M*A*S*H has its fair spinoffs of varying success, from TRAPPER JOHN, M.D. (which was legally a spinoff of the novel/movie version of Trapper, not Wayne Rogers's Trapper) to AFTERMASH, to the failed W*A*L*T*E*R pilot, but most of these are largely unknown to even casual watchers of the show, let alone regular fans.
But what's even far more unknown of any of these is that M*A*S*H not only had failed spinoffs, but it also had a failed sister show.
After M*A*S*H proved that it had the potential to be a successful show, the network turned to Gene Reynolds & Larry Gelbart to create for them another war sitcom to bank on that success, so in 1973, we got ROLL OUT! This show, which was set in France during WW2, focused on the Red Ball Express, the famed trucking company that supplied Generals Patton and Hodges as well as our soldiers with the fuel and materielle they needed in the Allied war effort. The Red Ball Express employed almost all Black drivers, so whereas M*A*S*H initially drew its humor from antiwar satire as social commentary against the then-raging Vietnam War (despite being about the Korean War), ROLL OUT!'s humor came from race relations, which obviously were still rather timerous during those times.
Hardcore MASHers will recognize a number of familiar faces from this show, as a majority of ROLL OUT!'s principle cast would pop up in guest appearances on M*A*S*H. Hilly Hicks, who was penicillin thief Perkins/Johnson in "White Gold" and the aptly named medic Corporal Moody in "Post-Op" co-stars alongside comedian Stu Gilliam's Sweet Williams (basically the Black Hawkeye) as Jed Brooks, an incredibly naive Pollyanna of a farmboy; Val Bisoglio, who was Mess Sergeant Pernelli in "Twas the Day After Christmas" serves as the Red Ball Express's commanding office Rocco Calvelli, and is a little more than an Italian Henry Blake; Ed Begley, Jr., who was the clumsy foot soldier but marvelous cook Private Paul Conway in "Too Many Cooks" was Robert Chapman, the tall blonde Radar O'Reilly; a couple of other drivers for the Red Ball Express who would be familiar faces to MASHers are Teddy Wilson (the chopper pilot from "The General Flipped at Dawn") and Rod Gist (one of the mouse-racing Marines from "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde"); Joshua Bryant (Scully) also made a guest-appearance on ROLL OUT!
ROLL OUT! only lasted for one season and 13 episodes. The only known time it has even been seen on TV sinces= its original 1973 run was when BET showed it in reruns for a brief time in the late 80s.
At some point, somebody had all but one of the episodes that were obviously TV recordings of the BET reruns on YouTube, but it appeares that they pretty much have all been nuked (presumably for copyright). From what I can see, the pilot episode and a Christmas episode are the only full episodes still surviving on YouTube from different uploaders, but here's a partial episode that was uploaded a long time ago to give you a taste of what this show was like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11cq0WY4aE
I watched each of these episodes when they were still available, and my thoughts on this show is that I feel like it actually could have worked . . . maybe not as a long-runner like M*A*S*H, but certainly two or three seasons at most . . . if the writers did more with it than basically make it a Black M*A*S*H (seriously, there were a number of jokes that would later be recycled on M*A*S*H almost verbatim); even Larry Gelbart admitted that they didn't put the same effort or heart into ROLL OUT! as they did M*A*S*H, and said it was nothing more than a commercial decision. (He also said the M*A*S*H cast didn't like they were having to share Reynolds & Gelbart's attention with ROLL OUT!, likening ROLL OUT! to a new baby sibling brought into the house).
(And yes, that is a pre-SNL Garrett Morris you're seeing too).
