The Ugliest Girl in Town

Airing this sitcom on any classic televison channel would throw a real "cog" to the average classic television buff. To them, a vague recall of the show might occur after hearing the theme song about 2 or 3 times (if they were around and watched tv during the fall of 1968). I was only 9 years of age back then and all that I can remember is the opening theme song and that I was in love with the main characters girl friend (who more than made up for his/her ugliness).

Although I can barely remember a thing about the plot or characters of this short-lived sitcom, for some reason, the melody and lyrics of the theme song are as vivid in my mind today as they were thirty years ago when I last heard them. Which just goes to show you, even the most forgettable of TV programs, can at least produce a memorable tune:

Who owns that fabulous face? The Ugliest Girl In Town........... Who's clothes are setting the pace? The Ugliest Girl In Town....

Since the day she made the scene................................ She's made the cover of every magazine.......................... She's got the whole world in a spin............................. She's so far out, she's in!.....................................

Guys are bustin' to date, The Ugliest Girl In Town.............. Girls are trying to imitate, The Ugliest Girl In Town...........

You Don't have to be a, Mia or Sophia,.......................... This is the year of the clown................................... Be the chickiest, kickiest, Ugliest Girl In Town................

I can't really rate about a lost and forgotten sitcom from the late-1960's that I never got the chance to watch unless it showed up somewhere on some cable channel that caters to old television shows that people really don't want to know or watch them for that manner. But this I do know about this show titled THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN that lasted no more than four months on the air. For anyone who has seen it has to relate that this was one of the worst sitcoms of all time,and I have seen far off worse than THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN.

For one,this was the show that actually replaced the wildly popular and almost successful BATMAN which became the surprise hit of the mid-1960's after ABC-TV canceled it after more than two and a half seasons on the air in March of 1968 due to terrible ratings. Secondly,this show was produced by the same people who brought you "Bewitched",and "The Flying Nun",which were two major hits on ABC(under executive producer Harry Ackerman and producer Jerry Davis). The series lasted no more than four months on the air from the premiere episode on September 26,1968 until the final curtain of the series on January 30,1969. A total of 17 episodes were produced in color which some scenes were filmed on location in Hollywood(on the studio lot of Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures which produced the series),and on location in England. The overall plot of the series was that the hero "Timothy Blair"(Peter Kastner) had to dress up in drag(as a woman)to remain in England to be near the woman he loves(Patricia Blake). He is mistaken for a female model by a big-time advertising agent,and soon becomes the toast of the advertising world. Some of the antics involving Kastner's cross-dressing antics as Timmy/Timmie came in some various predicaments but it didn't help in the ratings neither.

ABC put THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN on its Thursday night schedule where it was opposite NBC's Daniel Boone that really killed it in the Nielsens. And it was opposite the short-lived series Blondie on CBS. TUGIT wasn't the best execution of a concept,but it was first sitcom of it's day to have a leading male hero dressed in drag....long before Peter Scolari and Tom Hanks did it for television on Bosom Buddies,and long before Dustin Hoffman pulled off the unthinkable in the film Tootsie. And to think that this show was the worst sitcom of the 1960's? I can think of some that were far off worst that were stinkers in their own right....think the worst of the worst TV-sitcoms of the 1960's.... "Mister Ed", "It's About Time", "F-Troop", "My Mother The Car",and even "Gilligan's Island" to name a few.

I was only 7 years old when it originally aired on ABC but also the song has been stuck in my mind for all of these years. I

keep hoping that TV Land will play this series. I remember that the title character was named Timmy and the series was set in London. Timmy had a screen in his apartment that he would step behind and then transform himself into a girl, with wig, skirt, make-up and all of the accessories. I wish I could see this series again. I loved it.

Anyone who's made it this far on IMDb to The Ugliest Girl in Town likely knows that this is considered one of the worst American TV series of all time. This is a tag often given out by people who've never watched a minute of the show; it just sounds good to trash it, based on its iffy premise and the fact that, well, everyone else trashed it.

It's also unfair. TUGIT, to be sure, is a pretty mediocre entry in the spectrum of TV series – let along sitcoms – but it's time to quit the blind bashing. If anything, it offers fair warning that intercontinental transplants of shows and concepts can be risky business, and that part often isn't heeded. (Coupling, anyone?) The leads of Peter Kastner and Patricia Blake are an engaging couple, having more than a few giggles making the best of Kastner's cross-dressing antics as Timmy/Timmie. In a situation where he can't possibly take himself seriously, Kastner's portrayal of a Hollywood talent agency young-man-on-the-hustle (think Mike Ovitz with a goofy streak) who's sidetracked by love at first sight is just about believable, due to his self-deprecating style. The pilot even dips into an effective bit of pathos as he sees the new love of his life jet off from LAX to London forever, except that ….

The real problem comes with trying to merge the wittier (certainly compared to U.S. standards) British sitcom style with the hit-them-over-the-hammer joking of American sitcoms that derived from various Lucille Ball vehicles. It's balancing the subtle with the shtick, which really didn't work until five guys (at just about the same time) down at the BBC hit the solution by going absurd with Monty Python's Flying Circus.

It's not that Americans didn't stop trying, as the same kind of U.S./U.K. TV comedy merger went another round with From a Bird's Eye View, which tanked two years later in Britain and whiled away as one of those NBC import summer time-burners (unlike better series such as Strange Report).

The Ugliest Girl in Town wasn't the best execution of a concept, but it had its funny moments with likable leads romping through the last vestiges of Swinging London. There are hundreds of shows (and I swear I've seen most of them) that offered far worse and escaped the constant dead-horse beating this one gets.