‘Brady Bunch Variety Hour’ Was Voted 4th Worst Show in TV History … And Star Susan Olsen Is Proud (Exclusive)
“It was TV Guide Magazine that proclaimed The Brady Bunch Variety Hour the fourth worst show in television history,” says Susan Olsen, who played Cindy Brady on the beloved The Brady Bunch and its variety show spin-off. Not many people are proud to be part of anything that’s been ranked the worst, but for Olsen, it’s a badge of honor: “Something I’m very proud of. It was great because it put it on the map. It’s like, well now it’s so bad. It’s worth mentioning that inspired an entire book that I was involved in, which exalted the whole mess.”
But did you think it was bad when you were filming it?
“Oh God, yes,” Olsen laughs. “I was in high school at the time, and we’d have these breaks in filming. I’d go back to regular public school, and I’d tell my friends, I’d make them promise that they weren’t going to watch the show because I thought it was so embarrassing. Of course, they lied and they all gathered together to watch it and laugh.”
The campy The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which ran from 1976-77 for a whooping nine episodes, was the brainchild of Sid and Marty Krofft, who were already well established in the bizarro TV world with their trippy (but beloved) shows like H.R. Pufnstuff (1969), Sigmond and the Seamonsters (1973) and Land of the Lost (1974). The Krofft brothers, however, were also behind the successful Donny & Marie variety show (1976), which featured four of the Brady cast members as guest stars, and the ratings were great. So why not try to work the same magic with the Bradys?
Everett Collection
The premise of the Variety Hour focused on a show within the show, following the Bradys as they worked on and starred in a new TV variety program. As Krofft explained in a 1976 interview with the Hollywood Reporter: “The unique thing here is that they never come out of character. They won’t be Florence and Robert. They’ll be Carol and Mike Brady, plus six. The Bradys have moved to a new house and they are putting on a variety show. The father, of course, is the architect. He goes along with the idea but is not overjoyed.”
Everett Collection
When ABC’s The Brady Bunch Variety Hour special hit the airwaves Thanksgiving weekend on Nov. 28, 1976, no one saw this one coming — it was horrible. But the ratings weren’t: The show was watched by an estimated 15.8 million people and ABC raced to produce another eight episodes, which began airing in January 1977 but not consistently.
The variety series received pushback for replacing Jan Brady (Eve Plumb, who took a pass on this one) with Geri Reischl; however, that wasn’t the problem. Rather, the cast wasn’t used to the rigor of a variety show, nor were they trained singers and dancers (aside from Florence Henderson). ABC knew they were in trouble and instead of airing the series weekly, they spread it out over several months, with one episode even pitted against The Oscars. Henderson eventually got tired of the rest of her TV family’s shortcomings and became snappy at the kids and Reed. At one point, the tension escalated and Reed snapped back and threatened to never come back. The show was canceled in April 1977, and few tears were shed about it.
“I thought the Variety Hour was stupid. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Singing and dancing for me is like a foreign language. The biggest question was how did they get this away from Sherwood Schwartz?” shared Christopher Knight.
The July 20, 2002, issue of TV Guide Magazine wrote of the short-lived series: “The TV family that wouldn’t go away starred in two sitcoms, a quasi-drama, a cartoon, a TV-movie and this, the most dumbfounding of all: a variety show featuring the original cast (with the exception of Eve Plumb, always the smart one) in character. Seems architect dad Mike had reluctantly given up blueprints to join his family in a musical endeavor — which explained actor Robert Reed’s profound lack of song-and-dance talent. So what was the kids’ excuse? We’ll never know.”
Actually, we could eventually know, as Olsen joined authors Ted Nichelson and Lisa Sutton to pen a book all about it — Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. They lament on the topic and the talent that graced the show — Tina Turner, Farrah Fawcett, Lee Majors, Redd Foxx, Tony Randall, Charo and more.
“It’s a proud thing now,” Olsen concludes. “At the time that we wrote it, we all got together and watched all the episodes and I’m like, this is so bad. It’s not even good. It’s just so bad. It’s bad. And then now it’s so bad. But it involves such iconic people and it’s just so hilariously bad that I’m very proud of it.”
You can purchase a DVD of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour on Amazon or watch on the Sid and Marty Krofft Pictures YouTube channel.
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