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.
By common consensus, Eric Idle was the best singer of all the Pythons.
ReplyDeleteSo 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.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he's released any CD's outside of Monty Python......