How can a show so chaoatic not have a bigger following? Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the overlooked or forgotten TV shows that are completely bizarre and totally unhinged.
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00:00 [Screaming]
00:02 "That is choking!"
00:03 "Stop moving!"
00:04 "Stop! Stop moving!"
00:06 "It's like a wild animal!"
00:07 Welcome to Ms Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the overlooked or forgotten TV shows
00:13 that are completely bizarre and totally unhinged.
00:16 "I'm outta here."
00:17 "Not so fast, mister."
00:22 Number 10. The Prisoner
00:25 A lot of explanations for this utterly confusing sci-fi series boil down to, "Hey, it was the 60s!"
00:31 "I suppose you're wondering what you're doing here."
00:33 "It hadn't crossed my mind."
00:35 "What's it all about?"
00:37 "Sit down and I'll tell you."
00:41 We can't attest to whether or not some illicit chemical substances went into the making of this series.
00:46 What is clear is that The Prisoner is one of a kind experience.
00:50 It stars Irish actor Patrick McGowan as a secret agent who finds himself held captive in a strange, isolated village.
00:57 "I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned."
01:00 "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered."
01:06 "My life is my own."
01:09 "Is it?"
01:10 "Yes. You won't hold me."
01:11 The plot reads like a mix between Lost and Gilligan's Island.
01:15 Its charmingly primitive special effects, surrealist imagery and counterculture themes make it a pretty disorienting experience for modern audiences.
01:23 "Good day, number six."
01:25 "Number what?"
01:26 "Six. For official purposes, everyone has a number. Yours is number six."
01:31 "I am not a number. I am a person."
01:34 Number nine, The Ben Stiller Show.
01:36 Long before they became Hollywood heavy hitters, Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow, Bob Odenkirk and Janine Garofalo made one of the '90s' most chaotic sketch series.
01:47 "Hi, I'm Ben Stiller. Welcome to the show. I guess you're wondering who I am and what the show's about.
01:52 Well, I don't know. I've never really had a show before. It's my first time. It's a comedy thing."
01:57 The Ben Stiller Show was a different brand of TV comedy from the start.
02:01 Mixing show business satire with high-energy nonsense, the show and its zany cast packed a lot of comedy into just one half-hour.
02:09 "Lucky Clover cereal. An important part of this well-balanced breakfast. Now with a fun new surprise in each specially marked package."
02:17 "Did I eat too much? More than a lot?"
02:24 Despite its cancellation, the show's first season won an Emmy for writing.
02:28 Considering where many of its stars ended up, it clearly made an imprint on pop culture, even if it's been largely forgotten.
02:35 "You shut your stinking trap!" "I will not listen! You shut it!" "Shut it! Shut your stinking trap!" "Trap! Trap! Shut your trap!"
02:43 Number 8. Most Extreme Elimination Challenge
02:47 Takeshi's Castle was a Japanese game show that threw its contestants into a punishing and often ludicrous obstacle course.
02:54 "Ahh! Shut up!"
02:59 Though it inspired a lot of shows, including Wipeout, some American viewers might have first become aware of the format through Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, retitled MXC.
03:10 Later in its run, the show took episodes of Takeshi's Castle and added inaccurate and often crude English dubbing over the original footage.
03:17 "Best we've seen so far. There he goes." "He's like that Lord of the Dance dude." "He's approaching the slope of no hope!"
03:23 Contestants were tasked with jumping across a field of giant bouncy balls and running through a field of thick mud to catch a soccer ball launched through the air.
03:31 "Terry Pruno, she takes it right across her, hits her and gets screamed right in the mouth!"
03:37 The added English commentary makes an already surreal game show all the more bizarre.
03:42 Number 7. The Comeback
03:44 Lisa Kudrow created this mockumentary series with Sex and the City writer John Patrick King.
03:49 "So this is my cup, Jane. I'm sorry. The camera keeps moving in and out." "It's always going to be moving. Just keep going."
