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Cancelled - Out of Production and Off the Air - Brought Back

M

MattParker

Which TV shows were cancelled (or ended their runs voluntarily), stopped production, went off first run television (but may have continued in syndication) and then were brought back?

The Life of Reilly (recast)
Mama (I Remember Mama)
Dragnet
Perry Mason (Recast)

Some shows have come back more as re-makes than continuations of the original. Original producers, writers and cast were generally not involved and the concept was re-worked or updated.

Battlestar Galactica
Hawaii Five-O

Partial Credit: Star Trek/Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Debatable whether this is the same show coming back or an extension of an earlier show.)

Several game shows have come back (often come back more than once) with mixed results: The Price Is Right. Password. To Tell The Truth. The X-thousand Dollar Pyramid. Hollywood Squares. Family Feud. Match Game.

Any others?
 
Would Family Guy count in this case? It was canceled twice by FOX and wasn't airing between 2002 and 2005.
 
As to the game shows, "$25,000 Pyramid" on CBS was axed at the end of 1987 to be replaced by another game show called "Blackout", which ran for only 13 weeks. Apparently, there was enough outcry to bring back "Pyramid", so it came back and replaced "Blackout"! This was a rare instance where a show was replaced by a show *it* replaced!

In a similar vein (not referring to production), according to Wesley Hyatt's book "The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television," ABC reruns of "The Brady Bunch" were replaced by the game show "Blankety Blanks." "Blanks" was in turn replaced again by "Brady Bunch" reruns!

cd
 
It's A Living - ran for 2 seasons on ABC from 1980 to 1982 and for its last season on ABC it was called "Making A Living". As I recall they were rerunning the ABC shows in syndication which warranted a comeback in syndication which lasted from 1985 to 1990.

Charles In Charge - ran for 1 season on CBS in 1984 to 1985 before bringing in a new family and ran in syndication from 1987 to 1991.

9 To 5 - ran for 2 seasons on ABC from 1982 to 1984 before going into syndication with new episodes from 1986 to 1990.

Too Close For Comfort - ran for 4 seasons on ABC from 1980 to 1984 before moving into syndication with new episodes and running from 1984 to 1987 with the last season of the show being called "The Ted Knight Show".


And I wouldn't call Monte Markham's Perry Mason a recast since it had been 7 years since the originial version with Raymond Burr was cancelled and there was a different name for the secretary played by Brett Somers. More a new show than anything else.
 
Braves2005 said:
And I wouldn't call Monte Markham's Perry Mason a recast since it had been 7 years since the originial version with Raymond Burr was cancelled and there was a different name for the secretary played by Brett Somers. More a new show than anything else.
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Brett Somers played Gertie, the receptionist/switchboard operator in Mason's office. Gertie appeared in the novels but was one of those mentioned but not seen characters in the first Perry Mason series. Della Street was the secretary in the novels and both series. Della was played by Sharon Gless (Cagney and Lacey, Burn Notice) in the Mason revival.
 
WKRP - First on CBS from 1978 to 1982, then in syndication from 1991 to 1993.

Would Newhart count since it turned out that everything was a dream that Bob Hartley had, and it was talked about a couple of years later on the Bob Newhart Show reunion? :D
 
The Honeymooners -- revived years after cancellation as a recurring sketch (often taking up the entire hour) on The Jackie Gleason Show.

The Dick Cavett Show -- revived many times by ABC (three different times there), PBS, USA and CNBC after cancellation and absence from a schedule.

The Merv Griffin Show -- there was a gap of more than two years between its initial run on NBC and its syndication revival by Westinghouse.

The Steve Allen Show -- Allen's first run as a full-fledged talk show host (his version of Tonight was always much more comedy variety than talk) for Westinghouse ended when he replaced Garry Moore as host of I've Got a Secret; his second run, for Filmways, started in 1968, the year after IGAS was cancelled.

