US Against the World II originally aired on Saturday, September 9th 1978.

Yet another 1970s celebrity "reality" sports show, this one ran on NBC to compete with the two other similar television shows of the era, the CBS television network's Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes and ABC's Battle of the Network Stars. Again in this program various tv and movie stars would compete against one another, but not network vs. network, or even boys vs. girls, but America against the world! On this program the competition was divided into the United States team and "the rest of the world" and we were completely enthralled as our stars endured numerous sports challenges to win for both country and honor!

In this episode the U.S. team included Joyce DeWitt, Scott Baio, Kristy McNichol, Gary Burghoff, Dick Clark, Jimmie "J.J." Walker, Erik Estrada, Melissa Gilbert, Dan Haggerty and Cloris Leachman. Some of the "World" team would include Levar Burton (West Germany), William Shatner (Canada), Rich Little (Canada), Bo Svenson (Sweden), Victoria Principal (Japan), Fionnula Flanagan (Ireland), Dudley Moore (England), Jane Seymour (England) and Britt Ekland (Sweden). Gabe Kaplan was the host for this episode, with help from both Ed McMahon and Ted Knight. Of course this program featured the normal array of sports competitions that you might expect for this type of show, including: kayak racing, swimming and running relays, the obstacle course and Go-Kart racing.

Buying note: To my knowledge this program has not been seen since it originally ran in 1978, no copies have been traded among collectors and the chances of it ever being released on home video are small at best. The best chance this show has of ever seeing the light of day again would probably be if a cable or satellite tv service reran them, much like Trio® did with the Battle of the Network Stars program a few years back.

5-20-2007