Carter Nash was basically the guy nobody noticed until he drank a fizzy, secret formula. If you’ve ever felt like the world was just a bit too loud and you were just a bit too quiet, you’d probably have liked him. In 1967, NBC decided to give the world a hero who was terrified of his own shadow. That hero was the lead of the Captain Nice tv show, a weird, short-lived sitcom that felt like a fever dream of the mid-sixties. It only lasted fifteen episodes. People still talk about it, though. Why? Because it was created by Buck Henry, the same comedic genius behind Get Smart and the screenplay for The Graduate.
The show wasn't just another superhero parody. It was a reaction.
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See, back in the late sixties, the Batman TV show with Adam West was a massive, neon-colored juggernaut. It changed everything. Suddenly, every network wanted their own "pow" and "zap" moment. CBS went with Mr. Terrific, and NBC rolled out Captain Nice. They actually premiered on the very same night in January 1967. It was a literal battle of the bumbling caped crusaders. Honestly, it was a bit much for audiences at the time.
The Man Behind the Cape: William Daniels as Carter Nash
William Daniels played Carter Nash. You probably know him as Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World or the voice of KITT in Knight Rider. Before he was a mentor to Ben Savage, he was a mild-mannered police chemist living with his overbearing mother. That’s the core of the Captain Nice tv show—the domesticity of it all. Carter didn't live in a cave or a mansion. He lived in a cramped house with a mom (played by Alice Ghostley) who basically forced him to be a superhero.
Imagine having a secret identity that your mom not only knows about but actively manages. She literally sewed his costume. It was a moth-eaten, baggy mess that looked like it came out of a bargain bin, which was entirely the point.
The "superpower" came from a chemical formula Carter discovered. When he drank it, he gained the ability to fly and had super strength, but he kept his neurotic, timid personality. He was still Carter. He was just Carter in a bad suit who could accidentally smash a wall. He had a crush on a police sergeant named Candy Kane, played by Ann Prentiss. The names weren't subtle. Nothing in 1967 sitcoms was subtle.
Why the Captain Nice TV Show Failed to Launch Long-Term
Ratings were the obvious killer. When you have two shows—Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific—doing almost the exact same bit at the exact same time, fatigue sets in fast. Viewers felt like they were seeing double. By the time the summer of '67 rolled around, both shows were gone.
But there’s more to it than just bad timing.
Buck Henry’s humor was often a bit too dry or satirical for the broad audience NBC wanted. He was poking fun at the very concept of American masculinity. Carter Nash wasn't a "man's man." He was a chemist who stayed in his room. In an era where James Bond and John Wayne were the blueprints for heroes, a guy who needed his mom to help him fly was a tough sell for a weekly series.
- The show debuted January 9, 1967.
- It aired on Mondays at 8:30 PM.
- The theme song was a literal march that felt intentionally ridiculous.
- Alice Ghostley later became a household name on Bewitched.
The production values were actually decent for the time, considering the flying effects. They used wires, obviously. You can see them if you look closely at the old 16mm transfers. It adds a certain charm that modern CGI just can't replicate. It felt tactile. It felt like something a chemist in his garage might actually try to pull off.
The Satire of the Sixties
Satire is a tricky beast. In the Captain Nice tv show, the jokes were often directed at bureaucracy and the incompetence of local government. Bigtown—the fictional city where Carter lived—was a mess. The police were usually baffled. The villains weren't grand theatrical masterminds like the Joker; they were often just greedy people or weird coincidences.
If you watch it now, you’ll notice how much it influenced later "loser-hero" stories. Think about The Greatest American Hero in the 80s or even The Tick. They all owe a debt to Carter Nash’s awkward landings. He never quite mastered the landing. He’d usually crash through a roof or end up in a bush.
Critics at the time were split. Some thought it was a brilliant send-up of the genre. Others thought it was just "silly." The New York Times and other major papers of the day didn't give it much breathing room before the axe fell. It’s a shame, really. A second season might have allowed Buck Henry to get even weirder with the scripts.
Finding the Show Today
Is it possible to actually watch the Captain Nice tv show right now?
Kinda. It’s not on Netflix. It’s not on Max. Because of complicated rights issues—mostly involving the estate of the creators and the network—it hasn't seen a major digital revival. For years, the only way to see it was through bootleg VHS tapes traded at conventions.
However, you can occasionally find episodes on YouTube or through specialty boutique DVD labels that focus on "lost" television. It’s a relic. But it’s a high-quality relic. The chemistry between Daniels and Ghostley is genuine comedy gold. They played off each other with a timing that you usually only see in seasoned theater actors.
- Check Archive.org for public domain uploads.
- Look for the "Television Favorites" DVD releases from the early 2000s.
- Keep an eye on networks like MeTV or Antenna TV, which sometimes run "lost pilots" marathons.
The Legacy of a Fifteen-Episode Run
Most shows that die after fifteen episodes disappear completely. They become footnotes. But the Captain Nice tv show stuck around in the cultural psyche because of William Daniels. His career took such a prestigious turn later on that fans started digging back into his filmography.
They found this weird gem.
It serves as a time capsule of 1967—the colors, the slang, the post-Kennedy era optimism crashing into the absurdity of the counter-culture. It was a show caught between two worlds. It wanted to be a standard sitcom, but it had the DNA of an avant-garde satire.
If you’re a fan of TV history, you have to respect what they were trying to do. They tried to make a hero out of a man who didn't want to be one. They tried to show that even a guy who drinks a "Super Juice" is still going to have to deal with his mom's nagging at the end of the day.
To dive deeper into this era of television, look into the production notes of Get Smart. You'll find that many of the writers shared offices and ideas. The overlap is why the humor feels so familiar if you’re a fan of 60s spy spoofs. Also, tracking down the "lost" episodes of its rival, Mr. Terrific, provides a great comparison point for how NBC and CBS were trying to out-gimmick each other.
The next step for any serious collector is to seek out the original trade advertisements from Variety in 1966 and 1967. They show how NBC initially marketed the show—not as a comedy, but as a "thrilling new direction" for the network. Seeing the disconnect between the marketing and the actual show is a masterclass in television history.