It is difficult to describe The Abominable Showman, as difficult as it is to talk about the show since the senseless plane crash which claimed the lives of all the cast and crew after their first triumphant year on the air.

The basic premise of the show is that Nancy, the world's richest and most powerful woman, has founded a Network to compete with Turner or the big boys in the USA. She runs the network with the same sleazy business practices that have characterized the building of her empire. Being both too penurious to hire real talent, and so egotistical that she thinks she should be on the air, she decides to host all the shows herself. The Abominable Showman is the first effort from her production company. She simply doesn't understand the name, which is a joke slipped past her by disguntled mimimum wage workers.

The Abominable Nancy

The Showman program was supposed to be a compilation of viewer videos, kind of a precursor to all those "America's Funniest" shows that came later. In reality, there weren't many videos forthcoming, and the writers and cast gradually made their live interludes the real focus of the show. The live segments were usually but not always related, often peripherally, to the videos, as the show's cast pretended to be the directors or actors who created the films.

Although all the people in the cast and crew are lost to us now, we can only hope to remember them by their deeds, and the many lives they touched in their brief 78 weeks on the air from the Autumn of 1988 until the end of 1989 (26 distinct shows). Here is a list of the team, and their most memorable roles. Other roles are discussed in the episode summaries.