Run Buddy Run

I remember a show from childhood in which the protagonist takes a huge pill and gets 20 or 30 seconds of super power, just enough to beat the bad guys. Was this show Run Buddy Run? (I can't imagine why I remember a show that only ran 16 episodes when I was 5.)

When this excellent production was cancelled after a brief run, I was disappointed and angry. And yet another example of a bad-executive-decision. Jack Sheldon told this joke on a Bob Hope gig I was on: 'I wish Glenn Miller would have lived and his music would have died !' The whole band cracked up. Jack was funny, and so was this show, and it should have continued.

I have a DVD of four episodes of this series and it's quite entertaining. Bernie Kopell plays Buddy Overstreet's brother Albert. He appeared in Get Smart as well playing the head of KAOS. Leonard Stern also produced Get Smart. More similarities: David Ketchum, who appeared in Get Smart, also appeared in Run, Buddy Run. The very first episode was executive-produced by David Susskind but other episodes I have did not list him. The pill-taking Superhero was either Captain Nice or Mr. Terrific. These shows also include the network id (CBS) but did not include the original commercials. My copies were done from 16mm film. According to some information I have, Jack Sheldon is a musician and got his start in show-business as a musician and his son also is a musician now. When watching this, it reminded me of the naiveté of Will Ferrell's character in "Elf" and Jack Sheldon looked a little like Will Ferrell in that movie. Buddy Overstreet appears to be a simpleton.

Buddy Overstreet witnesses or hears (can't remember which) some mob goings on and the syndicate boys begin chasing him to silence him. Each episode was about Buddy's on going attempts to elude the mob. It was a comedy and the show was short lived but had it's moments of hilarity. Where is it today? Who knows. It would be fun to see the few episodes again. Bruce Gordon who portrayed Frank Nitti on the Untouchables was cast once again as a mobster.

My memory of this show was that it was a vignette within another; i.e. it was a very short format that was used something like an intermission within another show.

But I do remember some of the words to the theme tune --went something like "Run Buddy Run" (what a whiz I am ;)and the Turkish bath scene does ring a bell--thanks for the memory-jog.

I must have got this idea from another show--does anyone remember what that might be? and keeping in mind I was only 6 at the time and watching in London, England it may well have been sandwiched between two episodes of the same show--which may well have been Get Smart.