This is the ground-breaking, exhaustively-researched book that revealed, for the first time ever, all of the details behind the thousands of TV series ideas that were developed and rejected by the networks since the dawn of television.
The book was an instant, national sensation when it was first published in 1990, winning enthusiastic critical acclaim and enormous media attention, including on-air praise from TV legend Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” and was adapted into two hour-long specials, “The Greatest Shows You Never Saw” on CBS and “The Best TV Shows That Never Were” on ABC.
This is the inside story of one of those doomed TV pilots, a would-be 1990 sitcom about presidential speechwriters first titled E.O.B., then The War Room, and finally Word of Mouth, developed by the acclaimed writer/producerteam of Bruce Paltrow, Tom Fontana, and John Tinker, fresh off of their Emmy award-winning success St. Elsewhere and in huge demand by the networks. The producers granted journalist Daniel Paisner unprecedented access, revealing for the first time exactly how television gets made… and how it doesn’t.
A unique, ground-breaking collection of lively, informative, and provocative essays & interviews from some of the most acclaimed and bestselling authors of tie-in books & novelizations about what they do and how they do it.
Did Gilligan and his fellow castaways ever get rescued? Is Dr. Marcus Welby still making house calls? Is Marcia Brady single? What kind of father did Beaver Cleaver grow up to be? Did Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers finally tie the bionic knot?
This lively and entertaining book looks at the three hundred best and worst TV series ideas—known in the industry as "pilots"—that never made it to primetime from 1955-1990. From the adventures of a Samurai D.A. to the antics of an invisible alien baby, Lee Goldberg reveals the most astonishing, funny, and bizarre shows that never were.