Years before he was clashing politically with ex-hippie parents on the 1980s hit series “Family Ties,” traveling through time in the “Back to the Future” movies, working as deputy mayor of New York on a pre-Charlie Sheen “Spin City,” or playing Gerry on Apple TV’s “Shrinking,” Michael J. Fox played an orphan lounging on a yacht in “Leo and Me.” Reportedly lasting a mere 12 episodes, “Leo and Me” is not available to stream on any platform. It aired on Canadian television in the late 1970s or early 1980s — sources differ — and was never released on any home media. The closest anyone can get to watching the show is through brief footage on YouTube.
The short-lived sitcom featured a 16-year-old Fox in the role of Jamie Romano. He lived with his fun-loving Italian uncle Leo (Brent Carver) on a boat Leo had won in a poker game. According to a list of episodes on LostMediaWiki, the show revolved largely around antics involving Leo and Jamie, involving things including a disco contest, peanut butter advertising, and even getting involved with the mafia.
The series received some attention in 2002 for an interesting coincidence
While the sitcom was largely forgotten, it did garner some media attention in 2002 from a documentary titled “The Parkinson’s Enigma.” Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1991 at only 29 years old, and three others who worked with him on “Leo and Me” would also be diagnosed with the disease, one of them in her 30s. While four people out of a 125-person crew getting the same disease does not immediately indicate a common cause, it’s quite an anomaly.
There was a medical investigation of the cluster, but any theory that an infectious agent caused it was widely disregarded. Director Don Williams, one of the four diagnosed, did not recall any widespread illness on the set. “No,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “I’ve tried to think back those years and I’m trying to remember if there was anything significant like that but I can’t recall anything.”
