Spin City

1996

Seasons & Episodes

  • 6
  • 5
  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
  • 0
7.3| TV-14| en| More Info
Released: 17 September 1996 Ended
Producted By: DreamWorks Television
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Workaholic Mike Flaherty is the Deputy Mayor of New York City, serving as Mayor Randall Winston's key strategist and much-needed handler. Mike runs the city with the help of his oddball staff: an anxious and insecure press secretary; a sexist, boorish chief of staff; an impeccably groomed gay activist running minority affairs; a sharp and efficient, man-crazy accountant; and an idealistic young speechwriter. Like Mike, they are all professionally capable but personally challenged.

Genre

Drama, Comedy

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Spin City (1996) is now streaming with subscription on Prime Video

Director

Production Companies

DreamWorks Television

Spin City Videos and Images
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Spin City Audience Reviews

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.
Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
moni Despite the fact there are funny moments here and there, the main problem with this show is (like all US recent productions) that this is strictly American oriented one. What does it mean? The jokes are juvenile, stupid and utterly predictable; mostly sex oriented, mostly homophobic and anti feminist oriented. There is nothing funnier than showing someone with his girlfriend implying they had sex with animals or someone saying he has been pig fender. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nothing oriented for audience with more than 2 brain cells. I am sorry, this is not my piece of cake. 1/10 from me. More lines are needed. Nothing more to say except to keep these sitcoms for yourself, gentlemen.
ajnash5 Personally I think that this is one of, if not the best TV series ever made and although it was very sad to see Mike have to leave for personal reasons I still think that Charlie was a good replacement and that it continued to be as good with Charlie as it was with Mike because of the fantastic acting from the likes of Alan Ruck and Barry Bostwick.My personal favourite character in the show would have to be Stuart Bondek because i think that he is just brilliant with the way he makes fun of everything and also turns everything into one big joke.A very close second would be Mayor Randall Winston because he is so funny when he needs to be but then can be very serious as well such as when he saying goodbye to Mike at the end of series 4 and how he says that he has been like a son to him i thought that was very touching.One of my other favourite TV series would have to be Scrubs which I know was made by the same people and that Michael J fox, Alan Ruck, Barry Bostwick, Alaxander Chaplin, Richard Kind, Michael Boatman and Heather Locklear have all starred in and they were all as good in that as they were when they did Spin City.
liquidcelluloid-1 "Spin City": Network: ABC; Genre: Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-14 (for language and strong sexual content); Available: syndication; Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4);Season Reviewed: Seasons 5 & 6To keep this little project manageable I have roped off the new millennium as a starting point to look at television. The trap door in this rule is that if a show was on the air at all after that time I can review the whole thing - except in the instances where that show underwent a change, for better or worse. Unfortunately, as with 'The Drew Carey Show' and 'The Daily Show', 'Spin City' is one such series whose glory days lie before the year 2000 and out of my jurisdiction. Thus, this review is really of a version of 'Spin City' that isn't the heart of this show. It is of a show that had lost it's lead, reshuffled the cast and was on it's dying legs. The change in the show is undeniable, and it would be irresponsible to simply ignore it, but this is not what 'Spin City' really was about. Created by Bill Lawrence and Gary David Goldberg, 'Spin City' is a traditional sitcom about the womanizing deputy mayor and his staff of spin-masters struggling to save and protect the image of flaky New York City mayor Randall Winston (Barry Bostwick). The real 'Spin City' was driven about Michael J. Fox's terrific lead performance and absolutely impeccable comic delivery (for which he garnered a well-deserved Emmy award and 2 Golden Globes). It crackled with sharp, adult and always laugh-out-loud writing and an awesome ensemble cast to contend with any other on TV. Michael Boatman, Alexander Chapman as James, and Jennifer Esposito's hot Stacey are just 3 of my favorites. And the reunion episode with Christopher Lloyd was superb. Truly one of the funniest shows on the