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"Poorly acted" shows

B

BobSacamano

Guest
OK, here's your chance to be a real drama (or comedy) critic...tell us the shows where you think certain cast members were in dire need of acting lessons..

For me the longer M*A*S*H went on, the worse the acting got...especially Loretta Swit..
 
How about the 60s "Dragnet"? Jack Webb was Jack Webb, and Harry Morgan was always solid, of course, but the rest of the Dragnet Repertory Theater...well...
 
I would've recommended for that list younger guest stars on Murder, She Wrote, especially after 1991-92. Not to mention the cartoon accents - "moose and squirrel" for stories that took place in Russia, "Pepe Le Pew/Inspector Clouseau" accents for French-based plots, and so on.
 
BobSacamano said:
For me the longer M*A*S*H went on, the worse the acting got...especially Loretta Swit..
Click to expand...

One of the reasons for that was the writing. In the latter years, most of the scripts were written by male feminist Alda, his crony from his days at Fordham, Thad Mumford, and Karen Hall, who somehow injected NOW philosophy into every episode she wrote.

Amen to the Loretta Swit comment. In the early years, she portrayed Hot Lips as an absolute witch, then came the middle years when they toned her down, and in the latter years, she practically had Margaret down as a perfect saint.

Mike Farrell's BJ Honeycutt also got progressively worse as time went on. He went from nice guy, to a milquetoast-ish annoying charicature. And who the hell advised him to grow that gawdawful mustache?

One MASH character that did get better, IMO, was Major Winchester. David Ogden Stiers did a great job of slowly evolving Charles into a likable man.
 
I would have to say the mid 1980's edition of Divorce Court with Judge William B. Keane & Jim Peck. VERY predictable and after awhile one could pretty much guess what was going to be said before the actors actually speak. Dittos with the other court shows from that time ( Except for The People's Court ) such as Superior Court and The Judge.
 
I gave up on TV as a pastime in the early 80's, but I recall Mary Hartmann, Mary Hartmann as having a very strangely stilted acting, as if
if it were a skit from "The Electric Company" like a full length "Love of Chair" concept.

Was it intentional or just the way it was?
 
I'm going to have to say Boston Legal because William Shatner acts like a pompous jerk on the show especially the end part where he and the other lawyer are smoking cigars. The Halloween show the other night they did was horrible where the guy was dressed as a woman and Shatner bullied him to the ground.

I wish that Candice Bergen would get more air time than Shatner, that's how bad Shatner is in his role.
 
I think Seinfeld was not particularly well acted. BUT it worked for the show. Jerry Seinfeld never claimed to be an actor. Because he was limited the show never really tried to be anything.

The only range of emotions on Seinfeld was anger and smirking.

This worked for the show because it forced them into odd situations. Like how the gang reacted to Susan's death.
 
RE: Mary Hartman x2 - if you remember, it was intended to be a take-off on soap operas, so the stilted acting was probably meant to satire the soaps. At least until it devolved into more of a straight-up comedy.

In the 90s, my kids loved Blossom. Aside from Joey Lawrence's over-acting...a few years in, the father in the show got involved with a British girlfriend, played by the lovely Finola Hughes who is really British. But she had a daughter on the show - maybe 6 years old, who was obviously not British, and had the single worst English accent in the history of bad acting. It was probably too much to expect such a young actor to do an accent. After a number of shows, they gave up, and the kid started talking with her natural American accent.

Not to pick on kids - but the runner up had to be the young actor in Small Wonder. What idiot decided that robots had to speak in a stilted monotone? They can design a robot to seem totally human, but they can't get her to speak normally...even in the 80s? A truly awful program.
 
I tried to watch the show "Dream On" a couple of times. Aside from the fact that it was basically a stretched-out comedy sketch, Brian Benben could not act.
 
...Here's a blast from the past: Bonnie Franklin constant smirking in "One day at a time"

..From what I've read the dialogue on Dragnet was read off of teleprompters! it was a cost cutting measure devised by Mr Webb himself, to cut down on rehearsal time..it probably accounted for some of the flat, un-natural style, but didn't excuse some of the horrible acting from the "rep company"

To me M*A*S*H was a M*E*S*S in the later years...and I agree the writing was partly to blame, it would be impossible to make some of that dialogue believable..and Alan Alda's scenery chewing didn't help..and IMO Mike Farrell made me appreciate how good an actor Wayne Rogers was..to elaborate on Loretta Swit, there was an episode where Margaret gets laryngitis..she loses her voice, and also becomes Tonto (.."must get to Tokyo"..) sheez
 
The '90s remake of "Burke's Law." Gene Barry was
more hammy than I'd ever seen him, and the guest
stars were even worse (or was it the writing?). BTW,
Amos Burke had been a spy for a half-season in 1965-66,
but here he was back on the police force with a son as
partner yet! I always wondered when he went back to
being a cop and when he got married (he was a millionaire
playboy on the original show).
 
mleach said:
I would have to say the mid 1980's edition of Divorce Court with Judge William B. Keane & Jim Peck. VERY predictable and after awhile one could pretty much guess what was going to be said before the actors actually speak. Dittos with the other court shows from that time ( Except for The People's Court ) such as Superior Court and The Judge.
Click to expand...
I just saw yet another new and HORRIBLE judge show a few days ago with the woman judge using ebonics & ghetto slang just as bad as the riff raff they get on the show. It may be called "Family Court"-I didn't stay tuned in long enough to investigate plus the channel was fuzzy. I had to tune out after I heard the judge say " I ain't tryin' to hear dat so y'aa best put dat car in park up in here". ::) :mad:
 
bpatrick said:
BTW, Amos Burke had been a spy for a half-season in 1965-66, but here he was back on the police force with a son as partner yet! I always wondered when he went back to being a cop and when he got married (he was a millionaire playboy on the original show).
Click to expand...
Perhaps he had a near-death experience we never saw that served as an epiphany and "settled him down," during his spying days? ;) We'll never know, won't we?
 
...actually, the flat acting style fit the original, '50s black&white Dragnet fairly well. However, it went a long way in making the '60s color revival unintentionally hilarious...

...it seems to me that Sanford & Son was never particularly well acted. Johnny Brown had been Redd Foxx's original preference to play Lamont, but he'd signed on to do Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In before the offer arrived, so Demond Wilson got the gig instead; unfortunately, the show was carried entirely by Foxx's and the supporting players' personalities, and there was never a good chemistry between Foxx and Wilson...
 
Interesting story about Johnny Brown and Sanford & Son. I liked Brown on Laugh-In but after his run was over he kind of disappeared. Foxx may have given him more exposure and a longer career.

Demond Wilson always seemed so mad at the world. I often wondered why he was cast as Lamont.
 
Mr. T on the A-Team
The Olson Twins on full house. Partly the fault of the writers to have them say annoyingly cute things children their age would never say or be able to pronounce.
same with (young) Jennifer & Andrew Keaton on Family Ties.
same with Emanuel Lewis on Webster.
Clint Eastwood in "Play Misty For Me"(although Jessica Walter played a stellar nutcase as Evelyn)
 
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