Anyone remember New Zoo Review on PBS from the late 70's early 80's?

I'm sure this comes up often with references to The New Zoo Revue, but there is a short reel of NSFW outtakes from the program that are side-splittingly hilarious.

 

Yup! My sister and I had that same LP, which was shredded after dozens of plays on a plastic portable record player we shared. IIRC it opened up and had a few pages with comics of the characters inside.

I remember watching the show as a wee kid, probably in the afternoons on whatever station was carrying it in Omaha. When we were kids this show was highly entertaining.

dan c

 

It's been a while since I've seen that, but the homophobia is brutal to hear now. But that's how it was in the day, and aside from that most of the reel is absolutely hilarious. They seemed to be having way too much fun on that silly kiddy show.

dan c

 

I can hear the theme song in my head right now!

 

I saw this a few times and was interested in the girl in the miniskirt. I later found out that the dorky guy was actually married to her.

 

The one of the owl taking a nostalgic dump in his favorite toilet had me in stitches.

 

I remember it but I don't know if I ever watched it that much. I think I was more of a Magic Garden man.

 

Yeah, I lived in Tampa in 1973 and watched WTVT quite a bit. New Zoo Review was a strange show. I'm still trying to figure out why the frog wore a turtleneck.

I wish I had thought of that! Oh... wait...

 

... and no pants.

 

George Clinton remembered it, "New Doo Review" was on Trombipulation.

 

I was really too old for this, but I saw several or many, on WTTG. It must have been on before or after something I watched more regularly, and it was the Least Objectionable Program for the time slot for me, and Emmy Jo wasn't bad, and it was funny. I remember that at some point there was a different voice for the owl -- that is not listed on wikipedia or imdb.

 

It came on in the morning when I was getting ready for work. I too liked Emmy Jo.

 

Emmy Jo

 

Nope, "our friend Doug"

 

I saw that too, on you tube, funny!

 

yeah I watched this a bit back in the early 80s but it was on channel 5 in New York at like 5:30 in the morning on weekdays. in fact, if I recall correctly, New Zoo Revue started the broadcast day for channel 5. there was also a very creepy Plastic Man cartoon or something along those lines that used to come on after it. honestly, it was on so early that I seldom made an effort to wake up for it and even when I did, I was wiped out by about 7 and had to go back to bed for an hour anyway.

 

As I recall it was also rerun on the Disney Channel. We watched it with our daughter but I had never heard of this show before then.

 

I love that show!!!!! -- I last saw it maybe 10+ years ago.........

 

They really made 195 episodes, which would work out to three (non-consecutive?) seasons of 65 episodes (13 weeks) each. The 196 number came about because the show at one point had an official website which listed all the episodes, and the number came out to 196 because they accidentally skipped a number.

I think new ones were made in 1972, 1973 and 1977, but I'm not positive. In Chicago it premiered on WGN-Channel 9, then moved to WFLD-Channel 32 and eventually to NBC affiliate WMAQ-Channel 5, which ran it early weekend mornings to fulfill educational requirements. Some time in the 1990s I saw some reruns show up on a home shopping channel in Chicago.

Some episodes are on DVD. A company called Delta released four DVDs with three episodes each, then later Brentwood/BCI released a "Season 1" set which was incomplete (it included 59 of the 65 Season 1 episodes). I am guessing the "missing six" were left out because they had been released on the Delta single-volume DVDs.

For some reason, when I have seen episodes from the later years, at the very end of the show they cut in the visuals of the copyright info from a first season show and plaster it over the end logo used on the later shows (so shows from 1977 might now say 1972).

Don Sandburg (Sandy from Bozo's Circus) wrote a few episodes. Jesse "Maytag Man" White appeared occasionally, as did Chuck Woolery as the mailman.

I have seen those outtakes on You Tube. There are different edits of them. There was one which was quite long and it was a more complete version of something that appeared years ago on a blooper tape. It seemed to me like something that would have been shot for fun at the end of the season as production wound down, to show at a wrap party later. But who knows?

 

Thanks for that, I didn't think I was crazy--I do remember the production values really varied from certain sets of episodes. Yep, originally those shows said 1977, the earlier ones stated 1972. Fran Ryan was on some episodes too, I'm thinking she was on the later ones.

 

Here is the list of 195 episodes (the list goes up to 196 because there is no #66)

https://web.archive.org/web/20021206163647/http://newzoorevue.com/library.html

As a young kid I had a soundtrack album on Disneyland records (they used to release stuff unrelated to Disney) with material from episodes #10 ("Art") and #20 ("School").

Here's a promo for the show -- it's on film, while the show itself was shot on video:



I think it's cool that (1) Doug and Emmy Jo were married in real life and (2) they're still married.

 

I first saw the NZR outtake reel somewhere around 1994-95?, on a website that I think was called Camp Chaos. I had heard rumors but had never managed to find it until then (pre-You Tube).

No offense intended to those that liked the program, but it was always considered kind of a "lame" show by the kids that I knew (I was born in '70, so I was around the target age of the show, I would think)....it was the program you watched if you woke up too early on Saturday, because it came on before the *really* good shows started. But I watched it, I didn't love it but it wasn't bad, really. I can still sing the theme song forty years later, so that must count for something, lol.

(Apropos of nothing else, whenever I hear "Reach Out in the Darkness", for some reason I picture Doug and Emmy Jo singing it.)

 

NZR has a high "camp" element, to be sure. Still could be a fun show at times.

Did you know that the couple who did that song (professionally known as Friend And Lover IINM) later got divorced?