The Opposite Show

Hire as many hack tv series writers as you can find (preferably from the 70s and 80s) to write your scripts. Then send them away and do re-writes with your own twists and as many non sequiturs as you can manage.

Example 1. A B&W western where the grasping, villianous banker is foreclosing on the kindly (and attractive) young widow woman's ranch until a handsome, mysterious stranger rides into town. After all the usual plot conventions, the stranger ends up on the hook for the mortgage and the 5 kids while the banker and widow woman ride off into the sunset with Handsome Stranger left scratching his head and saying "WTF?"

Example 2. Similar to above but it turns out in the expected, conventional manner with the kindly (and attractive) young widow woman and Handsome Stranger jointly defeating the nasty banker whose bank then folds causing economic chaos and the ruination of the entire town.

Example 3. A drawing-room murder mystery where, towards the climax of the show, there is a commercial break. When the commercial break ends, a kid's afternoon show comes on instead. 12 minutes into the 'Mr. Squiggle Show', Mr. Squiggle (a marionette) announces: "The murderer was Dr. Phineas Phflatbottom and I know this because the handwriting on the fake suicide note was the same as on the prescription for Sally De Ceesed's sleeping pills."

The possiblities are endless. Old hardboiled detective shows à la "Mannix" or "Columbo" or sunny musicals like "Heidi" or "The Sound of Music" are all fair game. The main goal is to have viewers standing around the water cooler the next day saying "I was watching this show last night, when the weirdest thing happened..."

Once The Opposite Show (aka The WTF? Show) becomes known, it would be important to sprinkle in a few 'straight ones' where everything unfolds according to the formula and all loose ends are wrapped up neatly in 23 minutes. Just to keep'em guessing.