Unsold TV Pilots

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JozefK, Jul 15, 2018.

  1. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Murder Ink (TV Series 1980– ) - IMDb

    [​IMG]

    TV: 'MURDER INK' PILOT, A SERIES THAT WASN'T

    TV: 'MURDER INK' PILOT, A SERIES THAT WASN'T
    By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
    SEPT. 6, 1983

    AMONG the more convincing reasons for looking forward to a new television season is the possibility that the networks may finally have cleared their programming shelves of failed pilots. If watching the stuff that succeeded in becoming weekly series can be trying, looking at the failures can border on downright cruelty. Tonight's prime example, on CBS-TV at 8 o'clock , is ''Murder Ink.''

    Once again, as with movie or stage flops, the credits offer no clue to the final result. Several people with respectable track records are connected with ''Murder Ink.'' Charles Fries is the executive producer, Alan Sacks the producer. Don M. Mankiewicz and Gordon Cotler wrote the script. John G. Avildsen, who won an Oscar for ''Rocky,'' directed. And Tovah Feldshuh has the leading role of Laura Ireland, owner of a bookshop specializing in mystery novels.

    All for nothing. ''Murder Ink'' begins silly and becomes more so. A little old lady is seen being followed by some exceptionally creepy types into a mausoleum. Within minutes, the woman is on her deathbed telling a police sergeant to deliver a bottle of sleeping pills to her granddaughter. The latter, a nervous type wearing oversized eyeglasses, is understandably puzzled because she never uses sleeping pills.

    Conveniently enough, the sergeant is Lou Ireland (Daniel Hugh-Kelly), husband of Laura and himself a mystery reader, a fact that figures into the eventual denouement. He works with a partner, Sgt. Willie Wilkinson (Ron McLarty), who seems to be constantly eating while driving. The plot is thickened to the consistency of a watery chicken broth with the introduction of characters that include an imprisoned magician, a circus strongman and a midget.

    Meanwhile, Laura, always seeming excessively cheery, keeps making references to Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes or Charlie Chan. Making things easier for the writers, she also has a memory like an elephant and never forgets a face.

    To lighten things up occasionally, Lou and Willie engage in men-will-be- just-boys banter. ''Why don't you write a book?'' says Lou. ''Why?'' asks Willie. ''I'd buy a copy, even two,'' says Lou. ''No kiddin','' retorts Willie. And so on. At one point, given a particularly innocuous piece of information, Laura exclaims, ''Lou, that's fascinating!'' That is about the only way that adjective could be used in connection with ''Murder Ink.''​
     
  2. What's interesting is he came up with the idea and story but had Samuel Pe0ples write the pilot (similar to what happened with "Star Trek" Peoples ended up writing what was the pilot -- it was miles better than Roddenberry's scripts for an alternative pilot. I'd love for this to come to Blu-ray (or even DVD) along with "The Questor Tapes" (which Gene L. Coon wrote the original draft of as I recall and Roddenberry did a rewrite similar to "Spectre")
     
  3. beccabear67

    beccabear67 Musical omnivore.

    Location:
    Victoria, Canada
    Your channel 3 was our French CBC.

    Our line-up was almost the same as yours in the '70s-early '80s...
    2 - CBC (CBUT Vancouver)
    3 - French CBC (CBUFT Vancouver)
    4 - ABC (KOMO Seattle)
    5 - NBC (KING Seattle)
    6 - CBC (later CTV) (CHEK Victoria)
    7 - CBS (KIRO Seattle)
    8 - CTV (CHAN Vancouver, aka BCTV)
    9 - PBS (KCTS Seattle)
    10 - clock displays that rotated (ditto)
    11 - independent (KSTW Tacoma)
    12 - independent (KVOS Bellingham)
    13 - independent (later Global) (CKVU Vancouver)

    There used to be a 13 from Washington state before that when I was really little that showed old movie serials, but I only have dim memories.

    and then we added:
    14 - Knowledge Network (Canadian educational & childrens)
    15 - FOX (KCPQ Tacoma)
    16 - TSN (first sports network in Canada)

    You had to get a UHF box to add between the cable and the tv, or a little box with a slidey thing and letters after 13, so that 14 was A etc.

