Childhood is rough for many people. Mine was no different, but there were times of total terrific television perfection that took me out of those doldrums. For a couple hours each night I could escape from my problems and just be a kid. Parents fighting, verbal abuses, trouble fitting in, all of that was erased in each thirty minute to hour episode of television goodness. Most of these shows were ones I knew I would be able to watch because my dad was into them, as well. As a kid, not having to watch sports or the news was a monumental event, in and of itself, but if you got the ability to watch a show you liked that they also liked, it was as if the heavens opened up and a rainbow descended to your house, bathing it in utter brilliance. These were the things I felt.
Many of those television shows have been forgotten as the decades passed. Wait, did I really say “as the decades passed?” Sheesh I am old and this post isn’t going to help those matters. Join me today as I look back on TV Treasures from the 1980s: Forgotten Shows That Helped Define A Decade.
Television and the 1980s
It is easy to see that the 80s changed television, whether good or bad. Most of TV history followed a very specific formula for TV shows and the cast was typically the white idealized version of a family; working father, stay at home mother, two and a half kids that seem to get in trouble at school and around the neighborhood. The 80s allowed that tired and overplayed family dynamic to change. We saw the beginnings with shows like Married with Children, The Cosby Show, and more.
No matter how bad things got in our lives, back then, it was television that seemed to bridge those issues. At least for the thirty to sixty minutes the show lasted. Mom would have dinner ready by about seven and we would head to the kitchen, fill our dishes, grab a drink, and make a bee-line to the living room to grab our designated spots. For most of the early to mid 1980s, my sister usually sat on the couch nearest my mother and I would take up the spot on the floor, in front of the ottoman. It had a pillow so you could recline and stretch out. It was one of my favorite spots. We would only venture back to the kitchen for a second during commercial breaks and that was like getting ready to run the 440 at the Olympics. You needed to be back just before the final commercial ended, so you could be in our place and ready and not miss anything.
As I sit here, in my study, and think back to my childhood, there are so many television shows I remember watching and wonder why they disappear. For a long time, I passed it off as misremembering events. Thanks to the internet, I have been able to track down some of those shows and see that my memories are not so far off. See if you remember these seven TV Treasures From the 1980s: Forgotten Shows That Helped Define A decade.
Seven treasures from the 80s
This list is comprised of shows that I remember watching, even just a couple episodes, as a child. The shows that spoke most to me were somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, combine the two and it was just sheer bliss for me. Let’s see if any of you remember these seven shows.
7. Wizards and Warriors – 1983 – 8 episodes
This is one of two short television series that came from the 1980s. Wizards and Warriors started in February 1983 and lasted until May of the same year. Wizards and Warriors was billed as an American comedy adventure fantasy series. Whew, that is a mouth full for a hour long show. In the medieval realm of the Aperans, two kingdoms of Karteia and Camarand have battled for as long as anyone can remember. Good Prince Erik Greystone battles Prince Dirk Blackpool for the right to rule Camarand. Prince Dirk will use any means necessary to win the battle and try to steal Princess Ariel Baaldorf from Prince Erik.
The show starred Jeff Conaway as Prince Erik, Duncan Regehr as Prince Dirk, and Julia Duffy as Princess Ariel. This show replaced the mid season cancellation of Bring ‘Em Back Alive. The series was praised for its directing, writing, and acting, however all of that could not save it from its low ratings. Even its Saturday even time slot couldn’t save it. I remember watching a couple of these shows, but due to my age I often thought it was some movie that I could not place. Thanks to YouTube for allowing me to find this lost treasure.
6. The Highwayman – 1987 – 9 episodes
The Highwayman was an action adventure show that was set in the not so distant future. The show was a spin off of a movie, but the television show quickly separated itself from the movie and didn’t reference it in the future. Each group of highwaymen have a high-tech, multi-functional truck. Once the pilot movie aired and it was cleared for television, there were some big changes. The truck lost its stealth ability and most of the cast did not return. The show was filmed entirely in the American Southwest and due to that and the solitary nature of the show, it had more in common with a western than a post apocalyptic do-gooder show.
As a kid, I seemed to be enthralled with these types of shows. This is one of two entries that follow the show’s plot being driven, forgive the pun, around by a vehicle of some sort. Not once in all of their dealings is the vehicle not useful. Hell, at one point in the show called Knightrider the car even became a boat so that the hero could get the villain. Thankfully, this show allowed the semi to become a smaller car, include a helicopter (in the pilot) and other gadgets that helped with each episode’s needs. My memories of this is vague and often blur with Mad Maxˆ. I do remember seeing Jacko on the show and a couple of clips seem to stand out.
