Someone at NBC thought it'd be a cool idea to develop a more up-to-date (for its time, anyway) version of Topper. Unfortunately, Nearly Departed scared more viewers away than it attracted, and was gone after a month.
Eric Idle (Monty Python's Flying Circus) & Caroline McWilliams (ex-Benson) play a British professor and his wife, who were killed in a rockslide. The new family taking over their home has no idea of what they've just bought into. Wendy Schaal (ex-Fantasy Island) & Stuart Pankin (Not Necessarily The News) co-starred.
Edit, 9/7/2020: Had to change the video. Here is the intro, and, yes, Eric Idle performs the theme song, in this case in a song & dance routine.
Idle would try again with a series at NBC, but this time, it was a cartoon, Stressed Eric, and that bombed as well.
No rating.
2 comments:
By common consensus, Eric Idle was the best singer of all the Pythons.
So if it isn't him singing the Nearly Departed theme … who the heck else could it be?
That end-credit announcement comes from an Australian broadcast; YouTube seems to have most of the set from that venue.
Listening to the theme, it sounds as if Eric was trying to emulate the sounds of a bygone era, and that's what threw me.
I wonder if he's released any CD's outside of Monty Python......
Post a Comment