Forgotten TV shows I still like. Have you ever watched Cheers and thought, “What if they all had bicycles?” The creators of Double Rush must’ve had the same thought.

Double Rush ran for 12 episodes with a 13th unaired one in early 1995. It takes place inside a New York City bicycle messenger service named, of course, Double Rush. Robert Pastorelli of Murphy Brown and Dances With Wolves (“There ain’t nobody here, lieutenant!”) stars as Johnny Verona, a former ‘60s rock guitarist and idealist, who now runs the bike service in place of realizing his rockstar dreams. Corinne Bohrer of E/R and Veronica Mars plays Zoe, a would-be businesswoman who reluctantly takes a messenger job with Johnny after failing to land the career of her dreams.

A bunch of well-known actors and a few familiar faces round out the rest of the ensemble. Adam Goldberg plays Leo, a burned-out and world-weary Gen X-er whose cynicism butts up against the idealism Johnny had in his youth. DL Hughley plays Marlon, who has a wife and kids at home he’s trying to support. David Arquette is Hunter, an adrenaline junkie who always takes wild, dangerous risks while biking around the city streets. Character actor Sam Lloyd plays Barkley, the spaced-out dispatcher, who always has some oddball bit of philosophy to spout. Finally, there’s the character known only as the Kid, played by Phil Leeds, who is an old man hip to modern culture.

There’s a long list of failed sitcoms out there, but Double Rush did the sitcom right. A lot of the jokes are good ones, and the fast paced, rat-a-tat dialogue means that if one gag didn’t work for you, another one is only seconds away. A typical trick is to introduce an element into the bike shop, such as a woman crying over a breakup or a bunch of mobsters, and then the writers go down list to come up with jokes for each character to make. These scenes keep the whole ensemble involved, and gives each actor a moment to shine.

But it’s the character work that makes Double Rush shine. We’ll never know if Johnny and Zoe would have developed a Sam-and-Diane thing, but that’s the most likely scenario. The show does get to follow up on Johnny and Leo, though. Several episodes establish a strained relationship between Leo and his unseen dad, putting Johnny in the reluctant role of father figure to Leo. If there’s any sort of main character arc in this first season of Double Rush, it’d be this.

But the show has other stuff on its mind as well. Everyone is broke, and a lot of time is spent on all the characters’ financial woes. We learn that Johnny could have signed a recording contract back to make it big back in the day, but he refused because he couldn’t leave behind his bandmates. Similarly, Johnny is often faced with selling out to a rival, more successful messenger service, but won’t do so because that would compromise his integrity. So Johnny feels a need to take care of his people, even when they drive him up the wall. Pretty heady stuff for a comedy, but Double Rush keeps these themes front and center while remaining light and fun.

Why didn’t Double Rush take off? It faced the bane of many a failed TV show – scheduling. It first aired on Friday nights, when its Gen X audience was mostly out and about. Part of the way through its run, it was moved to Tuesday against ratings juggernaut Roseanne, and that was all she wrote. Double Rush was co-created by Diane English, creator of the mega-successful Murphy Brown. It had the goods to be a hit, but… alas.

Other observations:

• Part of the Double Rush set included a ramp where extras and even the main cast would ride bikes onto and off of the stage. Cyclists often skidded to a halt mere inches away from their fellow actors. I hope they got some stunt training before filming.
• The show’s flashy opening credits sequence was directed by music video director turned feature filmmaker Spike Jonze (who took his name from the great old-time radio comedian Spike Jones, but that’s a blog post for another time).
• Several times throughout the series, we go outside for some location shooting. We get to see the cyclists zipping through the streets of New York (or whatever New York-like streets they had wherever this was filmed). This must have been expensive, but it was worth it. The location shoots gave the show a bigger size and scope than other sitcoms.

I could only find four episodes of Double Rush online. Who knows, if the folks at Paramount Plus click the button to put this on streaming, they might have a surprise hit on their hands.

Next: “Why a spoon, cousin?”

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