Five years before "Airplane" changed the nature of comedy in the movies, "When Things were Rotten" presented the same anarchic, rapid-fire ambiance on the small screen.
From the then-fertile mind of Mel Brooks, this Robin Hood spoof came at a time when television comedy was 1) presented before a live audience, which meant that it was stagy, limited, and had tired laughs from an audience that had already seen several takes of the same lines and possibly an argument about them; and 2) was geared more to advocacy serio-comedy in realistic situations.
The creative 60s, which had comedy shows with genii, witches, and monsters, with settings on desert islands, western forts, and even World War II POW camps, had given way to mundane settings with scripts, from the mid to late 70s, that were nothing more than insults piled upon each other.
Enter Brooks, co-creator of a successful "Get Smart." It sounded like a good idea: take the Robin Hood legend, the tropes of which everyone knows, give it a good cast, a few plots to act as skeleton on which to place jokes, and pile the jokes on. If you do enough jokes in a short enough space of time some of which are bound to get laughs. Oh, and the sillier, the better. And anachronisms are more joke fodder.
Somehow, it misfired. The cast seemed pretty good on paper. Dick Gautier as Robin, Bernie Kopell as Alan-a-dale, Dick van Patten as Friar Tuck, and Misty Rowe -- best known from her skimpy costumes on "Hee Haw" -- as Maid Marion. Rowe is letter-perfect and Gautier was a good choice. But the usually reliable van Patten and Kopell don't seem to have their typical way with lines.
For the other actors, Henry Polic II is a good sheriff. Young Ron Rifkin is not good as King John (was this before Brooks met Ron Carey?) In a dual role, as a supporter of the Sheriff and a twin brother in Robin's band, Richard Dimitri is every bit as annoying as Stephen Stucker later became in "Airplane!" only without once being funny in either role (unlike Stucker, who was funny once). David Sabin is Little John in a role that cries out for a Paul L. Smith.
The generally dreary proceedings are brightened by the occasional guest shot. A few years before becoming a star in "10" Dudley Moore was particularly amusing in his episode. And he knew how to deliver a line without mugging.
Unfortunately, some jokes that might have been amusing in 1975 simply don't translate well in a new century. In one episode Rowe thinks she has a vial of poison but every time she opens it, it says, "Perfume!" This is a take-off from an old Parkay commercial where someone opens its lid and the Parkay tub says "Butter!" So much for topical humor.
Of course, there are a few great areas, like Rowe's cleavage, if you enjoy that sort of thing. And Gautier's gung-ho Robin. But the disappointments, such as Kopell's strangely lackluster showing, outnumber the successes. And that's too bad. "When Things were Rotten" was just the show television needed in the dead zone of 1975's comedy landscape. Perhaps that's why supposedly "serious" shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "The Rockford Files" more successfully filled the comedy void, even if they weren't laugh-a-minute.