air, It probably gets my vote for the most underrated sitcom of the 90s. During the first 4 years, 'Spin City' was a 4 ½ star show by my scale. It was that good.At the close of the 2000 season, Fox made a classy exit to fight a private battle with Parkinson's disease. At that signal, the rest of the cast (save for Boatman, Bostwick, Richard Kind and Alan Ruck) jumped overboard like rats form a sinking ship. But all was not quite lost as replacement Charlie Sheen - reportedly hand picked by producer Fox himself - stepped in and stepped up, filling the new role with surprising success and agility. Sheen has picked up Fox's mannerisms for the arrogant Mike Flaherty and incorporated it into his own completely new character, Charlie Crawford (like Fox, taking his own first name). In fact, with this his first project after coming out of rehab, Sheen is something of a revelation here. As hard to believe as it may be for the purists, but he almost comes up to par with Fox. The fast and steep decline of the series really has nothing to do with Charlie Sheen. I believe it had more to do with the rest of the ensemble leaving and the show making the suicidal decision to shoulder the series on Heather Locklear. 'Spin' then quickly became a 2-person series in which we are supposed to agonize over the sexual tension between the leads and wonder if Sheen and Locklear's characters will get together. It should have occurred to Lawrence that it's fans where smarter than that. Locklear is a black hole that sucks every remaining ounce of life out of 'Spin City'. Sheen's efforts to save the show and the legacy of it's name deserve far better than this. Forget about this. Stick with seasons 1 through 3, and 4 as a bonus, and you will be in good hands. * ½
superscal23 Spin City was a great show for the first three years, okay for a year, and bad for the last two. From what I've read on IMDb, I'm the one who didn't like Michael J. Fox from Family Ties and Back to the Future. I also don't like some of the things I've heard him say in interviews, but that all goes away when he is playing Mike Flaherty. That, I believe, is a sign of a good actor.This show is by Mike, for Mike, and about Mike, and for the first 3 years of the show, it worked, and worked well. Bringing in Heather Locklear served its intended purpose, which was to create competition for Mike, but it did not work. This show was at its best when Mike was in command of his team of dunces, including the mayor.In the beginning, Carla Gugino played Mike's love interest, and that created some great moments just in the first 12 episodes. Mike is the Deputy mayor of New York City, and Gugino, as Ashley, was a City Hall reporter. Not a totally original concept, but it worked really well. After the original 12 episode run, they decided that they had enough show without the Ashley character. Apparently it came as a surprise to the producers of the show that New York City politics was enough to stand on its own. So much so that no character other than Mike was ever really explored on this show. All the other characters are very simple, but very funny. Stuart is the sex obsessed wacko. Carter is the homosexual, token black wacko. Nikki is the unlucky in love, neurotic wacko. James is the naive wacko. Stacy is the foul-mouthed Brooklynite wacko. Paul is just plain wacko.What made the first 3 seasons great were the story lines and the performances of Michael J. Fox and Barry Bostwick. The fact that they used politics without politicizing the show just makes it a stroke of genius. Think about this: the show is about politics, and it never once got preachy. In fact, I don't believe they ever come out and say what political party the staff is representing. Reading between the lines, you can figure out that they are Democrats, but that is not the point of the show in any way. Others may find this a detriment to the show, meaning it was not socially relevant. This is true, it was not. But it was funny. That was really the bottom line of this show. It was just funny. Nothing more, nothing less. The jokes made you laugh. Whether its a joke about the Pope, or the state of Wisconsin, or homosexuality, or an overflowing toilet (perhaps the single best moment ever on the show).This show lost me in the fourth season when Heather Locklear came on board. Her character took charge of the office, and the energy that came with Mike in control was gone. In addition, with two well known stars on the show, the other characters were literally filtered out. I would have loved to see Caitlin take on Stacey, but Jennifer Esposito left as Heather Locklear came on. Of course, Mike and Caitlin eventually fell for each other, but it never really worked, and shortly thereafter, Mike was gone. I personally consider the Charlie Sheen years to be a completely different show, not worthy of comment.