I wanted to like Jack of All Trades for having Bruce Campbell but it never quite clicked with me though I wouldn't mind checking it again with older eyes.
I thought it was awful. Very stupid, crass, and unfunny.
Conan, Tarzan, Sheena, Beastmaster were ones that just didn't work that well for me even as filler, they were just too pedestrian even for my modest tastes.
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures was pretty good, I thought. It was one of the few screen adaptations that really tried to be true to the books. Though there was an obvious disconnect between the location shooting in South Africa and the fakey "jungle" soundstage sets, driving home that the kind of jungle Burroughs described in the books is an environment not really found much in Africa, if at all. And it's a shame the show failed to get funding for a second season, with the syndicator instead replacing it with reruns of the previous half-hour Tarzan series.
I remember this one. It was
Superboy's syndication partner while it was on, and it was halfway decent but not great. A guy in an armored supersuit, sort of a pseudo-Iron Man sort of thing, with Patrick Macnee as his mentor.
I once had a dream in which I was having lunch with Matt Frewer, who'd found himself woefully miscast as the lead in a bad show very much like
Super Force, and he wanted me to take over as showrunner and retool it into something smarter. I was intrigued enough that when I woke up, I started to imagine how I'd actually develop such a series, and I eventually wrote up a comic book series premise based on my musings, though I never did anything with it.
The Untouchables [II] (1993-94)
Sort of loosely based on the Costner movie, with Tom Amandes as Eliot Ness and John Rhys-Davies as the equivalent of Sean Connery from the movie. William Forsythe played Al Capone. The main thing I remember was the terrific score by Joel Goldsmith. Also that the show seemed far more fascinated by the mobsters than by the lawmen, so that the Untouchables besides the two leads got very little character development.
Universal Action Pack (1994) [wheel series of 2-hour movie of potential series. Among the aspiring series: Hercules, Vanishing Son, Knight Rider, Bandit, TekWar, Midnight Run]
Specifically
Knight Rider 2010, a pilot that had nothing whatsoever to do with
Knight Rider beyond the concept of a tricked-out supercar with an onboard AI. It was more of a post-apocalyptic
Mad Max riff, and I actually kind of liked it. Notable for its lead female character (who was murdered and whose consciousness ended up as the car's AI) being played by a lovely actress named Heidi Leick, better known a few years later as Hudson Leick,
Xena's arch-nemesis Callisto.
Robocop: The Series (1994)
One of my all-time favorites. Often goofy, but it understood what a lot of RoboCop sequels didn't, that the concept was always meant as a satirical comedy. It had some good writing and a terrific cast, with Richard Eden being my favorite RoboCop portrayer, mastering emotional nuance in deadpan acting better than anyone since Leonard Nimoy.
The Adventures of Sinbad (1996-98)
I remember somewhat liking this one, though it had a mostly white cast playing the supposedly Arabian crew. Notable for co-starring George Buza, aka the voice of Beast in the classic '90s X-Men animated series.
F/X: The Series (1996-98)
A fun show from the producers of
RoboCop: The Series, notable as an early role for Carrie-Anne Moss. It was based on the Bryan Brown/Brian Dennehy movies, but I liked it better than the original film. The movie had what should've been a fun concept, a Hollywood special-effects artist using his knowhow to fight crime, but instead it was a grim revenge thriller of the kind where the "hero" is a serial murderer, even killing the one guy who could possibly have cleared his name, which was incredibly stupid but played as a happy ending. The second movie and the series captured the sense of fun that the original should've had.
Queen of Swords (2000-01)
A female-led Zorro knockoff, to the extent that I think it got sued by the Zorro copyright holders. I always found it very implausible how the evil authorities never figured out that the gorgeous, masked brunette swordfighter opposing them was the same person as the gorgeous brunette noblewoman who'd shown up just before, was a skilled swordfighter, and disapproved of their policies. The mask barely even made her hard to recognize, and it's not like there were a lot of other candidates.
