Saturday, June 24, 2006

Milestone of mediocrity in sitcom history

The Record ran a front-page article today about Diane Nyland, who once starred in what is generally regarded as the worst sitcom ever made - The Trouble With Tracy.

With "a lower-than-low budget and atrocious writing," Trouble was indeed trouble - a sitcom with a punishing schedule of seven episodes being shot in five days, no rehearsals, no retakes - and it showed. The show was monumentally bad. But the Record article reveals that Diane enjoyed making the show. She was just a struggling young actor who needed a gig. But the gig pretty much ended her TV career. (She directs theatre productions nowadays.)

The article describes the progam as "a campy 1970s Canadian sit-com that was so abysmally unfunny that even the canned laughter seemed reluctant to kick in."

At a "tribute" site called The Trouble With The Trouble With Tracy, the webmaster writes:
The Trouble With Tracy sucked. It sucked from day one. It was bilge-water in a rusty bucket. They had to spray the tapes with industrial strength air freshener because this show stunk so much. The "jokes" were unoriginal, unfunny and poorly delivered. The acting was pathetically wooden. The sets were cardboard, at best. Entire walls wobbled when doors were opened. They had no "blooper reel" for Ed McMahon and Dick Clark, because they left the bloopers in. The single, re-usable laugh track was recorded at Knowlton Nash’s Muskoka cottage barbecue one rainy summer. Pure crap from start to finish.

A few years ago, The Comedy Network announced that it was going to remake the show, with the original scripts. But it was all an April Fool's joke.

Will this show ever come out on DVD? Would anyone buy it if it did?