I was reading a Variety issue from 1990 that had a listing of the television ratings for the 1989-1990 primetime season. Naturally, I was drawn to the lowest entries and not surprised to see the relatively new Fox Broadcasting claimed the last five spots. Coming in at 692nd place (out of 695 entries) was the intriguing sounding The Ghost Writer (not to be confused with the 1989 movie Ghost Writer). Looking it up, I was surprised to see it had one of the most absurd premises as it was a sitcom starring Anthony Perkins as a horror writer who lives in spooky house and encounters the dead. Consider me intrigued. And thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to dig up more info and actually see it.
ABC announced The Ghost Writer as a potential mid-season replacement in August 1988. It was created by Alan Spencer, who had given the same network Sledge Hammer. In a LA Times profile of Spencer that same month, he said the ABC execs were befuddled by the concept, but grew to like it when they saw the box office returns of Beetlejuice (1988). Favorite quote from the article: "I wanted to be the first on the air with a series about the living dead, but Thirtysomething beat me to it." Dubbed a "scarecom" by a network exec, it shot in the fall of 1988 under the New World Television banner. By the spring of 1989, articles began to pop up about Perkins and company still waiting to hear from execs if the pilot would be picked up. I guess they got their answer at some point as the pilot was sold to Fox and dumped in a 9:30 slot on Wednesday, August 15, 1990; a timeslot that was so random that it garnered a 2.7 rating for that coveted 692nd place. To compound matters, its lead in was a sitcom called Molloy, one of two teen shows featuring Mayim Bialik airing at the same time (the other being Blossom on NBC).
Perkins stars as Anthony Strack, a best selling horror writer who has recently married the younger Elizabeth (Leigh Taylor-Young) after the death of his first wife. Together with Elizabeth's daughter Cindy (Julie Sorci) and his death-obsessed son Edgar (that weird kid Joshua Miller), they make the perfect blended (Addams) family. Trouble arises when Elizabeth moves the portrait of Anthony's first wife on the anniversary of her death, resulting in her returning from the grave. I'm sure "Norman Bates in a sitcom" sounded better on paper...actually, no, I'm not sure about that. This is a totally bizarre concept for a sitcom, but I think it could have worked in some way. However, the pilot doesn't show that way as it is filled with bad death puns in every other sentence. Example: The climax has Anthony confronting the skeleton of his dead wife (an actually cool realized prop) and she confronts him about getting remarried with this exchange:
Wife: "What's she got that I haven't got?"
Anthony: "A pulse."
Wah, wah, waaaaah. This could have worked if it was shot like Spencer's earlier Sledge Hammer, but they opted to go with a live studio audience scenario like The Cosby Show, resulting in forced claps and hooting and hollering. Also, Perkins is very jittery in his performance and I'm sure you can figure out why. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the show is that in its death-joke filled 30 minutes that they somehow managed to NOT work in a Psycho joke. Mother would not be proud.
