Trama

A husband and wife are sucked into a hellish television set and must survive the gauntlet of twisted versions of shows in which they find themselves.

The Knables are having marriage problems: Roy is a lousy plumbing supplies salesman by day and couch potato by night, and his wife Helen is a successful senior product manager for a vitamin company. Roy watches too much television every night and Helen just cannot stand it. One night, she suggests a romantic getaway without phones, their kids, or--especially--television, but when Roy's hooked on the big screen, there's no calling him back. Frustrated and angry, Helen decides to smash the family console with one of Roy's trophies as a wake-up call to reality. Disoriented but heartbroken, Roy then hears the doorbell and opens the door to a mysterious salesman named Spike who offers him the "ultimate getaway" from all the hate, frustration, and failures: a new remote control and a new state-of-the-art satellite television. Roy accepts the new television by signing a free-trial contract not knowing that he just sold his soul to the devil himself. When Helen finds out, she is both unimpressed and steamed; as they fight outside, the "dish" activates. Roy and Helen try their hardest to escape, but it's too late: the force of gravity from the dish sucks them into the "Cable Television World of Hell"--all 666 channels' worth. Now they must survive through every episode of shows such as the game show "You Can't Win", the U.W.W.F. (Underworld Wrestling Federation) match, "Northern Overexposure", "Driving Over Miss Daisy," and a cartoon sequence called "RoboCat", "Autopsies of the Rich and Famous", "Duane's Underworld", "HTV" and "Off With His Head", all within 24 hours. If successful, they will return home, but if they fail, the devil keeps their souls forever. After they survive one day without harm, Roy gets sent back home while Spike holds Helen hostage. Now with the help of their children, communication whiz Darryl and fashionista Diane, Roy must re-enter the underworld of Hellevision and save his wife, while keeping his distance from Spike. Will he learn the hard way that there's more to life than television--like commitment? (Formerly written by Christopher Howell)—Artemis-9

Couch potato Roy Knable (John Ritter) is a struggling Seattle plumbing salesman and former fencing athlete who spends most of his spare time watching hours of television. Roy's neglected wife Helen (Pam Dawber), a senior vitamin product manager, resents the fact that they never do anything special or romantic together anymore.

After a fight (which involved Helen smashing the family television screen with one of Roy's fencing trophies as a wake-up call to reality), a shady man named Mr. Spike (Jeffrey Jones) appears at the couples' door, offering him a new high-tech satellite dish system filled with 666 channels of programs one cannot view on the four huge networks (CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox). What Roy doesn't know is that Spike (called "Mephistopheles of the Cathode Ray") is an emissary from hell who wants to boost the influx of souls by arranging for television aficionados to be killed in the most gruesome and ironic situations imaginable. The 'candidates' are sucked into a hellish television world, called Hellevision, and put through a gauntlet where they must survive a number of satirical versions of sitcoms and movies. If they can survive for 24 hours, they are free to go, but if they get killed, then their souls will become the property of Satan (the latter usually happens).

The dish eventually sucks Roy and Helen into this warped world. Roy and Helen first appear on a bizarre game show called "You Can't Win" where they are forced by the game show host to answer personal questions about their failing marriage or be eliminated. They succeed and as their prize are pushed through a porthole into another world called "Underworld Wrestling Foundation" and are forced to wrestle a stout couple called The Gorgons. When Roy is bested, Helen defeats Mr. and Mrs. Gorgon by bashing them with a microphone stand and for their reward, are pushed into another porthole to another channel.

Watching the Knables from the confines of HVTV's control room is Spike, who is soon joined by Crowley (Eugene Levy), a nerdy employee who brings along Pierce (Erik King), a younger upstart employee to the television center. Crowley explains the events happening to Pierce. They watch another couple, the Seidenbaums, on another channel where the shrewish wife is crushed to death by a Godzilla monster while her henpecked husband escapes. After Crowley makes a sly comment to Spike about a previous individual who survived the 24 hours in HVTV's dimension, Spike banishes Crowley to the Hell TV world by zapping him with a special remote-control device he always keeps on him.

Back in the real world, Roy and Helen's 11-year-old son Darryl (David Tom), and his older sister Diane (Heather McComb) arrive home from school and are puzzled to their parents' absence. They find the large HVTV set in the living room as well as the large satellite dish in their backyard. While Diane invites some of her school friends over, Darryl watches the new television set and is puzzled by the various HVTV programming which includes hellish spoof shows like "Sadistic Hidden Video", "Three Men and Rosemary's Baby", "thirty-something-to-life", etc. When Darryl goes into the backyard, the motion sensitive dish activates and tries to suck him into the Hell TV world but zaps his bicycle instead. When Darryl sees his bicycle on the television set later in a show called "Meet the Mansons", he tries to convince Diane that something sinister is going on, but she dismisses his theories.

