40 Worst TV Shows of the 1970s - Highcliffe Manor

[Mysterious Benefactor]

40 Worst TV Shows of the 1970s:
Highcliffe Manor
Highcliffe Manor

I don't even remember this show existing, much less having possibly seen it. And that's odd considering they say it supposedly took "obvious inspiration from Dark Shadows."

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I don't remember this show, either:

Struck by Lightning
Struck by Lightning

[Uncle Roger]

I remember seeing ads for Struck By Lightning. The promos were enough to convince me not to bother with the series.

But I did watch Highcliffe Manor. Not a great show, though the cast made it tolerable. But I thought that the tone of the show was a lot closer to The Munsters than Dark Shadows.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Curiosity got the better of me so I did a Google search for Highcliffe Manor. In part, it came up with this:

HIGHCLIFFE MANOR - promos & ephemera (1979)

It's interesting how the manor house has a similar look to the Greystone version of Collinwood (though more so in the promo photo in this article...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Apparently the Struck By Lightning pilot is on YouTube:

Struck By Lightning - Pilot - W/O/C - Sept. 19th, 1979

My god - they use the same house as Highcliffe Manor - nothing like a little recycling! And in the opening credits it looks even more like Greystone...

And anyone willing to watch the whole thing (I wasn't) will see the commercials aired with it...

[Gothick]

MB, that Highcliffe Manor video clip was put together by my buddy Curt, who also maintains a blog for Strange Paradise. If you look through his Youtube channel, Maljardin, he's done a number of fascinating videos over the years, often compiling ephemera for various series. I think he did one for Green Hornet a month or two ago.

G.

[Gerard]

I've never heard of those two shows and back in the '70's, I watched everything.  The Highcliffe Manor looks like an attempt to combine DS with Soap and it was a tremendous fail.  Ah, the seventies.  It was the decade of the best and worst shows on TV.

Gerard

[patrickm]

I looked at the list and pretty much went along with it except for maybe a couple. I remember watching Gibbsville and liking it quite a bit.. I didn't watch it at the time but picked up the dvd set for The Bearcats last year and thought it was pretty good and fun to watch also. For shows omitted on the worst list, I would have suggested The Jimmy Stewart Show, Grandpa Goes to Washington, The Captain and Tennille and Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

An updated version of the article - and the copy for Highcliffe Manor is a lot more flattering to DS than it originally was:

40 Worst TV Shows of the 1970s - Highcliffe Manor


Highcliffe Manor

Everyone who lived in the '70s remembers Dark Shadows. This show was fantastic, and Highcliffe Manor wanted to do something similar. It was a Gothic horror sitcom with many of the same themes. Writers really should have learned that you can't beat the original.

Highcliffe Manor was originally slated to have six episodes, but it only got through four before NBC pulled it. Audiences didn’t enjoy it, and the ratings were far too low to keep it going. Dark Shadows still reigns supreme!