I have to believe Schlatter came up with The Best of Times as a title from reading Dickens' Great Expectations, and not from listening to Styx's "Paradise Theatre" album, which was pretty hot back then. Of course, there was that movie with Kurt Russell and Robin Williams, too, but that's beside the point.

Crispin Glover is our genial "host", if ya will, but he'd have been better served fronting a remake of Dobie Gillis. Crispin's bedroom, as we see, reminds me of mine back in the day, except that mine was a little more organized and free of pets.

The supporting cast includes Nicolas Coppola (Cage) and Julie Piekarski (The Facts of Life), with Jackie Mason getting "special guest star" billing.



If you didn't see it, and most online sites snarkily suggest you do, you actually might be lucky. Glover actually sounds like he could've been a new generation Dobie. Looking at this for the first time, it seems that Schlatter's idea was somewhere between Dobie Gillis and one of James Komack's failed Archie pilots from a few years earlier. With Glover having achieved cult favorite status since then, this might be of interest to his most devoted fans.

Rating: C-.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

Holy Cow! Glover did TV? Who knew??

Too bad he pissed off the Hollywood PTB, or he might have had a bigger career outside of the first Back To The Future film.

This show is definitely very "Dobie-esque", with a smidge of Fast Times of Ridgemont High (G-rated version of course).

hobbyfan said...

And it pre-dated Fast Times by a year.

Other than frequent appearances on talk shows, I don't think Crispin Glover did much TV after this.