The Idiot Box is an American sketch comedy television series created by Alex Winter, Tom Stern and Tim Burns, which ran on MTV from 1990-1991.
After the success of Bill & Ted, MTV hired Winter, Stern, and Burns to develop a half-hour sketch comedy show for the network. As the channel was still strictly music-oriented at the time, The Idiot Box was mainly a showcase for popular music videos, but with a series of sketches, fake commercials, and parodies shown in between. Therefore, although an episode ran 30 minutes, there were only 7 to 11 minutes worth of sketches.
Inspired heavily by the likes of MAD Magazine and Monty Python's Flying Circus, the humor in The Idiot Box was rooted in absurdity and violent slapstick, often in the form of television and movie parodies and commercials for fake television shows. Each episode would end with a recap by the Max Headroom-esque VOTAR, "the future of television announcing", as he would criticize each of the sketches in the episode and occasionally quote lines from New Wave
Each episode takes the form of a broadcast made by a fictional pirate television station from a fictional small-minded village in East-Flanders, manned by a small number of VJs who introduce various sketches disguised as news or human interest reports. The style of both the program and its official website is deliberately amateurish. Most episodes involve a framing story which intertwines with certain sketches. Many characters are recurring and feature several catchphrases. The series sometimes includes sketches about current news, such as a baby found at a railway station, but also reacted to some negative critique, not taking itself too seriously.
Hardwicke House was a 1987 seven-episode sitcom produced by Central Independent Television for the ITV network. It was so negatively received that only the first two episodes were transmitted.
Kyung Min, a law student, is in desperate straits, so he decides to take it upon himself to help Hye Ryun's poor friend, Jung Eun. This is the beginning of an extremely volatile friendship that somehow ends with the two of them living together under one roof, or to be more specific, living in a room on top of the roof of an old building. Kyung Min's bratty ways clashes with Jung Eun's simple living, as he steadily takes advantage of her kindness and good nature.
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour is an American network television music and comedy variety show hosted by singer Glen Campbell from January 1969 through June 1972 on CBS. He was offered the show after he hosted a 1968 summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Campbell used "Gentle on My Mind" as the theme song of the show. The show was one of the few rural-oriented shows to survive CBS's rural purge of 1971.
A psychiatrist is given care of Rhoda Miller (real name "AF 709"), a life-like, sophisticated, but naïve android that eventually learns how human society works and begins showing -- or at least emulating -- rudimentary emotions.
Victoria Wood was a series of six one-off situation comedies written by and starring Victoria Wood in 1989, who took a break from sketches, two years after her very successful and award winning series Victoria Wood As Seen on TV. Wood appeared as "Victoria", a fictionalised version of herself, in all six episodes - in The Library it was said that she "worked in TV" and in Over To Pam characters appeared to recognise her celebrity and in the final episode, Staying In, she was taken to a party to perform as a comedienne and was expected to go through her stand-up 'routine'. Her character often broke the 'fourth wall' of TV and spoke directly to the camera, but not in every episode.
Bored with the sketch format and with a yearning to recapture previous success as a playwright, Wood came up with six individual sitcoms as a compromise. She admitted to finding the writing difficult. Though Wood was written as the central character, other lead parts were written with specific actresses in mind, like Julie Walters and Una
Hapless bank clerk Willie Melvin dreams of being a successful writer but is held back by his own incompetence, the dodgy dealings of his best friend Chancer, and lack of support from his mother, the bank's manager Adam McLelland and his obsequious fellow teller, Brian.
The Hollywood Palace is an hour-long American television variety show that was broadcast weekly on ABC from January 4, 1964 to February 7, 1970. Originally titled The Saturday Night Hollywood Palace, it began as a mid-season replacement for The Jerry Lewis Show, another variety show which had lasted only three months. It was staged in Hollywood at the former Hollywood Playhouse on Vine Street, which was renamed The Hollywood Palace during the show's duration and is today known as Avalon Hollywood. A little-known starlet named Raquel Welch was cast during the first season as the "Billboard Girl", who placed the names of the acts on a placard.
The Goldbergs is a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on American radio, and from 1949 to 1956 on American television. It was adapted into a 1948 play, Me and Molly, a 1950 film The Goldbergs, and a 1973 Broadway musical, Molly.
The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage is a television series broadcast in the United States by NBC and produced by Stephen J. Cannell Productions in association with Walt Disney Television. This show originated as a TV-movie. The program originally aired in 1991, but lasted less than one season. The series was officially titled Disney Presents The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage.
Caiga Quien Caiga, also known as CQC, is an Argentine television show. Under the format of the production company Cuatro Cabezas, CQC has also been adapted in Spain, France, Chile, Italy, Brazil, Portugal and briefly in Israel and the Netherlands.
It won an International Emmy for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment in 2010.
Big Bite was an Australian sketch comedy television series, which ran on the Seven Network from 8 May 2003 to 4 March 2004 in a prime time timeslot on Thursdays. Since the end of the series episodes have been repeated on the Foxtel cable channel, The Comedy Channel and recently, reruns were shown on 7TWO.
Clue Club is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions from August 14, 1976 to September 3, 1977 on CBS.
Clue Club only had one season’s worth of first-run episodes produced, which were shown on Saturday mornings on CBS.
In the fall of 1977, cut-down versions of the half-hour episodes of Clue Club appeared under the new title Woofer & Wimper, Dog Detectives to showcase the show's basset and bloodhound which aired as a segment on the CBS Saturday morning package program The Skatebirds from September 10, 1977 to January 28, 1978.
When The Skatebirds was cancelled in early 1978, Woofer & Wimper, Dog Detectives re-appeared as a segment alongside The Robonic Stooges on their half-hour show, also on CBS. The full-length versions of Clue Club returned to CBS on Sunday mornings from September 1978 to September 1979, concluding the show’s original network run.
After a mid-1980s revival on USA Cartoon Express, it has since resurfaced on Cartoon Network and Boomerang.
Kid Notorious is an animated television series that aired for nine weeks on Comedy Central and is currently running on the UK version of Adult Swim. It starred Hollywood film producer Robert Evans as himself. Episode plots were often bizarre and absurdist in nature, featuring Evans as a James Bond type character. Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash also appeared on the show as himself. The show was directed by Pete Michels.
A sword-and-sorcery adventure series done tongue-in-cheek. It's set in a mythical kingdom where good Prince Erik Greystone helps the kindly king fight the forces of evil.
Super Dave is a Canadian/American variety show starring and hosted by the fictional character Super Dave Osborne. It ran from 1987 to 1991 on Showtime in the US and the Global Television Network in Canada. Super Dave was spun off from the sketch comedy series Bizarre, which featured Bob Einstein in recurring roles, including Super Dave. Super Dave made his first appearance on the 1972 TV series The John Byner Comedy Hour. Einstein then regularly played the character on the short-lived 1976 variety show Van Dyke and Company starring Dick Van Dyke.
The New WKRP in Cincinnati is a sequel/spin-off of the original CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. It was made for the syndication market from 1991 to 1993. MTM Enterprises produced the show.
Gordon Jump, Frank Bonner, and Richard Sanders reprised their roles from the original show. Other original cast members came in for guest spots, with Loni Anderson returning for two episodes, Tim Reid for one episode, and Howard Hesseman appearing in nine episodes total, as well as directing several other episodes.