Shark Bytes

Andy Griffith is a junk dealer who builds his own rocket ship and blasts off to the moon to salvage all the stuff the astronauts left behind so he can sell it for a gazillion dollars when he returns to Earth. Now THERE'S a solid concept for a weekly series. Should be a mega-hit. Now shut up and pass the Bolivian Marching Powder, the '80s are nearly here, Belushi will OD and then we'll all have to at least pretend to sober up for awhile.

Agreed with Scott (April 21, 2007) that the pilot was so exciting that the subsequent series was doomed to be an anti-climax.

Good show for the '70's. Hard to picture Andy Griffith as anyone but Sherrif Taylor, though.
Typecasting sucks, but it's a reality.

It never lived up to the pilot movie, which was kind of fun. When they were captured by the Japanese soldier who thought WWII was still going on, it became unbearable. When you have to resort to stealing plots from Gilligan's island, you know it's over.

A terible show but a rather interesting and novel idea.Was never as exiting again(while it "lasted")as when they went to the moon.I sure hope they were paid a LOT to retrieve that moonjunk to make the trip worth it.Don't love Griffith,grumpy man personally but cute enough ensemble show.It however could not be salvaged.

The pilot episode was so silly (blasting themselves to the moon with illegal explosive rocket fuel) that I decided not to watch the rest of the series. I think in the UK that may have been the reaction of most people, as I think ITV did not screen the other episodes!

The main problem with the show, was the pilot movie. The movie was so big, and great, that the series could never outdo the movie. Once you go to the moon, what other feat would beat that?! I watched the show, and loved the characters, but it was a let down.

Look, it's a fantasy goofball show. You build a rocket, you fly to the moon. There should have never been another shot after that. Most everyone I know of who saw it agreed that there's NOWHERE to go after you fly to the friggin' moon! Towing icebergs? Strange jungle monkeys? Puh-leeze!

I loved the original TV movie, but remember being rather upset that they were going to ruin it by trying to make a series out of it. An everyday Joe going to the Moon in a homebuilt spaceship is one thing and worked because we all knew it was fantasy. Great entertainment for an evening. To try to repeat this every week with a new equally unrealistic adventure was too much. I quit watching after just a few episodes and was not surprised to learn of its demise before the first season was over.

This show Jumped the Shark when the director exposed the first frame of film and recorded the first wavelength of audio for the program. What a HUGE failure of a TV series. Even as a KID, I found it frightening that a TV studio would even dare to write stories on the premise that Andy Griffith could take a cement mixer from his junk yard and transform it into a spaceworthy vehicle to make daily runs to earth orbit and the moon to collect hubcaps.

I was really impressed with this show as a 12 year old but I now realize what a crock of s**t it was. It jumped in the episode where Andy Griffith was driving a jeep wearing really cool 70's style mirror sunglasses, only problem was that reflected in the sunglasses was the camera truck, you could see the camera ,boom mike, and various crew members.

One of the stupidest television shows of all time.

This show was a great pilot. What young kid alive during the 70's didn't want to build a rocket and fly to the moon, especially in '79 when things really sucked here on Earth. The ingenuity of the characters was akin to the crew of the Enterprise, and the premise seemed somehow believable. Seemed the show had lots of potential before it got canned.