This is a list of episodes of the television series The Monkees which ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968, on Monday nights at 7:30 PM Eastern (6:30 Central). After the show was cancelled, ABC ran repeats of the series on Saturday morning with alternative songs taken from later Monkees albums.
Contents
All songs listed are from the original NBC broadcasts. Tracks with different mixes or versions as compared to the album versions are indicated.
Season 1 (1966–67)
Debuting on September 12, 1966, the series aired on Monday nights @ 7:30pm EST preceding I Dream of Jeannie and opposite The Iron Horse (ABC) and Gilligan's Island (CBS).
Season 2 (1967–1968)
The series aired on Monday nights preceding The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and The Champions and opposite Cowboy in Africa (ABC) and Gunsmoke (CBS). "For Pete's Sake" from the Headquarters album replaced the "Monkees Theme" as the closing song during this season.
Unproduced episode
Movie
The Monkees also filmed a movie called Head that started production in early 1968, and was released in theaters that November by the Monkees' parent studio, Columbia, just after their TV show was canceled. Head was co-written by a then-largely-unknown Jack Nicholson. The film included six new songs, but was poorly promoted and not received very well by the public (as the film had a somewhat darker and more mature tone than the TV series) or contemporary critics; in the decades since, it has become somewhat of a cult classic; some of the film's songs are now part of the Monkees' current concert setlist.
Later television episodes
The Monkees' television series was canceled after its second season. The group hoped to take the television show in different directions (making it more like an hour-long variety show with comedy sketches and musical guests) and NBC wanted the show to stay the same; both parties mutually decided to throw in the towel. After the series was canceled, NBC contracted with The Monkees to create and broadcast three longer television specials.
33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee was the first of these longer television productions. It aired on NBC on April 14, 1969 (opposite ABC's live telecast of the 41st Academy Awards) to lower-than-expected ratings. The second two planned television specials were never produced. Peter Tork quit the group between the taping of 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee and its broadcast; Michael Nesmith left the group - buying out of his contract - in early 1970 to focus on his solo career, leaving the Monkees as a duo of Dolenz and Jones, under which one final original Monkees album under the 1966 Colgems contract, Changes, was released in June 1970.
The Monkees returned to broadcast television with Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees, a reunion special which was broadcast on ABC on February 17, 1997. The special was written and directed by Nesmith, emulating the style of the original NBC series; all four of the "real" Monkees do comedy and sing songs, some of which were new songs from the quartet's 1996 album Justus. This would be the last time Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith, and Tork would appear together on a television special, although Dolenz, Jones, and Tork made semi-frequent guest appearances on TV talk shows (such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Rosie O'Donnell Show and the Today show) for a few years afterwards. Davy Jones died in 2012.
Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork continue to make occasional TV interview appearances to this day. The trio appeared together for a May 2016 interview with Anthony Mason of CBS News Sunday Morning, on the occasion of the group's 50th anniversary.