Maximum Bob

I loved this show. I knew with every bone in my body that it would be cancelled before the end of its first season, but I loved it. Elmore Leonard is a closet vice of mine (as a grad student, we are not encouraged to read these types of things, but hey Leonard writes about my people ;).

As white trash from both rural and urban roots I can honestly say the Leonard has a certain understanding of that element of the population and really knows how to tell an interesting story (even if he is not a particularly great writer, he grammar is really atrocious... ;).

Anyway, I saw Maximum Bob before reading the book and find that the show really filled out the much of what was interesting about the story. I thought that it was funny, intelligent, witty and charming. Though not as good as Twin Peaks, it occupies a similar place in my heart. Hopefully, someday the re-runs of this show will turn up somewhere, or I will meet someone who taped them all, but until then it will live on in my dreams...

Good television is soooo hard to find.

Sadly only a six-episode series which to date has only had one run on British TV, but which gave Beau Bridges perhaps his best (and certainly the funniest) screen role ever as the southern judge who was more than a bit odd... there was a mermaid in there somewhere, and a creepy collection of people with identical glasses, and a dancing sheriff (Sam Robards, again little seen on TV and served well with his role in this).

I'm laughing while I'm typing this just thinking about this. There was just something so addictive about the series and I'd love to see it again. I was kicking myself at the time for not taping the episodes when they aired - if this series gets shown near you, give it a go. Small, mad and hugely enjoyable.

It appears this TV series has been taken off the air as I have seen neither an episode nor a promotional spot for the series in the past several weeks. Hopefully it is because they are busy filming several more episodes and intend to bring it back in a big way.

It's one of the first series since Northern Exposure that has some intellectual qualities to it and is not just a bunch of buffoons reading dog tired lines that should have been put out to pasture long ago along with their writers. It seems all and any of the television being offered to us is exactly the same and only the faces and the locations have been changed to protect the writers and the producers and maybe even the Networks.

People say that education is lagging in this country. Well I agree; and if we are now clearly the Television Generation then the programs we offer should have some content that at least makes a person think a little bit and/or generates some sort of mental stimulation.

Maximum Bob definitely does that; let's get it back on the air.

I saw this show on its only run on English TV a year before i moved to the swampy part of the USA and loved it. It was reminiscent of Twin Peaks in its quirkiness. Mr Bridges was excellent in the role of the southern judge and the portrayal of the "bubbas" was spot on, and yes those people do exist down here.

Its been 8 years since i saw this show and still i am looking for a DVD of the season or anything about it. I swear I thought i was the only one who liked or even saw this show. I often cite this as one of the high points in American broadcasting, but i am just met with blank stares and bemusement. I guess it was on against some other mega show when it was on ABC(?, but who knows they might show it again when they cancel a show mid-season and need six weeks of programming.

i was glad to find other bob heads out here who still remember this show and mourn its passing.

all in all one of the best shows i have ever seen despite being made by one of the major networks

This wonderful series veered slightly from the book, but mostly in ways necessary to make an ongoing TV show. The tone, the characterization, the feel were all right on target.

The casting was superb. Although Elmore Leonard pictured Harry Dean Stanton to play the judge, Beau Bridges brought so much verve and energy to the part it became difficult to imagine anybody else in the role. Liz Vassey was excellent, and the supporting cast and guest stars pulled the whole thing together.

Production values were very high, and writing and direction top-notch. Ordinary and eccentric people, getting on with the day to day business of living -- or not -- in some backwater of Florida isn't something we see every day on TV, and credit is due the producers for going out of their way to get this series on the air.

There was a higher ratio of comedy to drama than is usual in a one hour show, and this may have scared the network. Is ABC so crammed with exciting, original, well-written, well-produced programming that it could afford to let this one get away?

Only a few episodes were aired, and, alas, no other network picked it up; one might imagine that Showtime or HBO, with their commitment to original programming might have been interested.

It's interesting to note how well Barry Sonnenfeld captured the spirit of Elmore Leonard's book in this series, and how poorly he captured the spirit of "The Wild Wild West" TV series in his ghastly, unbelievably bad film version.