Fridays (TV series)


Fridays is the name of ABC's weekly late-night live comedy show, which aired on Friday nights from April 11, 1980 to April 23, 1982.

Overview

The program was ABC's attempt to duplicate the success of NBC's Saturday Night Live, which, at the time, was in its fifth and final season featuring the original "Not Ready for Primetime" cast, along with several writers who had been promoted to feature player status, as well as newcomer Harry Shearer. Like SNL, Fridays featured popular musical guests and, beginning in the second season, celebrity guest hosts.
The show featured many recurring characters and sketches, short films, and a parody news segment called Friday Edition, with Melanie Chartoff as the anchor. Veteran comedian Jack Burns served as show announcer and made on-screen appearances on the show. Initially, the show was compared unfavorably to Saturday Night Live as a weak clone that resorted to shock humor for laughs. The third episode was the last episode to air on some affiliates due to objectionable content concerning zombie gore and cannibalism, disgusting habits, and blasphemous humor.
When Saturday Night Lives sixth season was met with negative reviews and low ratings over the new cast, new writers, and new showrunner Jean Doumanian, critics who once panned Fridays praised it, citing the show as being sharper, edgier and funnier than Saturday Night Live at the time. Some critics attributed this to the sprawling, ambitious, and often pointed sociopolitical and situational sketches.
Some examples of this include:
Unusual for a sketch comedy series at the time, Fridays occasionally featured serious interludes and dramatic sketches, such as a segment that aired soon after the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan involving all nine of the cast members recalling where they were at the time of previous assassinations and attempts and a sketch where a punk rocker visits his father who rejects him by yelling, "Who are you?" and "I have no son!". After a long, heartfelt speech from the punk about how his father should accept that he's from a different generation and learn to love him, the punk discovers that the old man was right: they aren't father and son because they have different hair colors.
From its inception, Fridays embraced the emerging new wave rock music scene and its associated culture to a greater extent than Saturday Night Live did at the time, widely incorporating it into their selection of musical guests, hosts and sketches. Unlike Saturday Night Live, Fridays did not have a show band on set. Pop art drawings were displayed and accompanied with a fuzz heavy electric guitar solo whenever the show went to and came back from commercial breaks, though season one featured cartoons by B. Kliban with some kind of pun as the punchline.
Three seasons of Fridays aired on ABC:
Season# EpisodesFirst EpisodeLast Episode
112April 11, 1980July 18, 1980
225September 5, 1980May 15, 1981
321September 18, 1981April 23, 1982

The last episode aired as a primetime sketch show. The show was originally 70 minutes in its first season. It was expanded to 90 minutes in seasons two and three.
SNL executive producer Dick Ebersol gave all Fridays cast members an offer to join Saturday Night Live in 1982, but most turned him down. Only Larry David, Kevin Kelton and Rich Hall worked on SNL for a short time after Fridays was completed.

Directors

Directors of Fridays include:
Producers of Fridays include:
Writers of Fridays include:
Main cast, guest stars and musical guests on Fridays include:

Main cast

AC/DC, The Clash and The Stray Cats made their American television debuts on Fridays. At the time of The Stray Cats' appearance, the band had yet to be signed by a record company. During the group's performance, there was a crawl at the bottom of the screen inviting offers from record companies.

Episodes

Andy Kaufman incident

On the February 20, 1981 episode, Andy Kaufman was the host. During a sketch about couples at dinner sneaking away to the bathroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman, who was known for causing trouble on live television, broke character and refused to read his lines. Michael Richards got up from the table, grabbed the cue cards and threw them down on the table in front of Kaufman, who responded by throwing a glass of water on Richards. Some of the show's cast and crew members became angry and a small brawl broke out on stage. Since the show was broadcast live, home viewers were able to see most of these events transpire until the network cut the cameras off. Kaufman returned the following week in a taped apology to home viewers. The incident was planned by Kaufman, who concocted it with his sidekick Zmuda, and was meant as a prank. The only individuals aware of the plan were producer/director Moffitt, producer/announcer Burns, and the three comedians acting in the sketch along with Kaufman: Richards, Chartoff and Burrell. This incident was reenacted in the film Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman, Bob Zmuda as Burns, Norm Macdonald as Richards, Caroline Rhea as Chartoff and Mary Lynn Rajskub as Burrell.

Cancellation

The series ended in 1982 following ABC's decision to expand Nightline to five nights a week, which moved Fridays to air at midnight instead of 11:30pm.
One final attempt was made by ABC to save the show by putting it on in prime time. The episode was scheduled against Dallas, which did nothing to help the show's moribund ratings. The series was promptly canceled.

Syndication and DVD release

A few years after the show's cancellation, Fridays appeared in reruns on the USA Network in the late 1980s. However, the episodes were edited down to 60 minutes. The reruns were pulled after a year.
For some time, a home video release of Fridays was considered out of the question, as cast member Michael Richards was said to have signed a deal stating that no episode would be released on any home video format. However, clips of sketches from the show surfaced on the Seinfeld season three DVD set in the bonus features set. Shout Factory announced plans to release all three seasons of the show on DVD in 2013. In August 2013, after missing their original release date, Shout Factory released a five disc best-of collection featuring highlights of 16 episodes from seasons one through three. In 2015, Hulu Plus streamed select episodes from all three seasons. As of 2017, the show is no longer streaming on Hulu Plus, but the best-of DVD collection is still available for purchase, and the show's episodes can be streamed on Tubi TV and Shout! Factory.