1979’s mostly forgotten Cliffhangers delivered a fun homage to the movie serials of old and it pioneered the season-long anthology format.
[Updated]
What Is It?
This contemporary updating of the old movie serials aired three ongoing segments during its hour: the action/adventure Stop Susan Williams that was a new take of sorts on The Perils of Pauline, the sci fi / western The Secret Empire that paid homage to 1935’s The Phantom Empire, and The Curse of Dracula which found the Count alive and well (err . . . undead and well?) in the 1970s.
Aired: NBC, 1979, 1 Season Totaling 11 Episodes
Starring: Susan Anton, Geoffrey Scott, Michael Nouri
Created By: Kenneth Johnson
Why Was It Cancelled?
The original idea for the show was to have a rotating set of serials that would change each season. Of course, if one or more of the segments proved popular, they could always keep those running while changing out the other titles. Kenneth Johnson (The Incredible Hulk TV series) created the show and it was part of NBC’s desperate attempt to climb out of the ratings cellar it found itself in during the late ’70s. And several TV critics at the time praised it for its fresh, new concept, though they weren’t necessarily as impressed with its execution. (You can read more about the show at this link.) NBC went for broke, though as they poured a significant amount of money into Cliffhangers (allegedly around $1 million per episode) and programmed it against ABC’s sitcom juggernauts Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley on Thursdays at 8 PM EST. The idea was to shoot directly for the younger audience that watched those shows thinking that they would have grown bored with the aging sitcoms by that point.
And while that probably sounded good in the network boardroom, it worked about as well as you would have expected when put into practice. The series debuted to poor ratings and dropped even further over subsequent weeks. It was axed at the end of the season (as were most of NBC’s new entries including the much lambasted Supertrain) and has since been mostly forgotten. But despite its high cheese factor and tendency at times toward bad camp, the show had a definite charm. If given more support from the network (and better scheduling), it could have possibly stuck around for another season or so.
Should It Be Rebooted?
Cliffhangers was ahead of its time by pioneering the season-long anthology format, and I believe it would work quite well today. Shows like American Horror Story and True Detective have since proved the concept, and I for one would love to see a revival of this show. With all the reboot fever in the air, maybe it could happen at some point. And it doesn’t even need to follow directly from the NBC show. Give it another title with basically the same concept and this could be a winner. It could even be used to try out stories that could carry on into their own shows. It certainly seems like a versatile format with a lot of potential and one of the networks or streaming services should take a flyer on this one.
Where Can You Watch It?
Unfortunately, the show has never been released on DVD, though some bootlegs are available with poor-quality transfers from VHS. The entire series is available on YouTube, but the video quality of that is not great either.
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