The Monsignor Martinez Live Action Spinoff from King of the Hill

In consideration of the incendiary failure of the ABC sitcom based upon the Caveman Geico commercials and whether such an idea was ever likely to work (I believe it could have worked tremendously if the producers and gutless wonders who run ABC would have treated it as a more serious probe into discrimination) it is fascinating to look at a potential TV show with an even more unlikely genesis that never even got the chance.

One doesn't often get the chance to accuse the Fox network (not Fox News, mind you) of caving in to the lurking dangers of sensitivity of viewers, but in this case that is exactly what appeared to have happened. The show in question was to be a live-action spin-off from a currently airing Fox show, plucking a fictional character from a TV show within the show. The Fox show was the animated sitcom King of the Hill, and the character was the gun-toting Monsignor Martinez, a Catholic clergyman in Mexico who is part James Bond and part Fr. Oreste Benzi.

Obviously, the Monsignor Martinez show would not have been the first time that audiences were treated to a live action interpretation of their favorite animated character. Everyone from Boris and Natasha to Fred and Wilma have been inhabited by three-dimensional flesh and blood carbon-based beings. What makes the Monsignor Martinez spin-off so much more innovative than the desperation of tapping into a forty-year old cartoon in order to plumb the depths of profit Hollywood sees in nostalgia for the shows we loved as kids is that Monsignor Martinez does not even really qualify for status as a minor character on King of the Hill.