5. Manimal – 1983 – 8 episodes
The one good thing I will give the 80s, when it comes to television, they would use almost any means necessary to hook their audience. What do you get when you take a well respected college profession and mix it with a dark past of his family? You get Dr. Jonathan Chase, a wealthy young doctor who’s family legacy is the mastery of the secrets that divide man form animal, animal from man… Manimal!
The transformation sequences of this show still stick with me. The tag line claimed he could be any animal he wanted but, mostly, we only ever saw Chase be a hawk or a panther. His secret was only known to two people, his best friend, Ty, and a young police detective, Brooke Mackenzie. Chase would use his unique abilities to help Det. Mackenzie solve cases. When it wasn’t conducive to transform into an animal, he could simply take on the characteristics of any animal. He could take the speed of a cheetah, quick reactions of a snake, or strength of a gorilla.The transformations were a bit hokey. As Chase transformed, his clothing would be seen ripped to shreds and then disappear after he transformed. Once he was back into his human form, he was, amazingly, back in the same three piece suit he had transformed out of.
4. Beauty and the Beast – 1987 – 55 episodes
Admittedly, this one seems a little out of place, in relation to the others. Beauty and the Beast lasted for three seasons and gave us 55 episodes. It was incredibly popular at the time it was out. It had a healthy combination of fantasy and crime fighting. This was the role that sealed my respect for Ron Pearlman. It is a reimagining of the classic fairy tale, with a twist. We all are familiar with the story and how the Beast is transformed , by love, into a regular human. Ron Koslow decided to shake it up a little. The beauty that was hidden below the Beast, Vincent, is his inner beauty. Vincent is gentle and loving but also fiercely protective, especially to his love Catherine, played by Linda Hamilton from TerminatorI fame. The love between them starts when Catherine is attacked and left for dead, Vincent finds her and takes her to his subterranean realm where he nurses her back to health. While she is here, they develop an empathic bond where Vincent can detect when she is in trouble.
I absolutely loved this show as a kid. We watched the first season and I was hooked. Unfortunately, as was the nature of our house, interest in shows changed season to season. I didn’t get to watch it a lot in the second season. By the third season Linda Hamilton was killed off and replaced. It was this change, in my opinion, tha killed off the show.
3. Airwolf – 1984 – 79 episodes
Similar to The Highwayman and a few others, this show centers around a mode of transportation used to solve various missions. It was initially classified as an action military drama that used an advanced high-tech helicopter piloted by Stringfellow Hawke. The plot of this show was… a lot. Essentially, Airwolf was a top secret government project that was stolen. Hawke is recruited by the operative Archangel that works for The Firm. Hawke falls in love with Archangel’s assistant who is sent on a secret mission to Libya, where she is tortured and killed. Hawke, after recovering Airwolf, razes the base to the ground and kills the captor. Hawke, along with his friend, still Airwolf and hide it in a cave in the Valley of the Gods. The entirety of this show revolves around the Firm being both a villain and a good guy, trying to steal back the helicopter and employing Hawke for their various missions.
This was the show where I realized that I was gay, as odd as that sounds. At the time, Jan Michael Vincent was America’s heart-throb, thanks to this show. He had this piercing gaze that just seemed to connect and fill you with hot intensity. Maybe it was just me, either way I loved the show. It was also one of those shows that my father lost interest in as I became more involved in it. The biggest failing on these types of shows is that each episode has to be built around a situation where the hero can use the vehicle to right the wrong, thwart the bad guy, or complete a mission. Airwolf had a unique difference in that a helicopter could go almost anywhere and be somewhat useful, that is if you don’t count all the massive explosions and rain of bullets that often ensued. It is a good watch, all the same. If you can find it, check it out.
2. Voyagers! – 1982 – 20 episodes
Science fiction and time travel, two great things that are even better together. Wait, I think that belongs to something else. Anyway! The 80s television series Voyagers!, was just that, a combination of sci-fi and time travel. This show followed two people, week to week, who went about history to “help it along.” A young boy, Jeffrey Jones (played by Meeno Peluce) was surprised when a person showed up in his sky scraper apartment. That person was a Voyager called Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum). Bogg mistakenly ended up in 1982 due to a malfunction of his time device called an “Omni.” The Omni wasn’t supposed to be able to jump to a time period after 1970. Once Bogg arrived in 1982 and met Jeffery, he dropped his guidebook that Jeffrey’s dog grabbed. In the struggle to get it back, Jeffrey accidentally fell out of an open window – in a sky scraper. Bogg, determined to save him, leaps out the window and uses the Omni to jump in time. This saves Jeffrey and sets up the entirety of the premis. Bogg prefer women over history and thankfully Jeffrey’s father who was a history teacher. talk about convenient.
