THE WORST TV SITCOM(S) OF ALL TIME

Dusty's Trail

Yes I know, anyone who ever saw that show, or even just watched the opening credits would know that, but ut was still one of the worse things ever on TV.

This one is pretty awful, but probably not even close to the worst. DeLuise must have needed money badly to agree to do this one, though.

Dear John may be the worst sitcom to star a name as big as Hirsch's, and even more so since it debuted so close after the demise of the excellent Taxi. Hirsch did what he could to save that stinker, but even his comedic skills weren't up to a task that impossible.


I love Bluerisk's summation of that bit of detritus. Not only an unfunny cliche-fest (the only slightly amusing episode was the one where Jim is on trial before God, and it was mostly a paunchy Erik Estrada as the devil that made it funny), but it cemented the opinion I've long had that Jim Belushi was a talentless hack who coasted on his late brother's name to get as far as he did.

As for Dusty's Trail, the only thing I can say about it is that it completely wasted the talents of Ivor Francis, a fine and funny character performer.

The War At Home(2005-2007) was pretty bad, a very poor attempt at trying to replicate the shock value of Married with Children and the quirk of Titus, perhaps the only thing it had going for it was Rami Malek - I think he was the only likeable character out of the whole cast.

Was that the original draft for BJ and the Bear?

No, it was an awful sitcom that starred Ted Bessel, a very likeable light comic actor who'd co-starred with Marlo Thomas in That Girl (which looks like Shakespeare next to this). It pretty much killed Bessel's career in front of the camera, and he decamped to doing mostly directing for the remainder of his life--he died, sadly, at only 57 years old.

BJ and the Bear was based (extremely loosely) on the Clint Eastwood 'Any Which Way' film series, copying the premise of an adventurous interstate trucker and his anthropoid buddy (an orangutan in Clint's case, a chimpanzee for the TV series). It came later than Me and the Chimp, the Eastwood film debuting in 1978, and BJ hitting the airwaves in 1979. MatC's plot revolves around a dentist and his family, who, some whichaway or another, come into ownership of a chimpanzee who's been booted from the space program--a common problem that beset many average American families back in the early 1970's.