Adam West, RIP

If you’re the right age—which means my age—then the first TV Batman series with Adam West and Burt Ward was the highlight of the TV week back when there were only the three networks.

West was typecast by that iconic role even more than William Shatner was typecast by Captain Kirk, and West could never escape it. In later years West embraced his campiness and typecast image (see his apparently genuine phone book listings at the bottom), and in the early 1990s starred in a pilot for a sitcom that sadly no one picked up called “Lookwell.” It was written and produced by Conan O’Brien, who you all know, and Robert Smigel, better known today as the genius behind Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.

In “Lookwell” West turns in a self-aware self-mocking performance that suggests he’d have been a really fun guy to spend an evening with in a bar. If you have 22 spare minutes, the pilot episode of “Lookwell” is here:

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