Stuff that it's painful to watch now

[Patrick Thistle]

Knight Rider and The A Team. Bloody loved them as a kid. Watching them on late night boondock cable channels recently and they are terrible. Dumb plots. Awful acting. Even the stunts are laughably staged.

KITT is still cool though. A good 30 seconds of the car zooming along to that theme and I feel 10 years old again. Ditto when the A Team van screams around a corner into traffic.

[hobbes]

The A Team is brilliant, you madman!

[Sean of the Shed]

Mr T is still a living god, however the A-Team was brilliant back in the day, but has not aged well.
Knight Rider was always a bit shit, to be fair.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Monkey, loved it as a kid then watched the reruns on cable in the late 90s and it was awful.

[elguapo4]

Loved Magnum at the time,one of the cable channels brought it back last summer,watched two episodes before walking away shaking my head sadly

[WOM]

Tales of The Gold Monkey. Bought the DVD box set, made popcorn, rounded up the kids, and shut down the whole endeavor after three episodes. What was I remembering?

[Satchmo Distel]

Six Million Dollar Man

[Arturo]

I remember rewatching some episodes of The Young Ones in the mid 1990s with some friends. It was only just over a decade old, but a lot of it was painfully dated. There were some awkward silences in the room and a great deal of disappointment at a show we had loved on first viewing.

Some of it was very funny though and I suspect still is, but even now, I've no desire to see it through again.

[ad hoc]

I have never heard of Tales of the Gold Monkey

[Lang Spoon]

Monkey. As in Monkey magic, oh woah... theme tune. Monkey had sideburns. Annoying pig man etc.

[ad hoc]

No I know Monkey. But I've never heard of WOM's thing. Was Monkey called that in Canada?

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah, think that’s it.

[ursus arctos]

Something else entirely

[Lang Spoon]

Bloody hell.

[Snake Plissken]

Oh wow, part of the subgenre of "TV series cashing in on the success of a film". Other examples include "Bring 'em Back Alive", "BJ and the Bear" and Relic Hunter got - bloody hell - 66 episodes.

[San Bernardhinault]

That looks like it would have been awesome when I was 14. Why was it never imported?

[Benjm]

I had fond memories of Tales Of The Gold Monkey; from memory the BBC used to show it at 7pm on weekdays. Having previously considered the DVD, I salute WOM for the heroic sacrifice that he made to save me the trouble.

Monkey is still brilliant. I ordered a copy of the soundtrack from Japan quite recently.

[San Bernardhinault]

It was imported? How the fuck did I not spend hours watching that?

[Benjm]

Maybe you watched a couple, thought it was shit and blanked it out until WOM happened by the thread earlier on?

Matt Houston used to be on at that time too, I think.

[Lang Spoon]

I saw some Battle of the Planets in the late 90s for the first time since maybe 85. It didn’t stand up.

[WOM]

Bring 'Em Back Alive....yeah, that was the other one. I'll bet it was even worse, which would take some work.

[WOM]

After thinking about that goddamn show all day, I've now convinced myself that it couldn't possibly be as bad as all that and I should give it another chance. I'm deeply stupid on many levels.

[Satchmo Distel]

I remember rewatching some episodes of The Young Ones in the mid 1990s with some friends. It was only just over a decade old, but a lot of it was painfully dated. There were some awkward silences in the room and a great deal of disappointment at a show we had loved on first viewing.

Some of it was very funny though and I suspect still is, but even now, I've no desire to see it through again.

It was like punk: important for what it achieved, especially blowing away some old farts to clear space for new comedy*, but very hit and miss musically, and the worst bits were junk. But I think Bambi (Gascoigne) holds up, for example.

*Genuinely good stuff like Stewart Lee, although very different in style and depth, would have taken longer to rise to the top, I feel. Also the backing given to Blackadder was built on its success, IIRC. I also think that the maxim "it couldn't happen now, in our conservative TV age and with loss of free university education" has to apply here.

[HeavyDracula]

Eddie Murphy’s Raw. I watched it a few years ago expecting to laugh like I did in the 80s and sat open-mouthed at how offensive and just not funny it is now.

[G-Man]

Oh yes, Murphy's comedy has aged badly. But then, I wasn't overly amused by it back then.

The thing with many mass-entertainment TV shows from the past is that watching them now for fun has to be an exercise in nostalgia. One has to switch of the critical faculties and enjoy them as a time capsule, like a shitty song you like despite itself because it reminds you of good times. Which also means that if you never watched the Knight Riders of the past then, doing so now is pointless.