    I have retained all this knowledge in hopes one day it might amuse someone for a moment or two. :)
     
    tvnut, MikaelaArsenault and MLutthans like this.
  4. MortSahlFan

    MortSahlFan Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    I noticed that being uploaded very shortly after Burt Reynolds passed away.
     
  5. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Alexander the Great (1963)

    Unsold pilot aired in 1968. Alexander the Great is noteworthy as a launching pad for several careers including soon-to-be Captain Kirk, William Shatner, as the man who leads his men into battle. There is a pre-Batman, Adam West as Cleander, Alexander's right hand man. Karonos is played by John Cassavetes, who would distinguish himself both as an actor and behind the camera as a director. Also on board is an aging Joseph Cotten

    Three years later Shatner and West were free to be cast in their iconic roles and history was made.

    Director: Phil Karlson
    Writer: Robert Pirosh



    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  6. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    https://www.amazon.com/Questor-Tapes-Robert-Foxworth/dp/B009AGEZ8S

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Character actor Simon Oakland as well based on the image above the Shatner/West picture.
     
    Comet01 likes this.
  8. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Also John Doucette and hulking heavy Cliff Osmond (so unexpectedly superb as a comedian in Kiss Me Stupid). Quite a cast.

    Oddly Oakland and Doucette are depicted in the picture, but Cotten is not.
     
    wayneklein likes this.
  9. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    It's not as if there was any fanfare or hoopla over a vault release like this.
     
  10. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Killer App (1998)

    A failed pilot set in a startup Silicon Valley software company

    directed by Robert Altman
    written by Gary Trudeau.

     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  11. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Three To Get Ready (1975)

    Three To Get Ready was the original unsold pilot that became One Day At A Time. And although Three To Get Ready shares many similarities with One Day At A Time, it may have even more differences.​

     
  12. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Re-up:

     
  13. BobT

    BobT Resident Monkeeman

    I can see why this was sent back for retooling. Ann Romano was pretty much correct, and Schneider was close, but the Julie character was ridiculously over the top. Plus no Barbara and the other characters were not a good fit. Also
    The theme song was terrible...
     
  14. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    Call Holme (TV Movie 1972) - IMDb

    Unsold comedy pilot starring Arte Johnson as an inept private eye who happens to be a master of disguise.

    Quite an impressive guest cast, including the great Cecil Kellaway in his final performance.

     
  15. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery

    ...Ioptimistic....I read of a 6p6ps up of a sitcom of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS - is that somewhere in here?
    Bette Davis made an up for a BETTE DAVIS SHKW sitcom, apparently never given a one-shot broadcast - That anywhere here?
     
  16. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
     
    WLL likes this.
  17. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    I'm trying to keep this thread at a manageable level. If I really wanted to go nuts... Sometimes it seems like half the episodes of Zane Grey Theatre and Kraft Suspense Theatre were pilots, along with many ABC MotW in the early '70s.

    The Judge and Jake Wyler (1972)

    A Nero Wolfe-in-all-but-name pilot (written by Levinson & Link of Columbo), w/BETTE DAVIS as the Wolfe stand-in.

    Actually pretty good: Doug McClure is probably my favorite "Archie Goodwin" ever.

     
  18. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie


    Supposedly three or four episodes were filmed before production ended. If this snippet turned up, perhaps the rest of the series is out there too.
     
  19. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    The Fat Man (1959)

    Excellent but unsold TV pilot, from the writers of White Heat & director of The Big Combo. Aside from much-increased physical exertion, Robert Middleton is Nero Wolfe in all but name. Too bad Middleton never played Wolfe.

