What Might've Been: Wojeck (1966)

 Credit goes to fellow blogger Chuck Miller for this one.

If you're subscribed to, say, for example, Max or Amazon Prime or Netflix, you're accustomed to series having short seasons of 10 episodes maximum. Turns out it's not unique at all.

Like, the Canadians did it first, eh? Many decades ago, eh?

Wojeck, inspired by the career of real-life coroner and politician Morton Shulman, ran for 2 seasons of 20 episodes before its star, John Vernon, was lured away by the promises of big bucks in Hollywood. That certainly proved to be true, as Vernon is best known to American audiences for "National Lampoon's Animal House" and its short-lived spinoff, Delta House, and as a character actor often cast as a villain or heavy.

Steve Wojeck (Vernon) is a coroner who also is a social activist. If this sounds familiar, well, Quincy, M. E., which came along a decade later on NBC, was also inspired by Shulman, and went from your average procedural mystery to a hour-long format that allowed for stories about sensitive subject matter of the period. The difference was, Quincy had a longer run.

American audiences got their first look at Wojeck when the episode, "Tell Them The Streets Are Dancing", was imported by NBC for the Bob Hope Chrysler Theater. The fonts used for the titles and credits on Wojeck have often been used at Universal as well for a number of series over the years (i.e. McHale's Navy, The Six Million Dollar Man), which suggests to me that maybe NBC & Universal were interested in bringing Wojeck over as a summer replacement at some point, then passed. What I'm not sure of is if there were some litigation over any similarities between Wojeck & Quincy. One YouTube commenter noted that the episode, "Another Wonderful Day", may have inspired an episode of Quincy.

Cartoon fans know Vernon from The Marvel Super Heroes Show (Iron Man & Sub-Mariner) and Batman: The Animated Series (as mobster Rupert Thorne, who also figured into the DTV, "Mystery of The Batwoman"). Carl Banas was also heard in Rocket Robin Hood, The Raccoons, & Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, among his toon credits. Graydon Gould was heard on Supercar.

Here's "Another Wonderful Day":

The opening made me think this show also inspired a UK series, Department S, which had nothing to do with the coroner's office, but did specialize in odd mysteries.

Rating: A.