Of all the serious spin offs, this is probably the most extreme (Unless you somehow think "Lost" is based on "Gilligans Island", I do). With the popularity of their cheesy Christmas reunion movie, the Bradys were greenlit for a "Dramedy" series on CBS in 1990.
Nobody got a football in the nose this time, it was straight up drama laced with a little bit of that Brady humour. The show got announced on Oprah (!) with all the cast members present. Marcia dropped out this time and was replaced by another actress.
I seem to recall a storyline of Bobby getting in a racing accident and suffering possible paralysis. Nobody wanted to watch that and the show went away after six episodes.
Theories on it's cancellation mention Robert Reed's illness but I personally just think the whole idea smelled.
3 comments:
I have a vague remember of Bobby crashing, but I always assumed that memory was part of a reunion movie. I really didn't remember this was a series.
I think this really shows how sometimes there is just a time and a place for things. Its like when you watch an old movie, you're so much more forgiving for some of the cheesey dialog or plot. You tell yourself, "well, that's just what they did then." But somehow when you watch the same level of story today, you just insist its crap and move on.
I watched every episode, but it was odd. The Bradys was kind of like depressing, seeing them face really huge problems.
I read that CBS originally planned to do three two-hour TV movies which would be shown over the course of a year. When they got a hole in their schedule, they decided to do a series instead using those three movie scripts as the first six episodes. All the drama and tragedy would have worked better spread out over a period of one year, but having it spill out in six short weeks made it utterly ridiculous. They should have quit on a high note with the Christmas movie.
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