Does anybody remember the short-lived Nearly Departed with Monty Python(and my man)Eric Idle as he starred as a snobbish British professor when he and his wife are killed in a car wreck as rocks came down on their heads and they have to watch another family move into their lovely Victorian house and when their grandfather moves in, they realize that the grandfather is the only one that can hear & see them and all three form a very reluctant but "friendly" alliance? Too bad it didn't last more than four shows. It could had gone on if dumb NBC hadn't given it a chance.

I remember that show. The premise was based on a hit-and HILARIOUS!-theatrical movie called "Beetlejuice".

The show was OK not bad, but not good, either.

It just happened to come out shortly after the movie.

Idle, himself, has stated that there were 6 shows recorded but only 4 aired. In one of the unaired shows he played his own aunt! Maybe these will be ported to dvd-- Hell, if the Rutles 2 can get a dvd release, why not this show?

I remember watching this! It's one of those distant memories that you wonder if you made up. lol Didn't it also star some blonde girl who was in another short lived show...she was a nanny, but also a witch or a genie or something. The little boy wished her.

Christopher Rich of "Reba" fame was in this, during the same season as "The Charmings". If this had got renewed along with "The Charmings", gee, I wonder which series Christopher would have stuck with?

Christopher Rich of "Reba" fame was in this, during the same season as "The Charmings". If this had got renewed along with "The Charmings", gee, I wonder which series Christopher would have stuck with?
I think he was in the other one I was trying to think of, the one with the witch nanny. I'm sure the same girl was in both.

His imdb entry has nothing but The Charmings listed for that time period. Ugh! I saw a preview of it on Youtube, and it wasn't The Charmings.

I think you are maybe thinking of "Free Spirit"? Chris was not in that series, however. The girl who played the witch was Corinne Boher. We also need to remember that imdb.com is also user generated content like that of Wikipedia, so it may not always have the most reliable sources.

Yeah, maybe. What I saw was an ABC? season preview, so maybe he shot the pilot and not the series. But he was in this clip. I may just have to go to youtube and see if it's still up.

"Nearly Departed" seemed much more akin to "Topper" than "Beetlejuice." It's another show that I loved with a theme song that's been bouncing around my head for decades... but when I finally saw the unaired episodes recently (which appear to have aired somewhere in the USA years later), it didn't hold up well. Maybe it was Idle in drag, I dunno.

As for Christopher Rich, the show you're thinking of is definitely "Free Spirit." He starred as the dad in the pilot, and his scenes appeared on ABC's fall preview, but when the show aired he'd been replaced by Franc Luz (and Alyson Hannigan replaced the daughter seen in the fall preview clips).