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TV
on DVD
 "Hi,
great site! "I love the info and the rare pics are great too! (all this and a Black Flag reference snuck in - rockin!) "I've got one for you: Holmes and Yo-Yo. No one I have ever met has remembered this show about a dim wited cop and his inept robot partner. (wow, the Seventies were something weren't they?) "Keep
up the good work, I dig it."
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1976 was a very good year for the big three networks. Prime-time commercials were selling at prices 50% higher than the year before, and were sold-out well into 1977. "This season we could sell a test pattern" was the way one network executive put it. And sell test patterns they did.
'Holmes and Yo-Yo' ran Saturday nights from 8:00 - 8:30, the series followed the mis-adventures of two New York City (?) police detectives. Unknown to almost everyone, one of the partners happens to be a super-sophisticated robot.
Yo-Yo had the power to eat anything, he had a built-in trash compactor that could absorb the shock of a bomb. He had a photographic memory, an independent power source and could print out color proofs. Just what you look for in an assistant today. But Yo-Yo was constantly malfunctioning - a bullet causes him to break out dancing, magnets fly out at him, he picks up radio signals from Sweden, and when his circuits blow he repeats "Bunco Squad, Bunco Squad, Bunco Squad" over and over.
If the show reminded you of 'Get Smart', it's because they shared the same producers - Leonard Stern was executive producer and Arne Sultan was producer. Most of the jokes on 'Holmes and Yo-Yo' were 'Get Smart' throw-aways: "Whyn'tcha try a bite of my blue plate?" Holmes asks Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo eats the plate.
ABC had high hopes for another 'robot that looked like a man' series - a drama called "Futurecop".
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The original 1970s Dark Shadows movies
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Save money! |
Holmes
One
of the misguided series foisted on unsuspecting viewers in 1976 was
Never
was there a more mis-cast robot in television history. John Shuck ('McMillan
and Wife') plays Gregory "Yo-Yo" Yoyonovich, 427 pounds of police department
relay circuits and armor. He looked more like 320 pounds of doughnut-eating
actor. Richard B. Schull plays his partner on the force Detective Alexander
Holmes. Bruce Kirby played Capt. Harry Sedford and Andrea Howard was
Officer Maxine Moon, the girl who swooned after Yo-Yo, never suspecting
his secret.
Holmes
and Yo-Yo was conceived as a comedy version of the highly successful
'Six Million Dollar Man/Woman/Boy/Dog' franchise that ABC had going
at the time.
To
contrast the stupid jokes, the crimes were treated more 'realistically'
to add an air of danger. But the real danger proved to be on the other
channels - 'Holmes and Yo-Yo' lasted only three months opposite 'The
Jeffersons' and 'Emergency', two gigantic hits in 1976.
The
pilot was shown as a special two-hour movie on March 25, 1977, and starred
John Amos and Ernest Borgnine as two big city cops teamed up with a
robot partner (Michael Shannon). The producers of that production were
sued for plagiarism by noted science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison.
Ellison contended that the "Futurecop" screenplay was stolen from one
of his short stories/teleplays, and he prevailed in court.