     
  20. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
  21. I'm suddenly remembering being invited to some sort of marketing "test-audience" event with 40 other people -- this was almost 25 years ago, mind you. I think I got a phone call inviting me to be part of a test audience for some new tv-series pilot, or something. And being a lot younger, and having nothing better to do one evening, my wife (she wasn't my wife yet at the time), she and I went one evening to the supposed "test-screening". I think we were promised a $20 coupon each, good at any of several slightly nicer-than-average restaurant chains around town (or something like that).

    Anyway, we go, and all sit in folding chairs in rows, in some empty offices in downtown Kansas City. And we watched some REALLY half-@ss TV pilot that had been cut down to only about 40 minutes, with 3-4 sets of commercial breaks (so there the ratio of ads to show was about double that of regular, broadcast TV).

    Turns out when it was all over, we had to fill out a 60 question questionnaire all about the TV ads (and the TV pilot was just filler, for something to show around the ads). The supposed "show" was literally a 48-minute pilot that had been further cut down to maybe 28 minutes of show, with 12 minutes of ads.

    The show itself made NO sense at all -- because whatever (flimsy) narrative there probably was to begin with, had been cut down to the point where you couldn't following anything. To say nothing about how bad it was to begin with. And the TV pilot part looked like about an 8-generation VHS dub too.

    Instantly forgettable -- and yet it's an experience I'll never forget either (and 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back). Come to think of it, I think it was a $15 coupon for some restaurant chain, and $15 in store coupons -- or some such nonsense.

    Seemed like the right sort of thread to share this in.
     
    Morton LaBongo likes this.
  22. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery

    ...So was the one pilot 2* minutes or 4o? Have you lost all memory of what the pilot was and was about?







    oster_Ties, post: 20795296, member: 6181"]I'm suddenly remembering being invited to some sort of marketing "test-audience" event with 40 other people -- this was almost 25 years ago, mind you. I think I got a phone call inviting me to be part of a test audience for some new tv-series pilot, or something. And being a lot younger, and having nothing better to do one evening, my wife (she wasn't my wife yet at the time), she and I went one evening to the supposed "test-screening". I think we were promised a $20 coupon each, good at any of several slightly nicer-than-average restaurant chains around town (or something like that).

    Anyway, we go, and all sit in folding chairs in rows, in some empty offices in downtown Kansas City. And we watched some REALLY half-@ss TV pilot that had been cut down to only about 40 minutes, with 3-4 sets of commercial breaks (so there the ratio of ads to show was about double that of regular, broadcast TV).

    Turns out when it was all over, we had to fill out a 60 question questionnaire all about the TV ads (and the TV pilot was just filler, for something to show around the ads). The supposed "show" was literally a 48-minute pilot that had been further cut down to maybe 28 minutes of show, with 12 minutes of ads.

    The show itself made NO sense at all -- because whatever (flimsy) narrative there probably was to begin with, had been cut down to the point where you couldn't following anything. To say nothing about how bad it was to begin with. And the TV pilot part looked like about an 8-generation VHS dub too.

    Instantly forgettable -- and yet it's an experience I'll never forget either (and 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back). Come to think of it, I think it was a $15 coupon for some restaurant chain, and $15 in store coupons -- or some such nonsense.

    Seemed like the right sort of thread to share this in.[/QUOTE]
     
  23. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  24. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery

    ...Okay, asking about 4 unsold pilots, IIRC, I saw in the 70s and I still remember them to this day!!!!!!!!! Furthermore, I remember them because of music - the theme songs for three of them made enough of an impression on my 70s me that!!!!!!!!! While the 4th had a weird but of dialogue, referencing the earlier years of Our Music, that has stayed with me all these years, despite me surely having only heard it once!:eek: If they've been brought up in this line already, I Haven't Read Every Post (IHREP) at this point. I think they were all CBS. The titles for the last two are pretty generic, but that's what they were. Okay, here gketh.

    MO AND JO
    HOME COOKIN'
    WE'LL GET BY
    WIVES

    They were all fairly standard sitcom concepts and not based on any prior show IIRC:nauga:. I think Alan Alta had something to do with the 3d production-wise - it could have had a short try-out run, not just a pilot:confused:.
     

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