A Year At the Top

Norman Lear was the TV hit king of the seventies and Don Kirshner had done quite well, also, with The Archies and then his TV Rock Concert series. Thus it was with great anticipation that the public awaited their announced collaboration, A YEAR AT THE TOP, due in early 1977. Only it was delayed almost a year and when it did air, it aired only 5 episodes.

The show starred Greg Evigan, later of BJ & THE BEAR and MY TWO DADS along with Paul Shaffer fresh off SNL and with three and a half decades of DAVID LETTERMAN still in his future.

Between january and August of 1977, there was a major cast shakeup, replacing Mickey Rooney with Gabe Dell. It didn't help.

In spite of the hype and the fact that the show's stars even put out an LP, nothing really helped.

The premise was basically that these two struggling nice guy musicians made a deal with the devil for one year of success, "a year at the top." To someone this apparently seemed an acceptable premise but even taken as black comedy it was just not workable. Add to that the fact that Paul, a brilliant musician and a funny man, simply couldn't act, and the show quickly died and was swept under the rug of TV history.