TV’s Two-Timers
What actors or actresses starred in two wildy popular and completely different TV series?
I was reading Larrylambert’s article Facts About the Rockford Files and it occurred to me that James Garner is one of the few actors who starred in two different highly rated, critically acclaimed TV series (Maverick was the first) as two completely different characters. (And by “starred in”, I specifically mean they played the main character of the show, the show’s POV character.) However, in trying to think of others who can claim that accomplishment, I realized there are quite a few!
Mulling it over for a few days (okay, obsessing over it), here are the actors and actresses I could come up with to whom I award the Garner prize … plus a few who surprisingly don’t make it.
I apologize for the length of this article, but it was awfully fun writing and researching it. You can just skim the photos if you like, but they don’t all get Garner Awards!
Kelsey Grammar comes to mind because he was in Cheers and Frasier, but he inspired my two caveats: He was not the star of Cheers and he played Fraiser Crane in both shows.
I’m thinking Lucille Ball, though I’m not sure her shows after I Love Lucy were all that popular. Ah well, she’s Lucy, let’s give her the Garner. In any case, with three subsequent sitcoms, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy, I’ll bet she holds the record for starring in the highest number of sitcoms. Ball earned a lot of show biz capital from I Love Lucy!
Everybody loves and respects funny lady Jean Smart. We were introduced to her as one of the Designing Women, and we are so happy to see her again in Netflix’ brilliant Hacks. But was she “the” star of Designing Women? No, she was not. It was an ensemble show, equally featuring equally talented Delta Burke, Dixie Carter, and Annie Potts. Therefore, it does not support a Garner Award nomination.
Can it be that, for all we’ve seen of Smart on our screens, she was never given her own show until Hacks? No, she had a couple of shows. There was a series called Style & Substance in 1998, where Smart played a Martha Stewart-like character, but it went only 13 episodes. IMDB trivia says, “Cast members Nancy McKeon and Jean Smart have expressed their belief that Martha Stewart was responsible for the show’s cancellation.” Smart also had a not-very-successful series High Society in 1995, also only 13 episodes.
We love you, Jean Smart, but, unfortunately, we cannot award you a Garner.
Dick Van Dyke had his wildly popular eponymous sitcom and later had a variety show. But, he didn’t play a character in the variety show, he just hosted it. And besides, it wasn’t very popular, it didn’t even get a second season. Trivia: Dick’s variety show introduced weirdo comic Andy Kaufman to the world. (If variety shows counted, we’d have Jackie Gleason for his variety show plus The Honeymooners. Maybe even The Smothers Brothers for their sort of two variety shows.)
But wait! Van Dyke also had Diagnosis: Murder in the nineties! He’s in!
We all love William Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, but did we all love him as T. J. Hooker? I guess a lot of us did because the show ran for five seasons. So Shatner gets the Garner prize, if you allow Hooker as highly rated. For that matter, Star Trek was not highly rated at the time and ran only three seasons, but I would have to call it highly rated in retrospect. Shatner was also in the highly rated Boston Legal, but I think you’d have to say that it was James Spader’s show, with Shatner in a supporting role.
OMG! In 2010, Shatner starred in a sitcom called $#*! My Dad Says. It lasted for 18 episodes.
But let’s talk James Spader. Besides Boston Legal (five seasons), he also starred in The Blacklist which ran ten seasons on NBC. I grudgingly award him a Garner. Grudgingly because, while I enjoyed The Blacklist (I caught it on Netflix), it wasn’t exactly prestige TV. It did not have the writing quality of Maverick, Rockford, Star Trek, Boston legal.
And speaking of Boston Legal, we can add another woman to the Garner roll: Actress Callista Flockhart was the charming and devastatingly quirky eponymous lawyer in Ally McBeal, which, like Boston Legal, was one of David E. Kelly’s many lawyer shows. Flockhart later starred in the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters. B&S ran 5 seasons without me seeing a single episode, but it earns Flockhart her Garner. She also earned one Harrison Ford, whom she married in 2010.
Bill Bixby! I loved My Favorite Martian when I was a kid, so therefore it must be a highly-rated sitcom. You might have thought the Martian — Ray Walston with antenna coming out of his head — was the star, but the star was Bixby, the bachelor who let the Martian stay in his apartment. An apartment with a garage, where the Martian kept his broken-down spaceship. And yes, that Ray Walston, Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Bixby went on to star in The Incredible Hulk, where he transformed into Lou Ferrigno, the professional wrestler and body-builder who beat out Arnold Schwarzenegger for The Hulk part. “You won’t like me when I’m mad.” Very popular series, although I never watched it. Guess I wasn’t a kid anymore.
From about the same time period, we have Sally (“You like me! You really like me!) Field as Gidget and The Flying Nun. The Flying Nun must have the most ridiculous premise of any sitcom ever.
I would love to give a Garner to Bob Denver for Gilligan, of Island fame, and that lovable beatnik Maynard G. Krebs of Dobie Gillis. (Formal title: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I guess he was a slut). But, alas, Dwayne Hickman, the eponymous Dobie, was the star. Much like Ron Howard was the star of Happy Days, and not Fonzie.