03:56 "Oh, I know. I know. It's just, I don't know if I should wait for it to settle or..."
04:01 In it, she plays Valerie Cherish, an actress consistently fighting off the piranhas of the entertainment industry as she tries to capitalize on her former sitcom fame.
04:10 Luckily for her and for us, Valerie is not exactly the most self-aware person.
04:15 "You girls, huh? Now this one, she's real special. That, um, Leela Durham."
04:21 "I think it's Lena Dunham."
04:24 "Well, I don't... There. Yeah, no, I'm right. Lena."
04:28 She's put through the degrading paces of being a middle-aged woman in a business where youth is currency and fame is fleeting.
04:34 The world of The Comeback is like a looking-glass version of Hollywood, full of narcissism, desperation, and sometimes even outright cruelty.
04:42 It's also hysterically funny.
04:44 "No one? Really? Not no one, Mark, because I believed in me. I'm not no one. That's not nice. Maybe you don't think I'm someone, but I have a birth certificate that says I am."
04:58 Number six, The End of the F-ing World. This British series is a road trip buddy comedy with a dark twist.
05:05 "I think we live in the most boring town on the planet."
05:08 "Yeah, maybe."
05:10 Based on a comic series by Charles Forsman, it follows James and Alyssa as they drive across the country.
05:17 Their reasons for this are vastly different. Alyssa is a troubled girl who wants to escape her rotten home life.
05:23 James is a troubled boy who thinks the road trip is the perfect cover to murder her.
05:27 "Somebody is there."
05:33 Despite its disturbing premise, the show somehow manages to reel you in.
05:37 If anything, James' motives just make what could have been a standard teen romance way more suspenseful and poignant than it would have been otherwise.
05:45 "We should go away, properly away, like somewhere foreign."
05:49 "Yeah."
05:51 "Somewhere else, completely new, and start again."
05:54 "Yeah."
05:56 "Do you want to do that too?"
05:58 "Yes."
05:59 Number five, I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson.
06:02 The sketches on this show find comedian and writer Tim Robinson and the ensemble having to negotiate increasingly stupid situations with surprisingly high stakes.
06:11 "It does both. I was here yesterday and it actually goes both ways."
06:15 "Oh, okay."
06:18 "Okay, see ya."
06:22 It asks the questions we've all asked ourselves from time to time.
06:29 What happens if a baby pageant turned deadly?
06:32 "Somebody get her! She's trying to get Jarvis!"
06:34 "Alright, you know what? This one's dumb. Dump it. Trash it. This one's garbage."
06:39 What happens if you swear too much on a haunted house tour?
06:42 What does The Table Lady do for a living?
06:45 Although the Netflix series has good reviews, its particular sense of humor is probably an acquired taste.
06:51 But if you acquire the taste, it'll have you laughing until you cry.
06:55 "I was fired from work for something completely embarrassing. I was fired for something extremely embarrassing.
07:01 I'm not gonna say what it was, but it led me to invent this powerful hot dog vacuum."
07:06 Number four, Police Squad.
07:08 After their success with Airplane, actor Leslie Nielsen and creators David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker teamed up for this short-lived sitcom.
07:17 "I'm Captain Frank Brevin. I understand you had a pretty rough time."
07:21 "Yeah, it was pretty bad."
07:23 "Cigarette?"
07:24 "Yes, I know."
07:25 Police Squad introduced the world to Lieutenant Frank Drebin, a cop who is almost blissfully unaware of the world around him.
07:32 Poking fun at the bravado of similar TV characters, Drebin has a knack for never ending a sentence the way you'd expect.
07:39 "Please go away. Please go away. I don't want to answer any more of your questions."
07:45 "We're sorry to bother you at a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but your husband wasn't dead then."
07:50 Despite its wealth of visual gags and ridiculous antics, the show failed to find its audience and was cancelled after six episodes.
07:57 However, a few years later, the premise found huge success when it became a movie, The Naked Gun.
08:03 "There's something on the side of your mouth, Al. No, no, the other side."