As a kid, I was always in love with history and this show delivered it in spades. Okay, it was through the lens of Hollywood, but the characters were there nonetheless. At the end of each episode, the stars of the show gave you a PSA in which they told you how to learn more about the period in history the show covered that week. The stars ran around with a pocket watch sized device used for time travel, so for a kid it was easy to replicate something similar for play time. I remember seeing about half of the episodes before losing it to some other show. It is one that I would live to go back and rewatch, but it may blur the rose colored memories I have of it.
1. V – 1984 – 19 episodes plus the original miniseries
The 1980s was a birthing room of television shows that worked and even some that worked but still failed. V: The Final Battle and V: the series is some of those shows. This was a time in which the world seemed to be out of this world with alien themed movies and tv shows. V: the series had this in spades. It was a continuation of the V franchise in which an alien reptile species invades earth to consume its people and planet for resources. In V: The Final Battle we follow the resistance as they try to over throw the alien invaders and V: the Series picks up after the rebels supposedly won. This is a show that didnt skimp on visual effects like lasers, space ships, vast science rooms, and even aliens ripping off human faces to reveal their lizard faces all while swallowing rodents on camera.
This was a sci-fi wet dream for me, it had guns, spaceships, aliens, and hot resistance fighters. My friends and I would pretend to be those fighters and run around shooting at one another. This show had numbers to keep going but, sadly in the second season by episode 10, it all stopped. The reason was that the series repeatedly violated content boundaries set up by the FCC. The parent network, ABC, feared that advertisers would back out and leave them holding the bag, decided it was in their best interest to cancel the show. As a kid, I only got to way V: the Final Battle as it was aired on ABC and not a channel that we got way out in the woods.
Bonus unlocked: Small Wonder – 1985 – 96 episodes
If you have never heard of Small Wonder, then hold onto your butts. Small Wonder was an American children’s comedy science fiction sitcom. The father was a robotics engineer who secretly created a robot patterned after a young human child. From there, they try to pass her off as their adopted daughter, Vicki. Boasting 96 episodes and lasting to 1985, it is hard to believe that there is a large group of people who have never heard of this or never seen this show. Let me rephrase that, there is a large group of GenXers that have never seen or heard of this show. And, it had an amazing rumor.
What stood out for me, about this show, was how well it seemed to handle problems that kids go through daily. Most of the jokes centered around Vicki trying to be human. Hell, who can’t relate to that, at times. To fit in with the fact that the girl (Tiffany Bridgette) playing Vicki would age, there was a point in the life of the show where the father gave her an upgrade to include an older looking face. It resonated with me because a lot of the struggle that Vicki had trying to fit in seemed to be similar situations to what I was going through as a child. I am sure this was the intended purpose, from the writers.
Bonus factoid for you. Growing up, most everyone I knew that had seen the show fully believed in the urban myth that the boy who played the lead on the show was a young Billy Corgan – of Smashing Pumpkins fame. There was no connection between the two, Corgan never acted in the movie, and the kid did not look all that much like him.If you have not seen it, give it a try. It is horribly outdated but still good for a chuckle to two.
Treasured television from the 1980s
It is, sometimes, shocking to see how far television has come, since the 1980s. Gone are the days of families crowding around the boob tube each night or on Saturday nights, watching favorite shows and being a family. Terrestrial television has almost completely been plowed over by streaming services that offer you the entire season of a show up front. There is no investment into following a show from season to season. Serial television shows are a thing of the past. It is hard to have the love for them that we used to have and some days, I truly miss it.
Were any of the shows I mentioned new to you? Have you seen any of them before? Maybe you have only heard whispers of them from other people and you thought they were misremembering them as other movies. Let me know in the comments below. Or, were you one of the ones who watched these shows and loved them as much as I did. What were you favorite parts? Was it just you who loved and watched them or was it a family event? Maybe there are shows I didn’t put on this list that you feel deserve their time back in the sun. Drop them in the comments below. I love reliving my childhood and taking a stroll down the TV history road. Thanks for being with us.
Gay in the CLE 