Tomorrow with Tom Snyder -- revived on CBS, by David Letterman's insistence, as The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder about a dozen years after NBC scrapped the original (Later with Bob Costas can be argued to be a revival of this one as well, as the only real difference between Snyder's original format and Costas' was the set decor).

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour -- under that title by CBS, as The Smothers Brothers Summer Show by ABC and The Smothers Brothers Show by NBC, each time with at least some of the original's supporting cast and writers (usually Pat Paulsen and Mason Williams).

...I'm tempted to add SheSpies, as I recall there was a slight gap between the initial NBC summer 2002 run and the first syndicated season, and it was briefly cancelled and out of production before MGM decided to pull together the second syndicated season with a radically different formatting and all-new supporting cast...
 
OldNumber7 said:
Lest we forget the Mission: Impossible revival in the late 80s.
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That's an interesting example. The Writers' Guild went on strike. No new scrip;ts could be written or produced. So they brought back Peter Graves with a new regular cast and re-shot old scripts in Australia.
 
Wasn't there an attempt back around 1986 to revive We Got It Made? I seem to recall reading about an attempt to bring it back, but don't know if it ever returned (however briefly) or not. I remember it being almost universally panned when it first came on the air in 1983. I don't even know if it lasted a full season, but the general consensus was that it had gotten enough of a chance that first time around.
 
Futurama. Cancelled by Fox, brought back first as a series of movies, then by Comedy Central with new episodes.

Sliders. (Fox Sci-Fi series) cancelled, then briefly revived by Sci-Fi Network.

The Jetsons. Cancelled, then revived in the 1985 with new episodes for syndication
 
From the cult show files: "Mystery Science Theater 3000" was picked up by SciFi after Comedy Central dropped it. I don't think thee were a lot of new episode, but there were some.
 
firepoint525 said:
Wasn't there an attempt back around 1986 to revive We Got It Made? I seem to recall reading about an attempt to bring it back, but don't know if it ever returned (however briefly) or not. I remember it being almost universally panned when it first came on the air in 1983. I don't even know if it lasted a full season, but the general consensus was that it had gotten enough of a chance that first time around.
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Close but not quite...The Weekly World News ( yes that Weekly World News ) , their "critic", the infamous Rex Winston called "We Got it Made" better than trash such as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and Dick Van Dyke while claiming that Teri Copley with her breasts will be the "..THE star of the 80's..hands down ! !".

Rex's columns didn't last for very long...maybe he was the one who had turned into Batboy.
 
firepoint525 said:
Wasn't there an attempt back around 1986 to revive We Got It Made? I seem to recall reading about an attempt to bring it back, but don't know if it ever returned (however briefly) or not. I remember it being almost universally panned when it first came on the air in 1983. I don't even know if it lasted a full season, but the general consensus was that it had gotten enough of a chance that first time around.
Click to expand...

I remember that "We Got It Made" returned in syndication around 1987-88 (I remember seeing promos for it on my then-local Fox station, WYZZ-43 Bloomington/Peoria, IL, which IIRC aired the short-lived revival on Saturday afternoons).
 
I'm surprised nobody has thought of The Twilight Zone (CBS 1959-1964, 1985-1987, syndication 1988-1989, UPN 2002-2003) and The Outer Limits (ABC 1963-1965, Showtime 1995-2000, SciFi 2000-2002)
 
anotherguy said:
I'm surprised nobody has thought of The Twilight Zone (CBS 1959-1964, 1985-1987, syndication 1988-1989, UPN 2002-2003)
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...in fact, CBS first cancelled The Twilight Zone in 1962, replacing it with the hour-long sitcom Fair Exchange. When that show flopped, CBS brought TZ back for its fourth season in hour-long episodes...
 
Um...aren't we forgetting "Baywatch?"

It ran for one season on NBC in 1990 until GTG -- the television production arm of Gannett which also brought us the ill-fated "USA Today: The Television Show" -- went belly up. But thanks to the backing of star David Hasselhoff and the show's producers, it returned in first-run syndication in 1991...the rest was history.
 
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