TIL There Was A "Blazing Saddles" Sitcom Except There Wasn't.

 To quote from this excellent little video:

"Mel (Brooks) and his crew always knew that the film would be a hit, so much so that they even suspected that Warner Brothers would seek to make a sequel with or without their involvement, so Mel got together with his lawyers and developed a contract clause that stated that Warner Brothers could not produce any sequels to Blazing Saddles unless they first made a TV adaptation within six months of the film's release... In 1977 Warner Brothers approached Mel Brooks and informed him of their intention to make not just a Blazing Saddles sequel but a whole series of Blazing Saddles films. Mel then informed them of the contract clause that prevented them from doing so. And that's when they dropped some surprising news on Mel: Warner Brothers had secretly been filming a Blazing Saddles sitcom for the past four years. Mel was taken into a projection room and shown three full episodes, later remarking 'My lawyers had never thought to put in language that said they had to air the damn thing, only that they had to make it'."

 Imagine that.

    And Warner Brothers didn't just Ring Worm it by, say, sticking a sheriff's hat on Louis Gossett Junior have him busk in front of a camera Andy-Warhol-style for eight hours – maybe they didn't have the imagination to realise they could – no, they wrote scripts, made costumes, put cameras on cranes, filmed wheels falling off wagons, added a polite laughter track, all the while knowing none of it would ever be seen. All those decisions. Let's give the Madeline Kahn character an eyepatch. Let's give the Gene Wilder character a confederate hat. None of it mattered. That's some serious Red-Headed League stuff. That's pretty Paul Auster.

 

UPDATE: Well, that video seems to have been removed, but someone's put up an actual episode, so here. Let me know how it goes: