Thursday, November 3, 2011

Margaret Colin & Frances McDormand in Leg Work (1987)

Claire McCarron (Colin) has quit her job in the DA's office to open a detective agency. It's rough going, and she's frequently without funds, but somehow it all comes together. Her friend Willie (McDormond), who still works for the DA and her brother Fred (Patrick James Clarke) who is a police lieutenant provide moral support and information when necessary as she navigates the back alleys of New York digging up the truth for her clients.

This show was one of those ratings victims. It was programmed poorly, against successful Saturday night show, The Golden Girls and only lasted 6 episodes, though 10 were created. Above are the opening credits for the show, uploaded to YouTube by jpwrites. Full episodes are available on YouTube as well, but the uploader has disabled embedding. The pilot can be seen here: http://youtu.be/uQ9pERxgL6Y.

Obscurity factor: 8 (not well remembered, not on DVD, available on YouTube)

5 comments:

  1. I've always wondered how actors feel when their TV pilot gets picked up (Yay!) and then find out they are scheduled against one of the top rated shows on the air (Oh no!) I wonder if the network executives figure they have to put something on in that slot, and pick a show they feel has some potential over the other pilots, but that no one feels is necessarily going to be a winner. Usually the new show is the loser, but not always. "The Waltons" was scheduled against "The Flip Wilson Show," and everyone thought that "The Waltons" had no chance. However, Flip was off the air in a year or two.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When my show was picked up, we were initially given a good time slot, but when the second season was aired they buried us. It was a letdown for sure - you put all this work into something that few people see...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am sorry to hear that. I wonder if there is a flip side to what I wrote above - instead of an unknown show being thrown to the lions against a major hit show, the powers-that-be figure if a show is doing well in one time slot it would do well in any time slot where they move it. Did they ever say why they moved your show from the good time slot?

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a long story, but basically they didn't want to re-up the show again. We weren't a part of the new network head's vision for the network.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete