Forgotten TV: Gun Shy (1983)

Someone at Disney thought there would be some more mileage in adapting the "Apple Dumpling Gang" movies into a TV series.

Problem was, the studio sold the series to CBS under a different name, Gun Shy, but without any of the cast from the "Apple Dumpling" movies. In fact, Tim Conway's Ace Crawford, Private Eye was coupled with Gun Shy on the schedule. Both were gone in less than two months. Would it have made any difference if Conway was persuaded to do Gun Shy instead of Ace Crawford, which he co-created?

Hard to say. Conway himself had flopped with a western sitcom, Rango, 16 years earlier, and Disney's mistake was not trying to contact him. Don Knotts wasn't available (Three's Company), so perhaps that would explain their reluctance to bring Conway in, allowing him to try his luck in a different genre.

The cast included Barry Van Dyke, headlining his own series for the first time, joined by Tim Thomerson (ex-Quark), Henry Jones, and Keith Coogan (billed as Keith Mitchell), the grandson of Jackie Coogan. However, Coogan was cut after four episodes, replaced by Adam Rich (ex-Eight is Enough).

So why did it fail? There are multiple reasons:

1. It had been a year after ABC tried with Best of The West, with Joel Higgins and Leonard Frey.

2. It aired on Tuesdays, where CBS was now running 3rd behind ABC & NBC.

3. Disney chose not to market it as The Apple Dumpling Gang: The Series.

Here's the intro:



No rating. Tuesdays meant The A-Team at my house.