08:07 Number three, The Syphil and Ollie Show
08:09 The brainchild of Liam Lynch and Matt Kroko, The Syphil and Ollie Show was a meandering and low-budget show about two sock puppets who specialized in crude humor.
08:18 "Hi everybody and welcome to the show. My name's Syphil and this is…"
08:21 "Dude." "What?"
08:23 "I just got a message on my machine from that stealth guy."
08:26 "The guy who hates you?"
08:27 "And he said that he found out where I live again. He's gonna kick my ass, dude."
08:31 "For real?" "Yeah, for real."
08:34 Airing on MTV between 1998 and 1999, the show had a grungy, public access feel.
08:40 Viewers would be treated to vulgar sketches, awkward interviews, and unpolished musical numbers.
08:46 Its underplayed humor may have been a little too ahead of its time.
08:49 "Everything is gonna be a holographic." "So you can't touch anything then?"
08:52 "No, in the future you won't touch anything because everything will be a holographic."
08:57 "But you can get a lot more things. You just won't be able to touch them."
09:00 Due to low viewership, MTV cancelled the show before its completed third season could air.
09:05 Though the show didn't find much of an audience, it does have a small and dedicated group of fans, the self-proclaimed sockheads.
09:12 "Yeah, that's just part of a man's cycle. Happens once a month. Don't worry about it."
09:17 "Totally, totally normal." "So I'm not weird?" "No, it's nature's way." "Oh, thank you."
09:22 Number 2. Strangers with Candy
09:24 This satirical skewering of after-school specials consistently crosses lines other shows wouldn't even go near.
09:31 It stars Amy Sedaris as Jerry Blank, a former sex worker with substance use disorder who returns to high school at the age of 46.
09:40 "I'm out of jail, picking up my life exactly where I left off. I'm back in high school, living at home, and discovering all sorts of things about my body."
09:49 Each episode finds Jerry learning hard lessons about very important social issues.
09:54 The show also features two equally deranged and highly unprofessional teachers, played by co-creators Paul Dinello and future Late Show host Stephen Colbert.
10:03 "Jerry, I wouldn't worry about those grades. This party is an A+."
10:07 "Glad you think so, Mr. Knoblood." "It's really a loss about Poppy." "Yeah, yeah, it's too bad."
10:13 Strangers with Candy may not be for everyone, but the show's brand of politically incorrect comedy has scored some passionate fans over the years.
10:21 "Hey girls." "Ladies." "Jerry, we heard an ugly rumor that you were going out with Drake."
10:27 "He did express an interest in me, but don't worry, my chastity is in no danger."
10:32 "That's good to hear, Jerry, because Drake Rogers leads to a bad reputation."
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10:56 From cheesy sci-fi horror epics to melodramatic soap operas, there were few genres this Channel 4 series didn't parody during its short run.
11:03 "Finally, here is Dark Place. For the first time on British television, it had a brief run in Peru."
11:09 "Sit back, dim the lights or switch them off if you don't have dimmers, put conventional logic to one side, and enjoy."
11:17 Each week, Dark Place presents an episode of a fictional 80s show bookended by commentary from its makers, particularly its egotistical writer and star Garth Marenghi.
11:27 "All I do is sit down at the typewriter and start hitting the keys. Getting them in the right order, that's the trick."
11:36 Full of terrible writing, stilted acting, and cheap special effects, Dark Place is a love letter to a certain kind of genre TV.
11:43 It takes some really gifted writers to make good bad TV. Writer-creator Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness clearly see the beauty in bad dialogue and messy storytelling.
11:54 "Dag, any thoughts?"
11:55 "I don't know anything about it."
11:57 "Besides, I think there are more important matters at present."
12:00 "Could you give me an example?"
12:01 "Like hospital bloody hygiene."
12:03 Which of these chaotic shows have you seen before? Sound off in the comments.
12:07 "Everything's all set, Frank. We've got men covering all the exits."
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12:22 [Music]