One of the most hard to find cult TV shows to find today is Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman which aired for just two seasons from January 6, 1976 – May 10, 1977, and starred Louise Lasser. The show was more or less a parody of a soap opera and 325 episodes was produced. Today you can find the first 25 episodes on DVD, however, good luck finding, never mind watching, the other 300 episodes because they just haven’t been repackaged for modern viewers.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman satire was considered highly controversial for its day because it tackled many issues head on such as impotence, and sexual perversion.

Common enough themes for today’s audience but back then the plots pushed the show well passed the 11:00 p.m. hour on most TV stations… well after the kids have been put to bed.

The title of the show is stated twice because the writers believed that everything in soap operas was always said twice and remember this show was considered a parody of the soaps of the day. The show had a number of bizarre deaths such as the first episode where the “Fernwood Flasher” killed an entire family… including the goats and chickens.  People died from being electrocuted in the bath tube and from being impaled on Christmas trees and this was all part of the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman show’s kind of, dry tongue-in-cheek type of humor.

The back drop of the show took place in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. Although there is a real Fernwood, Ohio, in the United States, the name came from the street Fernwood that ran behind the production studio. I remember my older sister staying up late on school nights to watch the show, devotedly I  may add, and so I do remember the characters fairly well. We got a kick out of seeing it appear on TV again a few years ago as it brought up memories of our childhood.

The show was syndicated in 1982 for a brief time and even aired on the Lifetime Television Network in 1994. TV Land gave it a shot back in 2002 but other than those brief flashes of cult history it has been very difficult to find an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman on television.