Upstaged by a Dog

In this trip to the ‘TV Pilot Graveyard,’ we’re pulling back the curtain on the chaotic, often absurd, world of media sitcoms.

Whether it’s the urgent deadline of a newspaper office, the ego-driven chaos of a TV studio, the quirky personalities behind the mic at a radio station, or the glamorous (and not-so-glamorous) lives of magazine editors, this subgenre has always promised a behind-the-scenes look at the content we consume. But for every ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ or ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ there’s a whole newsroom of rejected pilots. Let’s dig into the stories that almost broke, but instead, just broke down.

In this instalment of the ‘TV Pilot Graveyard’, we’re celebrating the unbreakable, often dysfunctional, bond of friendship – or at least, the sitcom pilots that tried to.

The ‘best mates’ sitcom is a cornerstone of comedy, built on shared experiences, mutual exasperation, and that one friend who always gets you into trouble. But for every ‘Friends’ or ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’, there are countless duos, trios, and quartets who never got past their first episode. Join me as we explore the friendships that fizzled out before they even began – and ponder why these comedic friendships hit the cutting room floor.

The ‘TV Pilot Graveyard’ is the series where we unearth the pilot episodes that never quite made it to our screens. In this video we’re diving into the chaotic world of the flat share sitcom. From mismatched personalities crammed into questionable living arrangements to the endless saga of who’s doing the dishes.

This subgenre has been a fertile ground for comedy – and, as you’ll see, a surprisingly large number of rejected ideas. Get ready to meet the aspiring actors, the struggling artists, and the perpetually unemployed who almost became your favourite roommates, but instead, ended up in the TV Pilot Graveyard.

We all love a good British sitcom, don’t we? But for every hit show, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of ideas that never make it past a single episode. The pilot.

There are some well-documented failed pilots, shows based on intriguing ideas but, for various reasons, they didn’t get commissioned. But what about the really forgotten ones? The phantom pilots of British television. The ones from decades past, some before the Internet chronicled every single detail. We know the titles, who wrote them, maybe who was in the cast … but the stories? They’re lost to the mists of time.

In this video, we’re going on an archaeological dig into the forgotten sitcom pilots of the 1970s and 1980s, to try and discover what they could have been.

In the fourth and final part of my mini-series about the unbroadcast tv sitcom pilot pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we ask why did the BBC bury this pilot?

In the third part of my mini-series looking at the unbroadcast tv sitcom pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we look at how it failed and see how this pilot could never have worked in 1985.

In the second part of my mini-series about the BBC sitcom pilot ‘The Jewel in the Crown, Southall, Middx’, we look at how this new pilot introduced Spike and Eric, the bogus restaurant premise, and showed how the audience reacted to seeing a relic of an outdated comedy style.

The BBC didn’t want you to see it. However, I have seen a copy of a studio tape so let’s see what actually happens.