Fridays is an American late-night live comedy show that aired on ABC 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 season. Like SNL, Fridays featured popular musical guests and, beginning in the second season, celebrity guest hosts, some of whom had appeared on SNL before and after Fridays aired, such as Andy Kaufman, Billy Crystal, William Shatner, Mark Hamill, and George Carlin. (Carlin, who had hosted the very first SNL in 1975, was also Fridays first official "guest host" in 1981.)

The show featured many recurring characters and sketches, short films, and a parody news segment called Friday Edition, with Melanie Chartoff as the anchor (later joined by Rich Hall in seasons two and three). 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 (original airdate: April 25, 1980) was the last episode to air on some affiliates due to objectionable content concerning zombie gore and cannibalism ("Diner of the Living Dead"), disgusting habits ("Women Who Spit"), and blasphemous humor ("The Inflatable Nun").

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:

  • A Bing Crosby-Bob Hope buddy comedy parody about the United States' dealings with El Salvador ("Road to El Salvador");
  • A Close Encounters of the Third Kind parody about refugees from an impoverished Central American country mistaking a Playboy magazine location scout and an American military invasion for extraterrestrials coming to save them ("Close Encounters of the Third World");
  • A Marx Brothers parody of Iran's revolution ("A Night in Tehran");
  • Palestinian radio DJs (played by Bruce Mahler and episode guest star George Carlin) broadcasting a morning show from a PLO bunker ("K.P.L.O");
  • A live-action Robert Altman Popeye movie parody with Popeye (Mark Blankfield) and a band of first-wave hippies fighting back against a fascist regime led by Bluto ("Popeye's Got a Brand New Bag");
  • The US Founding Fathers worrying that the Second Amendment ("The Right to Bear Arms") will be abused in the future while ignoring suggestions for amendments granting equal rights to women and African-Americans;
  • A variety show run by the Moral Majority featuring a magician who makes minorities disappear, a top ten list of things the Moral Majority hate, and a punk band performing bowdlerized hits for conservatives ("The Moral Majority Comedy Hour");
  • A parody of Altered States where Ronald Reagan (John Roarke) uses sensory deprivation and psychedelic mushrooms to find a way to bring America back to its glory days, but ends up transforming himself into Richard Nixon ("Altered Statesman");
  • A spaghetti western centered on the creationism vs. evolution argument featuring Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci ("A Fist Full of Darwin"), and,
  • In what is considered the show's magnum opus, a 17-minute parody of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Ronald Reagan (John Roarke) as Tim Curry's Dr. Frank N. Furter creating the perfect Republican, who turns out to be a militant black man who leads Reagan's followers in a revolution. This incident was reenacted in the film Man on the Moon (1999), starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman, 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. This lasted from January through April 1982, after which the show was dropped from ABC's schedule.

One final attempt was made by ABC to revive the show by putting it on in prime time, about a month after its final late-night broadcast. The sole prime-time episode of Fridays (broadcast on April 23, 1982) 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 (similar to how Saturday Night Live is edited on cable reruns and NBC reruns that air at 10pm EST as filler). The reruns were pulled after a year.

<blockquote>"A DVD release, said producer John Moffitt, was delayed because Richards' original contract gave him video approval rights and because David for years asked that the show not be made available because he was uncomfortable with the quality of his work."</blockquote>

<blockquote>"According to Perrin, for many years a DVD edition of Fridays was blocked by Larry David, but finally a 4-disc set was released in 2013."</blockquote>

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 (mostly sketches that featured Richards or David) 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 (not complete episodes). In 2015, Hulu Plus streamed select episodes from all three seasons (season one has episodes 1, 3, 8, and 10; season 2 has episodes 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 19, and 20; and season three has episodes 2, 4, 12, and 13). 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 (which include the Hulu episodes and some episodes that weren't featured on Hulu) can be streamed on Tubi TV and Shout! Factory.

As of April 2025, Season 1 of Fridays is available to stream, with ads, on Amazon Prime Video, while Freevee has four episodes (episodes one, two, three, and ten from season one) available.

Legacy

Larry Charles, Larry David, Michael Richards, and Bruce Mahler later worked on Seinfeld.

References

  • https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/fridays
  • https://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/fridays/cast/1000180477/
  • https://www.emmys.com/shows/fridays
  • https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/fridays
  • https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Fridays
  • https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/search/searchterm/Fridays%20(Television%20program)<!-- https://calisphere.org/item/6d7a92c6c32f69e8f2c1d0c176108881/ -->
  • Fridays : TV Party!
  • Andy Kaufman Hosts Fridays - Andy Kaufman fansite