10 Ridiculous TV Premises You Won't Believe Were Real

3. My Mother The Car

For such a daft set up, the premise of My Mother The Car can be summed up pleasingly succinctly: a man buys a car, which to his surprise contains the spirit of his deceased mother. That’s really all you need to know – from there, hilarity supposedly ensues for an impressive 30 episodes.

OK, there’s a little more to it than that. Only the main character, Dave, can hear his mother’s ghost, who speaks to him through the car radio, leading to all kinds of wacky moments in which the lead seems like he’s lost his mind. There’s a nefarious car collector who wishes to nab the car.

Basically Dave’s entire life is driven(!) by his new car and his ghost mother, turning My Mother The Car into more of a horror story than a sitcom. She gets drunk on antifreeze and winds up the neighbours; she helps him with his ventriloquist act, in one episode which shows just how limited this story was, but that’s about as useful as she gets.

The series was reviled by those who watched it in the mid-‘60s, and its legacy today is as a punchline. If My Mother The Car didn’t exist, The Simpsons would have invented it as a joke.