Steve Carell rose to prominence in the mid-2000s thanks to “The Office” and Judd Apatow’s “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” But he’d been acting for some time before audiences came to know his name. Fans of Carell will be aware of how he got his start on “The Dana Carvey Show” in the mid-’90s before becoming a correspondent on “The Daily Show.” But even die-hards might be unaware of his short-lived sitcom “Over the Top,” which starred Tim Curry — who passed away in August 2026 at the age of 80 — and ran for just three episodes before it was canceled.
If you think of Tim Curry in a hotel in the ’90s you think of the enduring classic “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” I’m fairly confident in saying that you do not think of the 1997 sitcom “Over the Top,” which saw Curry return to a Manhattan hotel five years after his run-in with Kevin McCallister. But this wasn’t The Plaza and Curry was not a concierge. Instead, he was Simon Ferguson, a struggling actor who’d fallen on hard times and was living in New York’s Metropolitan hotel, of which his ex-wife was the manager.
It was an oddly fitting premise since “Over the Top” represents one of Curry’s more regrettable projects. Not that it forced him to move into a hotel and reassess his career (as far as I know), but the sitcom was pretty dire, earning some of the most scathing reviews of the 1990s following its October 1997 debut. It might even be one of the worst sitcoms of all time. As such, Carell was surely glad he was only a supporting actor. Had he starred in “Over the Top” he might have ended up in Simon Ferguson’s position.
Tim Curry played a down on his luck actor in Over the Top
Tim Curry remains the master of frights, funnies, and fishnets even after his passing. But the “funnies” weren’t always successful. “Over the Top” is the perfect example. The show follows Curry’s Simon Ferguson in the aftermath of his being fired from soap opera “Days to Remember.” As the opening titles of “Over the Top” explain, Ferguson was once a promising actor with a “string of hits” to his name, who after “a few misses” ended up with “no job and no place to stay.” So, he did what anybody in his situation would do: moved in with his ex-wife to whom he was once married for 12 days.
This is the slightly tortured setup of “Over the Top,” which also stars Curry’s longtime friend and “Pass the Ammo” co-star Annie Potts as his ex-wife Hadley Martin. Luckily for Ferguson, Martin now runs the Manhattan hotel and is willing to give her ex-husband a room while he gets back on his feet. Also living at the hotel is Martin’s young son Daniel Martin (Luke Tarsitano) and teen daughter Gwen Martin (Marla Sokoloff). Liz Torres’ Assistant Manager Rose, John O’Hurley’s hotel investor Robert McSwain, and Steve Carell’s Greek hotel chef Yorgo Galfanikos, round out the main cast.
Carell is given quite a bit to do as the oddly aggressive and, in retrospect, culturally insensitive chef Yorgo Galfanikos. One episode sees him develop a crush on mail carrier Linda (Mary Lynn Rajskub), and struggle to express his feelings in a storyline that would be rough stuff for a sitcom of the 1960s let alone one airing during the age of “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” Nonetheless, Carell did his best as the heavily-accented hotel culinarian. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Critics were over Over the Top before it even started
“Over the Top” prompted a remarkably disdainful response from critics. The Sun-Sentinel’s Tom Jicha seemed particularly affronted. “This is the kind of show that is so bad it makes you wonder how it got on the air,” he wrote in a scathing review which pointed out how the sitcom was originally supposed to air in September 1997 but was held back, ostensibly to help it stand out from other new fall arrivals that year. But as Jicha also pointed out, ABC Entertainment President Jamie Tarses and “Over the Top” executive producer Robert Morton were actually romantically involved when the show was greenlit, only to break up ahead of it debut. Did Tarses try to sabotage “Over the Top” by holding it back and unleashing it on the same night as Game Three of the 1997 World Series? “Draw your own conclusion about whether this has anything to do with the subsequent handling of its premiere,” Jicha wrote.
Not that she needed to do much to sabotage the series. Peter Ko wrote a downright meanspirited assessment for TeeVee, calling out Carell specifically in a passage that’s worth quoting in full:
“I have never seen anything like what I saw last Tuesday night. I have stood in a freezer full of dead people at the morgue. I have seen a man’s scalp pulled back over his nose. I’ve even seen 35 minutes of Ellen DeGeneres’s ‘Mr. Wrong.’ But I can now honestly say that until Steve Carell’s turn in the premiere of Over the Top, I have never known true horror.”
Simon Ferguson was hardly Curry’s best performance, either, though like Carell he did his best with the material. Sadly, it wasn’t even close to enough and “Over the Top” was well and truly over after three of its 12 episodes aired.
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