Another one from 1981, Open All Night centered around Gordon Feester (George Dzundza) a schlub who managed an all night convenience store along with Robin (Bubba Smith), Gord was married to Gretchen (Cult Movie Queen Susan Tyrell) and lived in an apartment with his very weird stepson, Terry. It may have been based on the classic Ronnie Barker britcom "Open All Hours", I'm not sure.
Open all Night was one of the funniest TV shows I had ever seen, a mid season replacement, I was kind of bummed to find out it was doomed. It had a weird flavour to it that is way, way more prevelant now. It also had this sort of depressing nature which just worked, the Feesters were far from perfect or successful and episodes often ended on downers like the entire contents of the store being stolen (save for the Slurpee machine, which Bubba Smith manned, despite having no cups).
Terry, the stepson was played by Sam Whipple, a character actor who people might remember as grown up Jughead from the Lamentable "Archie return to Riverdale" TV movie or the repairman Elaine plots to kill on "Seinfeld". Whipple was genius on this show, playing Terry like a complete freak, I was saddened to find out while looking up info on the series that he's been dead for six years.
David Letterman would also pop up on the show as a customer who constantly needed directions. It's a shame that Tripe (IMO) like "World According to Jim" is readily available on DVD but I'll have to search high and low for a wonderfully bleak show such as this. Can I get a l'il help video pirates?
3 comments:
i remember watching this show intently, because on the set they had a comic book spinner rack as part of the show's decor.
in the 70s and 80s, you hardly ever saw comics on TV so i was enthralled!
Wow, I remember that.
I loved this show. I never laughed so hard in my life.
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