NBC just signed Neil Patrick Harris to make 10 episodes of a variety show. It’s a great fit for the talented performer, and if it’s a hit, it will be the first successful variety show on American TV in more than 35 years. Here are some variety show revivals that didn’t make it.
Folklorist Alvin Schwartz published his first Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark book in 1981, the first of three volumes, before he died in 1992. The books remain extremely popular, a cult classic among young readers, those who read them as kids, and even in Hollywood, which is preparing a film adaptation of the anthologies.
From unassuming TV movie to town-wide celebration. Here is the story behind “Halloweentown.”
Do you remember these TV programs? Probably not—they were watched by so few people that they were the first new fall show to get the axe in their respective year.
The mix tape had fallen out of cultural prevalence until the release of last summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The movie’s soundtrack is those songs, and it was released, almost in its entirety as an album called Peter Quill’s Awesome Mix Vol. 1.
For the past several years, someone (or something?) has been leaving videocassette copies of “Hellraiser” at a bus stop on London’s Old Kent Road.
In the late 1980s, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening reportedly based the show in a town called Springfield because it was widely believed to be the most common town name in the United States, and so the most generic and non-specific. He wanted the town to be set in “Anytown, U.S.A.,” and so he did, and named it Springfield.
Did you help the evil doll movie Annabelle earn $37 million at the box office on its opening weekend? Believe it or not, it’s based on a true story.
Showtime just announced that it’s bringing beloved 1990s cult show Twin Peaks back in 2016. But how will it rate in the canon of other ‘90s TV show revivals?
NBC’s legendary sketch comedy show began its 40th season last weekend. It’s evolved quite a bit from its first season in 1975.
Pour out a box of sugar cereal to honor the death of an American institution.
The TV landscape is certainly changing. There are hardly any soap operas left, most any program can be seen outside of its timeslot online the next day, and cheap devices allow us to store our favorite shows and skip the commercials. But while the majority of viewers do still watch, say, late night TV shows late at night, there’s one TV institution that’s gone for good: Saturday morning cartoons on network TV.
A successful show does not necessarily mean a successful offshoot. Here are three examples of TV show spinoffs that never took off.
The new TV season begins this week, and the networks will roll out a few dozen new shows. A lot of them will be cancelled, but it still won’t be a programming bloodbath like NBC’s fall 1983 slate of new comedies and dramas.
Forrest Gump was released 20 years ago this summer. While it was expected to be a hit—it starred Tom Hanks on the heels of an Oscar win for Philadelphia—nobody expected it to be a cultural phenomenon. Here are a few interesting Forrest Gump facts you may not know.
Every Friday we give you a handful of weird stories and you have to determine which of them are true and which ones are made up. Why would we make them up? Because it’s fun! See if you can tell which are real ways the eccentric actor Nicolas Cage prepared for a role…and which ones are too strange even for him. (Answers at the end of the post.)
Have you ever wanted to visit the places where some of your favorite characters have grabbed a bite to eat or once sliced off an alien’s arm with a lightsaber? Now you can!
Novelty songs are the product of their times, responding humorously to the concerns of the day…and then they’re quickly forgotten, like these.
Mere weeks after it was announced, last weekend Lifetime aired The Unauthorized Saved By the Bell Story, a TV-movie about the behind the scenes action of NBC’s 1989-1993 Saturday morning sitcom Saved By the Bell. Here are some Saved By the Bell facts you might not have known.