Meanwhile, Roy and Helen are trapped in a sub-freezing snowy forest area on the HVTV show "Northern Overexposure" where they venture to a frozen lake and meet Crowley who is digging holes in the ice to find a conduit to the next channel. Just when Crowley finds a dimensional opening, they are attacked by savage wolves and forced to take shelter in a nearby shack where Crowley explains to them about their situation and that they have 15 hours left to survive HVTV's world. In his attempt to escape from the shack, Crowley is overwhelmed by the wolves and the shack is set on fire from a dropped oil lamp.

Roy and Helen are forced to leave Crowley behind and jump through the dimensional porthole and find themselves as animated mouse characters in a Looney Tunes-type cartoon and are forced to battle a mechanical robot cat that chases them. Darryl sees his parents as animated characters and watches their actions on the screen. Helen travels through a mouse hole into another channel, but Roy is left behind to deal with the robot cat, which he defeats by sending for a mechanical robot dog. Roy then runs through the conduit to find Helen and ends up on "Saturday Night Dead" in a segment called "Duane's Underworld" as a captive guest. Roy manages to escape and finds himself in a black-and-white channel as a private detective in his search for Helen.

In the meantime, Darryl finally convinces Diane where their missing parents are by showing them on the television set and they try to help them survive any way possible. Roy finds Helen being held by Murray Seidenbaum, their former next-door neighbor, who has set himself up in this cloak-and-dagger show as a nightclub owner. When a gangster arrives and begins shooting up the place, Murray is fatally hit and as his final act, gives Roy and Helen his remote-control device that he has somehow smuggled into the HVTV world. Roy and Helen use it to escape but they lose the remote control after they find themselves in the next channel on a period piece show called "Off With His Head" set in 18th Century France where Roy and Helen are aristocrats being chased by Parisian citizens during the French Revolution. They are reunited with Crowley, who has survived the wolf attacks despite the loss of his right leg and arm, who tries to help them escape, but they are soon captured by French soldiers and taken to a town square to be executed.

Darryl and Diane try to help by hacking into the television set's cable database to access the system just as the countdown to Roy and Helen's time is to expire. They manage to prevent Roy from being beheaded long enough for the clock to expire and Roy and Helen are saved by the clock to announce the end of their 24-hour trial period in HVTV.

This infuriates Spike to the point that he makes good on Roy's contract, releasing him but not Helen as she was not in the system under contract. Spike then transports himself into the HVTV world and spirits Helen away to a Western site where he ties her to a cart sitting across a railroad track for her to be run over by an oncoming train in order to lure Roy back into HVTV to kill him once and for all. Roy re-enters the HVTV system to save Helen, bringing his own remote control with him, allowing him to control their journey. Roy battles Spike in a climatic chase across the HVTV system shows from a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" spoof, to "Driving Over Miss Daisy", to "Underworld Professional Hockey", to a medieval show were Roy's remote control gets destroyed. With assistance from Darryl who throws a fencing sword at the satellite dish to fight with Spike, they battle across a medieval mansion where Roy tries to get at Spike's remote-control device.

Roy confronts Spike in a Salt-N-Pepa music video where after both men chase Spike's remote control around, Roy finally gets a hold of the device. Spike then makes a last-minute offer to have Roy work alongside him, but Roy refuses and banishes Spike back to the medieval world. Roy then uses the remote to save Helen from being run over by a train in the western movie, but the demonic production team at HVTV have locked out all inter-channel escape options. Roy and Helen eventually realise they can still escape for good by pressing the remote off, doing so moments before the speeding steam train crashes through the cart, creating a burning explosion as the dynamite explodes.

Roy and Helen are evicted from the television set moments before it sucks their neighbor's abusive and vicious Rottweiler into the television set, and it destroys itself. Under the command of Crowley, Spike gets eliminated by the Rottweiler in the medieval world while Crowley shows up to watch, and Pierce takes over Spike's executive position in the HVTV control room. In the final scene, Roy, who has learned a valuable lesson after his adventure, dramatically cuts back on his television viewing, leaves his job as a plumbing salesman and has taken a new job as a fencing teacher, in which he advises one of his students that watching too much television can get you into trouble.