Lookwell

TV Movie
1991
30m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Deborah Richter and Ami Rothschild in Lookwell (1991)

The former star of a cancelled cop TV show solves crimes. Pilot episode for a TV series that was never picked up.The former star of a cancelled cop TV show solves crimes. Pilot episode for a TV series that was never picked up.The former star of a cancelled cop TV show solves crimes. Pilot episode for a TV series that was never picked up.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

8.2/10

582

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos6

Storyline

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Trivia
Upon later cult success, the pilot was, as co-creator and co-writer Robert Smigel later stated in a retrospective interview concerning the series, the subject of a film offer from an unnamed studio. The offer was of no interest to Smigel, however, as the studio wished to recast the lead character of Lookwell with that of a bigger star, namely Nicolas Cage. The offer in the end, of course, fell through, because, according to the writer, without Adam West it simply 'wouldn't work'.

Quotes
Ty Lookwell: Did you do that shopping I asked you to do?
Hyacinthe: I tried, but the store said they don't make that hairspray anymore.
Ty Lookwell: Those fools.

Alternate versions
When this pilot was re-aired in 2003 on the Trio network, a few cuts were made to fit in the 22 minute time slot. The biggest difference was the deletion of the epilogue in which Lookwell announces to his class that Jason and Miss Royster were sent to jail for stealing the car. Then, he introduces his two new students who are the Samoan prisoners that Lookwell met earlier in jail. Finally, he shows the class another scene from "Bannigan".

Connections
Featured in The Greatest Show You Never Saw (1996)

User reviews19

Featured review

10/10

The Thinking Man's "Police Squad"

"Lookwell" is the thinking man's "Police Squad," a fiercely funny sendup of the TV detective genre. It's a national tragedy that NBC execs pulled the plug. Adam West's deadpan delivery is so slyly self parodying that at times you wonder if he was in on the joke.

O'Brien and Smigel manage to drop in references to nearly every Quinn Martin 70s police drama while at the same time weaving a bitterly hilarious ode to the chew-em-up, spit-em-out world of Hollywood TV actors who go from being essential pop-culture icons to unemployable has-beens in what seems like weeks.

Often overlooked in glowing tributes to "Lookwell" is the work of longtime television director E. W. Swackhamer, a veteran of the very shows "Lookwell" parodies, who imbues every frame with the dead-serious crime-fighting authenticity of "Tenspeed and Brownshoe" and "S.W.A.T." One imagines the mighty O'Brien could feasibly get "Lookwell" back in production, and he should do so at once. An essential piece of television.