Top Banana Phil Silvers had Seargent Bilko and later The New Phil Silvers Show, but the latter bombed. No Garner for you, Phil!
Raymond Burr was both Perry Mason and Ironside. I never saw either show, but I guess they were both hits. Perry, please accept this Garner award. Likewise, Andy Griffith for your eponymous show and Matlock. (“Oh, grandpa. Matlock’s not real.”)
Six-foot-five-inch tall Fred Gwynne is a legitimate Garner Award winner for Car 54 Where Are You? and The Munsters. The latter show was CBS’s response to ABC’s The Addams Family. Of the two programs, The Munsters received higher ratings. It was more kid-friendly. So where are The Munsters movies?
Bob Newhart had two hit sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show where he played a psychologist married to Suzanne Pleshette, and Newhart, where he was an innkeeper in Vermont, with neighbors Darryl, his brother Larry, and his other brother Larry. He also starred in two lesser-known (I don’t remember them) sitcoms, Bob (a cartoonist), and George and Leo (bookstore owner). That’s a lot of series, but the first-mentioned two earn him the Garner.
Fun fact, the Newhart show gets the prize for Most Original Ending Episode, where Bob wakes up beside Suzanne Pleshette, his wife from the previous show. Was the entire Bob show just a dream? As an homage, the ninth season of prime time soap opera Dallas was, at the end, revealed to be just a dream of Pamela Ewing.
BTW, is Dallas’s J.R. Ewing, actor Larry Hagman, eligible for a Garner, having previously starred in I Dream of Jeanie? Well, no, I Dream of Jeanie was Jeanie the genie, Barbara Eden’s show. Eden starred in the film “Harper Valley PTA” based on the Tom T. Hall-written song of the same name (sung by Jeanie C. Riley). The film was successful enough that it got Eden a TV series of the same name, but it ran only two seasons — hardly Garner-worthy.
Comic and professional provocateur Ricky Gervais is a talented writer and actor as well. He wrote and starred in three BBC comedy series, The Office, Extras, and Life’s Too Short; and also After Life for Netflix. The BBC series were critically acclaimed, but not so much After Life. However, After Life did get three seasons on Netflix, which is doing pretty good these days. Now generally we’re doing only American television series for Garner awards, but we’ll bend the rules for The Office because it was remade as a very successful American TV series, though starring Steve Carrell instead of Gervais. Here is your Garner, Ricky. [Ricky replies something snide.]
Pretty boy Michael Landon had Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. Bonanza was so popular and long-running (14 seasons, and in those days, a season meant 30 episodes!) it is tempting to give Garner-credit for it. But, unfortunately for Landon, Lorne Greene starred as the father of the Cartwright family, and Landon was just one of his many sons. (Little House was no slouch, either. It went 202 episodes over ten seasons 1974–1983, followed by three TV movies in 1984.)
Wait a minute, hold the presses! Landon also went five seasons with Highway to Heaven in the eighties. I believe he played an angel. It was a quite popular series, though again one I never saw. Landon, who is now literally an angel (died July 1991) — or with the angels, at least — joins the Garner roll!
While he doesn’t spring to mind immediately, our generation’s everyman actor Jason Bateman gets a Garner Award. He starred in the highly critically acclaimed, ground-breaking comedy series Arrested Development. I think it was one of the first — possibly THE first — network sitcom without a laugh track, and its off-key humor could be challenging. While not overwhelmingly popular, it did get three seasons on Fox and two seasons on Netflix. Bateman’s recent Netflix drama Ozark was also a hit with the critics and the audience. Garner Award earned.
But Bateman also starred in five other, less successful shows: Some of my Best Friends (8 episodes, 2001), Chicago Sons (1997 — I remember this one), Simon (21 episodes, 1995), Black Sheep (1994), and It’s Your Move (1984 — Bateman was just a kid, but he was the star). Hey, Bateman is a contender for most series ever; move over, Lucy!
Bateman also showed up in 21 episodes of Little House on the Prairie! Of course, he was not the star of Little House.
If Jason Bateman is our generation’s Everyman, then Judd Hirsch is our Every Jew. He caught a rocket to the moon with the immensely popular sitcom Taxi, where he was the straight man to an incredibly talented stable of funnymen — Danny DeVito, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, and Andy Kaufman — and funny women — Carol Kane and Marilu Henner. Hirsch subsequently starred in two series, sitcom Dear John (a remake of a BBC series) and crime drama Numb3rs. But Dear John wasn’t a big hit and Rob Morrow had the lead in Numb3rs, so no Garner for Hirsch. But don’t feel bad for Hirsch, he has had a very busy career in movies, as well as supporting or guest roles in television.
Ed Begley, Jr. was on Thirty-Something and St. Elsewhere, both quite highly rated series. But they were both ensemble shows. Can Ed fairly be called “the” star of them? (I saw nary an episode of either one. I do see Begley turning up as a guest star in seemingly almost every series I watch. He may have a record there.)
Oh wait, Chattie informs me that Begley wasn’t in Thirty-Something. Why did I think he was? Mandela Effect?
Can we squeeze in the beautiful Cybill Shepherd? She took a rocket to the moon with Moonlighting, starring opposite a handsome, charismatic, young, unknown actor, Bruce Willis. Shepherd was already an established movie star when she took on the TV role, but Willis soon outshined her in the movies. BTW, for a movie star to do a TV series was a pretty bold move in 1985, as TV was considered lower class. But the unlikely team of Shepherd and Willis had a huge hit on their hands.
Cybill must have enjoyed being a TV star because she later starred in another sitcom named — wait for it — Cybill! (Exclamation point is not part of the title.) Teamed with the always-reliable and often hysterical Christine Baranski, I loved it and considered it to be America’s answer to the BBC hit Absolutely Fabulous (AbFab, to us fans), without so much liquor. How popular was Cybill the show? I found this nugget on IMDB:
During a 2018 interview on SiriusXM’s The Michelle Collins Show, Cybill Shepherd said that this show was abruptly cancelled, despite its popularity, because she refused to have sex with CBS executive Les Moonves.
So Cybill gets her Garner Award, and fuck Les Moonves. (I mean, do NOT fuck Les Moonves … oh, you know what I mean.)
Rob Lowe is asking where his Garner is. Sorry Rob. It is true that, originally, your character on The West Wing was supposed to be the lead. But it didn’t really work out that way, did it? And I enjoyed the first season of your (and your son’s) new Netflix comedy, Unstable, but it’s too soon to tell if it will be a significant series. What’s that, you say, Rob? What about 9–1–1 Lone Star? The Grinder? Wild Bill? The Lyon’s Den? Never heard of them. What do you say, people, does Rob deserve the Garner? Does he beat out Lucille Ball for starring in the highest number of sitcoms? To be fair, if T. J. Hooker gets Shatner onto the list, at least two of Rob’s shows must count. Rob, honey, you’re in!
And so we have, in alphabetical order, the sixteen actors to whom I award a Garner for starring in two popular and completely different TV series:
- Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy, subsequent forgettable Lucies)
- Jason Bateman (Ozark, Arrested Development)
- Bill Bixby (My Favorite Martian, The Incredible Hulk)
- Raymond Burr (Perry Mason, Ironside) *
- Sally Field (Gidget, The Flying Nun)
- Callista Flockhart (Ally McBeal, Brothers & Sisters) *
- James Garner (Maverick, The Rockford Files) *
- Ricky Gervais (The Office, After Life)
- Any Griffith (The Andy Griffith Show, Matlock)
- Fred Gwynne (Car 54 Where Are You?, The Munsters)
- Michael Landon (Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven) *
- Rob Lowe (A bunch of shows you’ve never heard of)
- William Shatner (Star Trek, T.J. Hooker) *
- Cybill Shepherd (Moonlighting, Cybill)
- James Spader (Boston Legal, The Blacklist) *
- Dick Van Dyke (The Dick Van Dyke Show, Diagnosis: Murder)
* If we eliminate sitcoms from eligibility, only six names qualify: Burr, Flockhart, Garner, Landon, Shatner, and Spader. (I’m classing Ally McBeal as an hour-long dramedy, not a sitcom.)
If you want to limit the list more strictly to only those actors with two truly wildly popular and critically acclaimed shows, James Garner is the only one who takes home the prize. Burr and Landon are close , but I’m not sure about the second series of each — Ironside and Highway to Heaven. Other runners-ups might be Bill Bixby and Fred Gwynne, but I’m not sure exactly how critically acclaimed their first shows were back in television’s Golden Age. As to popularity , well, remember that audiences for a particular program were much larger back in the days when there were just three networks and you had to watch the shows at the time the networks scheduled them.
Let’s also review who starred in the most TV series ever. Our candidates are:
- Lucille Ball, 4 shows
- Jason Bateman, 7 shows
- Rob Lowe, 5 shows
Jason Bateman wins walking away, starring in an astounding seven shows. Amazing that the networks had so much faith in him despite his real successes coming later in his career. We all thought Jason’s sister, Justine, was going to be the star of the family, having rocketed to fame with Family Ties opposite Michael J. Fox. And she has done pretty well in her career. But Jason topped her by a bunch. Slow and steady wins the race!
But Lucy does win “Most shows playing different characters who all share the actor’s first name!”
There must be additional obvious Garner Award eligible actors, but that’s more than enough from me. Who can you think of? And, dear readers, please rely on your memories and not ChatGPT. Chattie helped a lot with my research, but I never asked her outright to find candidates. That would take the fun out of the game.
Photo credits: All images in this article are from Wikimedia Commons. Note that a photo being in black-and-white does not necessarily mean the show was in black-and-white. For example, Captain Kirk’s photo is B&W but Star Trek was broadcast in color. I think a lot of photos in Wikimedia Commons are B&W because they are more likely to be in the public domain.
