Bad TV: McDuff, The Talking Dog (1976)

NBC experimented with a 3 hour live action block on the back end of their Saturday morning lineup in 1976. Pink Panther had expanded to 90 minutes, adding Misterjaw and the Texas/Tijuana Toads to the Panther and regular back-ups The Inspector and Ant & The Aardvark. Ahead of that were reruns of Woody Woodpecker, only because NBC didn't get enough new programming to fill the schedule. Makes one wonder if they were intentionally cheap, which would explain their poor performance back then.

While I've never seen McDuff, The Talking Dog, which sounds like a mash-up of Topper (Because McDuff is a ghost) and Mr. Ed (Because McDuff only talks to a specific human), it didn't attract enough eyeballs such that viewers flipped over to ABC or CBS when McDuff came on. The series was gone by Christmas.

Edit, 6/17/21: Here's the intro, from Gilmore Box:



Star Walter Willison wasn't heard from again. Veteran Jack Lester was the voice of McDuff. This came from the Bill D'Angelo/Harvey Bullock/Ray Allen factory that also produced Monster Squad (previously reviewed). Writer-producers William Rayner & Miles Wilder co-produced the series, then dissolved their production company after cancellation. Co-star Gordon Jump moved on to WKRP in Cincinnati and a stint doing Maytag ads, so he at least recovered from this debacle.

No rating.