One Hot Brady Mess!

As anyone who’s ever turned on a TV knows, there’s lots of bad television out there. There’s even a lot of really bad television. 

Very rarely has been there anything on television as bad as The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, a show that ran for a mere nine episodes in 1976-1977.

Consider:

• The show was a typical 1970s song and dance variety show, but except for Brady mother Florence Henderson, none of the cast had any real experience, and in most cases, any real talent, for song and dance. Several cast members could barely carry a tune.

• One of the original Brady Bunch cast members, Eve Plumb, who played Jan, refused to participate, meaning the part had to be recast with an unfamiliar actress, later dubbed “Fake Jan.”

• Since the show was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft (of H.R. Pufnstuf children’s television fame), the sets and costumes were as garish and as outlandish as possible. The equally outrageous Rip Taylor co-starred.

• The centerpiece of the show’s set was an enormous swimming pool – a take-off of the ice-skating rink on Donny & Marie – where dancers also performed water ballet.

• The show pretended that the stars of the show were not the actual actors who played the roles on The Brady Bunch, but the actual characters themselves. In other words, Mike and Carol and their kids moved to Los Angeles and were given their own variety show!

In short, the surreal badness of a The Brady Bunch Variety Hour is an amazing thing to behold! Indeed, in 2002, TV Guide named the show the 4th Worst Show of All-Time.

For years, many of the cast members were understandably embarrassed by the show. But after Nick-at-Night and TV Land aired portions of the series in the early 1990s (and after it was hilariously parodied in 1997 on The Simpsons as the The Simpsons Family Smile-Time Variety Hour), the thing began to develop a “so-bad-it’s-good” cult following.

In 2000, pop culture historian Ted Nichelson started a website, The Complete Guide to the Brady Bunch Hour.

Now he’s teamed up with Susan Olsen, the actress who played Cindy on both The Brady Bunch and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, and co-author Lisa Sutton, to produce Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, an incredibly detailed account of exactly how this TV debacle came to be.

Recently, we talked with Olsen and Nichelson about their book (the interviews were conducted separately):