7 Sitcom Spin-Offs That Never Made It Past the Pilot Stage
For fans of King of the Hill, Monsignor Martinez is about as cool as you can get. Seen regularly on the television of the Hill family, Monsignor Martinez is a fictional priest who always seems to be wrapped up in melodramatic life-and-death adventures in the telenovela named after him. In King of the Hill, the ridiculous clips of Monsignor Martinez are always good for a quick laugh, but if the television gods had complied, we could have gotten a lot more of him.
In 2000, King of the Hill writers Mike Judge, Greg Daniels and Jim Dauterive crafted a half-hour live-action pilot based on the character. Sadly, Fox didn’t proceed with the series. According to an interview transcript posted to the FilmBoards forum in 2004 (the original interview doesn’t appear to be online), King of the Hill actor Dave Herman reportedly said Fox didn’t want a show where “a Catholic priest (was) going around shooting at people.”
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This kind of thing isn’t unusual either. While sometimes a spin-off seems like such a sure thing that it goes right to series (such was the case for The Jeffersons and Frasier), countless other proposed sitcom spin-offs never made it past the pilot stage. Here are seven of them…
‘The Mini-Munsters’ (1973)
Despite the fact that The Munsters was canceled after just two seasons, the show’s strong afterlife in syndication quickly turned it into a beloved classic. Just seven years after the original series ended, a cartoon spin-off called The Mini-Munsters was created. The pilot included a whole new cast in the old roles, except for Al Lewis, who returned to play Grandpa Munster. Despite the title, which seems to suggest that these are kiddified versions of the characters, The Mini-Munsters was just an animated continuation of the original series. However, without Fred Gwynne as Herman and Yvone De Carlo as Lily, the show just didn’t have the same spark.
‘Carlton Your Doorman’ (1980)
Speaking of animated spin-offs of live action sitcoms, Rhoda, a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, had a failed animated spin-off, too, called Carlton Your Doorman. Similar to Norm’s wife Vera on Cheers and Niles’ wife Maris on Frasier, Rhoda’s doorman, Carlton, was an unseen character only heard through Rhoda’s intercom. Carlton was voiced by Lorenzo Music — best known as the voice of Garfield on Garfield and Friends — and he reprised the role for the animated series starring him. But, not so shockingly, the spin-off of a spin-off starring a previously unseen character didn’t go beyond a single episode. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch the pilot on YouTube, however, as hearing Garfield’s voice coming out of a human character is just bizarre.
‘Clarissa Now!’ (1995)
Before she became Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Melissa Joan Hart starred in Clarissa Explains It All on Nickelodeon, where she played a quirky teenager in a suburban town who regularly breaks the fourth wall. The show ended in 1994 and could have continued with Clarissa Now!, which saw her moving to New York City to work as an intern at a newspaper. However, even with a proven character like Clarissa and comedy legend Richard Klein in a supporting role, the series couldn’t make it to a second episode.
‘W*A*L*T*E*R’ (1984)
‘The Fighting Nightingales’ (1978)
The Korean War-set comedy M*A*S*H was so big during its run that 106 million people watched the final episode (a record that will never be broken). It’s no wonder then that CBS wanted to find some way to spin it off (or, more accurately, four separate ways to spin it off). Trapper John, M.D. which began in 1979, spun off the lovable surgeon Dr. “Trapper” John McIntyre — albeit with a different actor in the part as it took place decades after M*A*S*H. The show lasted seven seasons. Then, there was the less successful two-season run of AfterMASH, which followed the post-war adventures of three of the show’s main characters.
Finally, there were two failed spin-offs that never made it past the pilot stage. The first was 1978’s The Fighting Nightingales, which would have starred an all-female cast of Korean War Army medics, and the other was W*A*L*T*E*R, which followed the character of Radar — who stops using his nickname in favor of his real name, Walter — as he becomes a police officer after the war.
‘The Coneheads’ (1983)
Before the bad Coneheads movie was even a twinkle in Dan Aykroyd’s eye, there was the bad Coneheads animated series. While the show brought back all three stars from the SNL sketches — Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman — the 24-minute runtime soon revealed how annoying the grating Coneheads voices get after seven or eight minutes. Instead, some producers decided that a full 90-minute movie would be much better.
‘Monsignor Martinez’ (2000)
Seriously, they should have made this into a real show. We’re getting a King of the Hill revival this year, so perhaps this show can be revived along with it?
