"You are CAST!, Dogbreath!"
Feb. 22nd, 2011 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSo the kid is home, and watching Glee, which for some reason got me thinking tonight (always a dangerous thing):
Why did this series concept work so well when Cop Rock bombed on impact?
Don't remember it? If not, you weren't alone in avoiding it. It was from Steven Bochco, who I came up with on the first NBC Must See TV Thursday night with Hill Street Blues. Like Star Trek movies, Boch tended to hit and miss in odd-even turns: he took Dennis Franz, who'd been an excellent two-character performer on HSB, and put him in far fancier duds in a spinoff of his latter and better character in Beverly Hills Buntz. Franz was also briefly in an ill-fated baseball ensemble cast called Bay City Blues, which failed around the same time that Bochco's work on Doogie Howser succeeded. Also in the 80s, L.A. Law made it, but Hooperman (starring John Ritter along with Frank's wacky ex-wife actress Barbara Bosson) kinda didn't. In the 90s, Franz came back for yet another Character Ending in Z role in NYPD Blue, but along the way, Bochco swung and missed at a Glee-ful cophouse effort where the precinct would just spontaneously break into song, as casts sometime do.
Check a clip:
It's remembered fondly by some critic types. I liked this memoir from this past December; another notes that, unlike Glee's lip-syncing precision, Bochco's show (plus some other earlier efforts he mentions) dared to do the musical numbers in live-to-tape performances by the cast.
I suspect the Internet has something to do with it, as does the related ability of things to go viral through that and other media (txt, NE1?) far faster than a Sunday night show in the early 90s ever would have. (seaQuest, anyone?;)
Hmmmm.... what other really bad television concepts would have done well in this social networking age?
Hmmmmm..... maybe not:O
Why did this series concept work so well when Cop Rock bombed on impact?
Don't remember it? If not, you weren't alone in avoiding it. It was from Steven Bochco, who I came up with on the first NBC Must See TV Thursday night with Hill Street Blues. Like Star Trek movies, Boch tended to hit and miss in odd-even turns: he took Dennis Franz, who'd been an excellent two-character performer on HSB, and put him in far fancier duds in a spinoff of his latter and better character in Beverly Hills Buntz. Franz was also briefly in an ill-fated baseball ensemble cast called Bay City Blues, which failed around the same time that Bochco's work on Doogie Howser succeeded. Also in the 80s, L.A. Law made it, but Hooperman (starring John Ritter along with Frank's wacky ex-wife actress Barbara Bosson) kinda didn't. In the 90s, Franz came back for yet another Character Ending in Z role in NYPD Blue, but along the way, Bochco swung and missed at a Glee-ful cophouse effort where the precinct would just spontaneously break into song, as casts sometime do.
Check a clip:
It's remembered fondly by some critic types. I liked this memoir from this past December; another notes that, unlike Glee's lip-syncing precision, Bochco's show (plus some other earlier efforts he mentions) dared to do the musical numbers in live-to-tape performances by the cast.
I suspect the Internet has something to do with it, as does the related ability of things to go viral through that and other media (txt, NE1?) far faster than a Sunday night show in the early 90s ever would have. (seaQuest, anyone?;)
Hmmmm.... what other really bad television concepts would have done well in this social networking age?
Hmmmmm..... maybe not:O