Rentaghost - Recycled Scripts

[Angela Channing]

A while ago on another thread I recalled watching a series called Pardon My Genie. I don't remember much about it as I was very young when it was on TV. This prompted me to take a look on YouTube and I found this fascinating video which compared a scene from Pardon My Genie and Rentaghost and they are almost exactly the same. Both were written by Bob Block and he clearly just used the same script for both show with just a few minor changes.

 

[Hawkman]

Bob Block also wrote Robert's Robots. I got the dvd about a year ago, god knows why, but it was okay for a bit of nostalgia.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I found this fascinating video which compared a scene from Pardon My Genie and Rentaghost and they are almost exactly the same.

Ye Gods. You're not kidding.

I suppose it's partly due to when they were made. TV - especially children's TV - was probably considered far more disposable then. Something to be shown once or twice and then forgotten and probably wiped out of existence.

Bob Block (and the powers that be) presumably thought nobody would remember or pay enough attention to notice. And it's unlikely they'd have considered home media 45 years ago. Even video cassettes were so rare as to be unheard of.

I regularly watched episodes - new and old - of Rentaghost in the early Eighties, but would never have noticed. I hadn't even heard of Pardon My Genie at the time, and didn't watch that series until sometime within the last decade.

 

[Angela Channing]

It seems as though quite a bit of Rentaghost was copied from Pardon My Genie. Here's another video comparing the 2 shows:

 

[Daniel Avery]

I recall a scene between characters on Soap being re-purposed similarly by characters on The Golden Girls, with both series written by Susan Harris. Harris is so amazingly creative and clever that I was a bit disappointed to see her recycle a scene---lord only know what it would have been like to see an entire episode redone like what you see above.

Like you say, I guess the writer never believed we'd be watching the reruns so closely. GG is rife with continuity errors, so that would support your theory.