Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

A funny thing happened on the way to the streaming era: a TV program a network once tried to pretend never existed has become a useable asset again.

“Remember WENN,” one of the earliest (and best) Pittsburgh-set prime-time shows, aired from 1996 to 1998 and was AMC’s first original scripted series – but it hasn’t been available for 24 years.

When new management took over AMC and canceled “Remember WENN” after four seasons, the network tried to send “Remember WENN” down a memory hole, never even releasing the series on DVD. (AMC isn’t alone in this practice: FX would prefer viewers think of critically-acclaimed 2002-08 drama “The Shield” as its first original prime-time show, not the sophomoric 2000-02 comedy “Son of the Beach.”)

In 2007, nine years after “Remember WENN” ended, creator Rupert Holmes saw a poster for AMC’s “Mad Men,” which billed the Don Draper drama as AMC’s “first original series.” To add insult to injury, the tag line used was “Where the truth lies,” which was also the title of a 2003 novel Holmes wrote.

“They got me in two different ways. They stabbed me in two backs!” Holmes said in a phone interview last week.

Holmes hastens to add he’s moved beyond such grievances now that “Remember WENN” is available on streaming service AMC+.

“All is forgiven for me with AMC because they’ve got the show looking better than ever,” Holmes said of the series, which has been upconverted to HD. “They obviously put some resources into it. The subtitling is great for people who are hard-of-hearing and it’s accurate so I’m in a happy place with AMC now. After many years they’ve remembered they had a gem of a TV show.”

And what a gem it is. Set in the early 1940s as the United States is on the brink of entering World War II, Indiana’s fresh-faced writer Betty Roberts (Amanda Naughton) goes to work at Pittsburgh radio station WENN, where she meets a host of colorful characters, from diva Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins) to a sound engineer viewers never hear speak, Mr. Foley (Tom Beckett), to her first boss, Victor Comstock (John Bedford Lloyd).

Family-friendly, funny, farcical, warm and filled with Holmes’ original, period-accurate music, “Remember WENN” offers a cheery, gentle respite from cynical comedy that’s needed more today than during its original run.

“The show was shot on film and it was color-corrected to have these warm, rich hues that you had in color movies of the 1940s,” Holmes said. “In upgrading the image for AMC+, it’s only brought that warmth and richness out further. And because it was a period show, it’ll never look dated.”

Made on a shoe-string budget, “Remember WENN” was generally confined to the radio station set built on a soundstage in Long Island City, N.Y. Characters weren’t seen walking the streets of Pittsburgh but Holmes chose the Pittsburgh setting for several reasons, including because of the presence of KDKA-AM, the nation’s first commercial radio station.

“I wanted to put them in a place where they’re in the big time but not the ultimate big time, which for most of them would have been New York and Broadway,” Holmes said. “And for Hilary Booth, who had worked on Broadway, it was a bit of being in exile.”

Holmes, best known as the singer-songwriter of “Escape (The Pina Colada Song”) and as the playwright behind “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “Curtains,” also has an affection for Pittsburgh from his days performing at the now-shuttered Holiday House in Monroeville, which may also have helped lay the groundwork for the comedic elements in “Remember WENN.”

“There was a comedy club in the basement and I’d unwind after my show watching a lot of comedy and I picked up some good comedy lessons,” Holmes said.

In addition to the “WENN” setting, another Pittsburgh tie can be found in executive producer Paula Connelly-Skorka, a Glenshaw native who was vice president of original program development for AMC and involved in “Remember WENN” at its conception. Connelly-Skorka graduated with a film degree from Point Park College in 1980 and moved to New York. She mined her Pittsburgh past for “Remember WENN.”

“I am a die-hard Pittsbugher, so we brought as much as we could have of the city to the show,” Connelly-Skorka said, including references to the Three Rivers, the inclines and Mount Washington. “My mother [Angeline Connelly], who just recently passed away, she’d help behind the scenes with references.”

In 1998 prior to “Remember WENN’s” cancellation, stars Naughton and Mary Stout performed in a Civic Light Opera production of “On the Town.”

“What is it about Pittsburgh in the ‘40s?” Naughton told me at the time in the Benedum Center green room. “I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever do a contemporary piece.”

Not that she was complaining (and she did get opportunities to act in contemporary stories, including in “Fun Home” on stage at San Diego Rep in 2018). It was clear last month in an episode of the online streaming series “Stars in the House” featuring a “Remember WENN” cast reunion that the cast still enjoy, well, remembering when they worked together on the series.

And now that there’s money to be made in streaming, AMC has remebered “Remember WENN,” too. All four seasons stream commercial-free on AMC+. The first two seasons of “Remember WENN” are available with ads on the AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) service, Plex, and on Stories by AMC, a FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channel carried on Sling, IMDb TV, Vizio, Samsung and Plex, where it has even been marathoned over the last year.

Courtney Thomasma, general manager for AMC+, said “Remember WENN” fits well in the service’s newly-launched Cult Classic TV collection where it resides alongside “Rubicon,” “Slings & Arrows” and “The Kids in the Hall.” (“The Lot,” an inferior period show to “Remember WENN” that followed after the cancellation of “WENN,” is being considered for future addition to the collection.)

“It was just interesting to monitor social channels when we aired it [on FAST] because the people that found it, love the show. Every time we aired it we saw someone who was like, ‘Guys, you won’t believe what’s on,’ and we had only aired the first two seasons,” Thomasma said, noting the show will live on AMC+ in perpetuity, not for a limited time. “This kind of streaming on-demand platform is the perfect way to showcase some of the library and legacy series. Everyone knows the ‘Mad Mens’ of the world, but we’re seeing really strong engagement around titles we just launched, “Remember WENN” and titles like “Rubicon.” This is probably the forum we were waiting for to present it in in its best possible format.”

There’s just one hitch for any viewers looking to revisit “Remember WENN” or take it in for the first time: When they get to the end of the show’s final, 56th episode, viewers are left with three cliffhangers that have never been resolved. Holmes has previously discussed and again revealed his intention on how he’d resolve two of the three cliffhangers in that “Stars in the House” episode, but he still wants to see them play out in show form. And he has an idea how to do it that gets around the fact that the cast is now 24 years older than when they last played their “Remember WENN” characters. Over the years, Holmes toyed with the idea of resolving the cliffhanger in a short story but he has a new, preferred method thanks to technological advances.

“My favorite solution has been to do a podcast with the original cast because they all sound wonderful and they all sound the same as they did then,” he said, noting that he’d filter the sound to make it sound like an old radio broadcast when the WENN actors are on the air broadcasting a radio show and keep it crystal-clear when they’re talking behind the scenes.

“We don’t currently have any plans for a reunion or series finale with the original cast,” AMC+’s Thomasma said, “but it’s a fun idea so we certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”

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