The Nutt House

As a young kid in Australia I remember in late 1989 a local TV station advertising this as an upcoming show for 1990 and it looked really promising. Lots of funny wild and wacky gags helmed by none other than Mel Brooks! How could it miss?

Alas, the show was already probably axed by the time that ad aired and I'm not sure it even got broadcast here. I certainly never got around to seeing any of it.

Being a fan of Brooks' work, I've always been curious about how good (or bad) this show actually was. Thanks to YouTube, several episodes of its short run became available and I watched the pilot.

Overall, it was a bit better than expected. Like a lot of Brooks' later work, there was a lot of corny and hacky gags that look especially tired in the present-day setting of the show. And the laugh track (which co-creators Brooks & Spencer apparently didn't want) is an irritant.

But there were a decent amount of clever and genuinely amusing moments. Even when the gags didn't work, I admired the amount and range of gags on display; if nothing else you can't say they were going through the motions making this.

As well we get to see Brooks regular Cloris Leachman display her talent and versatility in dual roles.

While not an overlooked gem, 'The Nutt House' pilot had enough entertainment in it to think it could've worked as a series.

Hey Everyone, I found it from a video warehouse in Pennsylvania. http://www.sell.com/241NPN Has all the episodes that didn't air in the US. Hopefully it'll be in good shape when it comes in. Me and my little sister used to rematch the same 6 episodes over and over again on VHS recordings when we were kids, hopefully the quality will be okay. Okay so the minimum is 10 lines of text.... well okay so like i said I sure hope the quality is good, not just good, but really really really great. I mean super duper. its been over 20 plus years since I've seen one of these episodes, so I don't even know if it'll be as funny as I thought it was when I was a kid. I remember laughing my butt off at old Police Files shows, so hopefully it'll be as funny as those were. these are the types of shows I wish that Hulu would pick up. It would be good I think to show the kids that not all 80's programming was grossly overly formulaic.

First off one of the reviewers suggest that the Nutt House was on ABC it wasn't it was on NBC after Night Court.I would also like to add had it been a sitcom with 3 cameras the jokes/premise of the plots would have worked better.IMy father Harvey Korman who was a exceptional comedian/actor on Burnett worked better with the immediacy of having the audience react naturally.When you do a 1 camera sitcom like say Sledge Hammer another Alan Spencer production the actors are forced to have to take a beat venture a guess how long a laugh would normally take had there been a audience there. Site gags and physical comedy only works when there is a immediate response from the audience.The only thing I can say about my fathers deft comedic talents and Cloris's was they range every laugh they could out of those scripts because they had a inate ability to know how long to wait for a laugh to desolve in their heads because speaking.Again this show would have been more successfull had it been done infront of a studio audience.

This hilarious comedy series, which lasted only 6 episodes, is great fun. Mel Brooks' best work since HIGH ANXIETY back in 1977. Slapstick, puns and sight-gags galore, this makes the best use of its good cast (Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Mark Blankfield, Brian MacNamara) and has great art direction (its lavish Nutt hotel). This is really hard to find, but is worth it for comedy and Mel Brooks fans.

I think this ran for 6 or 7 episodes, and I laughed through all of them. As good as Cloris Leachman is as the head of housekeeping she is even better as old Mrs. Nutt. The character is kind of similar to Tim Conway's old man routine from Carol Burnett, but that routine never made me laugh, the Cloris version cracked me up. I vaguely remember her jumping her support hose. Whenever I see Gregory Itzen as President Logan on 24 I remember him as the Dennis the player bell hop, and smile. Harvey Korman is good as well. I'd love to see the 3 or 4 episodes that did not air in the U.S. (the U.K. aired all of them), and I wish this was available on DVD.