The Monkees

1 9 6 6 - 1 9 6 7 (USA)
28 x 25 minute episodes

In an attempt to cash in on the popularity of The Beatles movies A Hard Day's Night and Help! US producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson interviewed 400 applicants for a madcap TV series based on the day to day life of a pop group. 

The successful applicants were Micky Dolenz (formerly Micky Braddock of Circus Boy fame), Michael Nesmith (whose mother invented the correcting fluid used on typing errors), Peter Tork, and British actor Davy Jones (who had briefly played Ena Sharples' grandson in Coronation Street). 

The series won the 1966 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy and the group became world wide chart toppers with songs such as Last Train To Clarksville, Daydream Believer and I'm a Believer (the latter composed by the still unknown Neil Diamond). The group starred in their own movie in 1968 entitled Head which was co-written by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson (who would go on to co-write the blockbuster Five Easy Pieces) but it died at the box office.

The groups last single to enter the British popular music charts was in 1969, but by that time they had split up and gone their separate ways. Micky Dolenz turned TV producer and in 1980 had a hit in Britain with a series called Metal Mickey, a children’s comedy about a robot.

In 1997 The Monkees, who still had a massive following on both sides of the Atlantic re-formed for a series of concerts that received less than rave reviews.