Sunday, November 24, 2013

What Might've Been: Lotsa Luck (1973)

Nearly 20 years after The Honeymooners told the story of a Brooklyn bus driver and his get rich quick schemes, Carl Reiner (ex-The Dick Van Dyke Show) and writer-producers Bill Persky & Sam Denoff (ex-That Girl) took a British sitcom, On The Buses, and transformed it into Lotsa Luck, which lasted one season on NBC in 1973.

I think the only reason Dom DeLuise landed the lead was because he was a frequent guest on The Dean Martin Show, and the network was doing Dean a favor or some such. Sad to say, it was Dom's only series gig as a lead, and the only reason I can figure that it failed was that it was too soon after Jackie Gleason's revival of Honeymooners had ended on CBS (his show ended 2 years earlier), and despite the British connection, viewers might've felt it was more of a ripoff of Gleason's work, despite the creative pedigree involved.

Bobby Cole uploaded the open:



A year earlier, NBC had tried an animated series that was a funny animal cross between Honeymooners & All In The Family. The Barkleys also bombed. Kind of foreshadowed the state NBC was in for much of the 70's, didn't it?

Rating: C.

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