5 More of the Greatest TV Shows You've Never Heard of

My Mother the Car

Just imagine it, you go to your local car dealership to buy a car, he shows you some old vintage thing and it starts to speak to you in the voice of your late mother! That’s exactly what’s happened to Dave Crabree, played by Jerry Van Dyke (a poor man’s Dick), who finds out that his mother has been reincarnated as a car, and only he can hear her. Typical parent, soooo embarrassing. Although he’ll have to watch out, the evil moustachioed car collector Manzini is out to steal his mother-mobile, so he'd better watch out.

Click here to see this enchanting opening theme.


Mrs Columbo

Once Mr Columbo had hung up his dirty detecting mac, it was time for the wife to take over. The woman who plays Captain Janeway in Star Trek Voyager is Mrs Columbo, although it’s not really clear whether she is actually married to the Detective Columbo. Peter Falk is not actually in it and after a while they changed the name of the show to Kate Columbo, then a little while later during its long 13 episode run they called it Kate the Detective, and awhile later they called it Kate Loves a Mystery, by which time she had divorced her husband, who wasn’t apparently Columbo anymore.

Anyway, you’ll be able to tell just how gripping a crime show it is from the exciting opening sequence.

Manimal

Jonathan Chase is a man, or is he! To quote the opening narration, he is: “A man with the brightest of futures. A man with the darkest of pasts. From Africa's deepest recesses, to the rarefied peaks of Tibet, heir to his father's legacy and the world's darkest mysteries. Jonathan Chase, master of the secrets that divide man from animal, animal from man... Manimal!” He can change into any animal he wants to fight crime, although in practice it tends to be either a panther or a hawk, unless he managed to change earlier off camera. This exciting series was obviously too much for audiences at the time, as it only lasted 8 episodes.

Watch the legendary title sequence here...

To see the gripping and tautly paced transformation sequence, click here. It’s so amazing it’s like he’s changing on a completely different set.

Supertrain

It’s all in the title. This nuclear-powered bullet train is more like a luxury liner than a normal train, boasting swimming pools, a shopping mall and a ballroom dance hall (must’ve been pretty steady). It could take you from New York to Los Angeles in 36 hours and must’ve been pretty amazing to make you go through that when you could fly there in about 6. Each week some exciting intrigue would happen that definitely wasn’t just nicked from an Agatha Christie novel, I mean, having spent so much time building all the sets and creating the special effects (it was at the time, the most expensive TV show ever), they definitely made sure that they spent plenty of time on the stories, all uhm, 9 of them.

Watch the exciting opening here.

Watch the teaser for episode two ‘And A Cup of Kindness, Too’ here. And don’t ever call Dick Van Dyke a lunatic.


The Powers of Matthew Star

David, who’s name changes to Matthew at some point, is an alien prince whose family has been killed and he’s hiding out in exile on earth with his guardian, Walter. He either does, or doesn’t know this, depending which episode you watch, but boy does it cause problems with his high school teenage life. Being an alien en all, he has various special powers: telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, transmutation and astral projection, again, depending on which episode you watch. Walter apparently doesn’t have any powers, but he’s a bit strong so that helps. They go on adventures
and avoid alien assassins, the authorities and try to keep their secret from all there friends. The usual stuff.

Watch the exciting opening episode here. It’s long, but worth watching all the way through.

And check out this exciting corridor chase scene. So tense.