V (TV miniseries 1983)

V was a two-part 1983 American TV mini-series which gave birth to a franchise. It originally aired on the NBC network. I must confess that I had until now never seen the mini-series or any other parts of this franchise.

Flying saucers suddenly appear over major cities across the globe. But it’s OK. They’re friendly. We know they’re friendly because that’s what they told us.

They look just like regular humans except they always wear sunglasses. And they sound just a bit odd.

The aliens become known as Visitors. Everybody is excited to welcome them. No-one has the least suspicion that they might not be friendly. I have to say that I thought this was wildly implausible. Even with the media assuring everyone that the aliens are our friends nobody has any doubts?

It’s also odd that apparently the CIA, the FBI and the military take no interest in the arrival of the aliens. In fact the government plays no part whatsoever in this series.

The aliens then proceed to act in a way that would have made a five-year-old child suspicious but nobody does get suspicious.

Pretty soon, without anybody realising it, the aliens are in complete control. There are fifty gigantic mother ships and thousands of the Visitors. An invading army has been welcomed in.

TV journalist Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) develops some suspicions. He sneaks aboard one of the mother ships and discovers the truth about the alien Visitors. Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend has become the chief PR officers for the aliens.

Eventually a few people figure out that they’ll have to take a stand but their numbers are few and they’re disorganised.

While there are a few weaknesses to this mini-series there are some real strengths. The aliens do not take control by taking over the military. They take over the mass media instead. Once you control the mass media you control society.

Of course a critical difference between this series and an alien invasion series like The Invaders is that because of their weird voices the aliens in V cannot just blend in with humans. They cannot infiltrate human society. They must find another way to seize control and hijacking the media makes sense. And it does give this series a different flavour compared to other alien invasion series. The aliens have to operate in the open whilst using deception and manipulation.

And of course there are journalists who are only too happy to sell us out and help the invaders. There are also cops who are willing to sell out.

There’s a realistic dark and cynical edge. When the chips are down your co-workers, your friends, your family and your neighbours are all likely to betray you if the media tells them to. The basic human instinct for social conformity makes things easy for the alien invaders.

There’s a very effective atmosphere of paranoia and the paranoia levels rise inexorably.

There’s also a mind control angle which is handled skilfully. Giving the aliens unlimited mind-control powers would have made them too formidable. Their mind-control powers have limitations. It was essential that the aliens be seen as extremely difficult but perhaps not entirely impossible to defeat. 

I don’t want to any more about the ending other then the fact that it allowed for a follow-up series.

There are some pretty reasonable action scenes.

The mother ships are not miniatures but matte paintings (they had neither the time nor the money to build miniatures). When judging the special effects you have have to keep in mind (in this and in all science fiction TV series up to the 90s) that in 1983 people were going to be watching V on relatively small cathode ray TV sets. The deficiencies in the special effects would have been a lot less obvious than they are today when viewed on Blu-Ray. Some of the special effects are very iffy and have a cheap 80s arcade game look.

The budget was huge by 1980s television standards but the series was rushed into production so time was more of a problem than money.

Jane Badler as Diana makes a fine sexy villainess. The acting overall is quite adequate.

V is quite entertaining if you enjoy alien invasion stories (which I do) although I think the alien invasion idea was handled better in several other series both American (such as The Invaders) and British (such as Undermind). V is recommended.

V is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was Hammer Films’ last desperate effort to save itself. Their final feature film was To the Devil…a Daughter in 1976. Due to unfortunate financial decisions, failed to make them any money. The British film industry was on its last legs and things were about to get worse, with home video about to arrive and drive the final nail in the coffin. Hammer’s decision to move away from movies into television was actually quite sound.

It’s a decision which should have worked. Hammer House of Horror, made in 1980, was well received and the ratings were healthy. The American network was initially keen on the idea of a second season. Sadly the deal fell through. Without the US network onboard the series was doomed.

Hammer House of Horror did demonstrate that Hammer could do TV horror extremely well. And by the late 70s it was becoming obvious that TV was more suited to Hammer’s style of horror. At the beginning of the 70s Hammer had realised that they needed to vary their formula, and that they needed to add more blood and more sex and more nudity. Their late 1960s efforts were starting to seem a bit tame and a bit stodgy. Hammer responded by making a series of extremely interesting early 70s horror films, with the extra blood, sex and nudity. But Hammer never seemed entirely comfortable with the idea of erotic horror. It just isn’t British. They preferred to leave that sort of thing to the Europeans who were very comfortable indeed with the concept. On TV however they could make the kind of horror that they were comfortable with, a bit bloody but not too much so and with just enough sexiness.

With Hammer House of Horror they hadn’t extricated themselves from their financial mess but the results of the series were still moderately encouraging. In 1984 they tried again, with Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.

This new series was a co-production with Fox’s TV arm in the US. That caused problems from the start. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was too rushed, and to please their American partners the series had to be squeaky clean, bland and inoffensive. If Hammer were uneasy about sex they were to find that American TV preferred to pretend that sex just didn’t exist.

The episodes have a 70-minute running time, presumably at the insistence of the American partners who intended the series to be screened as a mystery movie series. The running times are definitely too long in some cases. Some of the episodes are a bit slower than they should have been, with not quite enough plot to justify the movie-length running times. But it's only a problem with some episodes.

The Americans presumably also insisted on imported American stars. 

Episode Guide

The Sweet Scent of Death was directed by Peter Sasdy. It was written by Brian Clemens so it’s no surprise that it plays out exactly like an episode from his 1970s anthology series Thriller. If you’re a Thriller fan you’ll know what to expect. The plot twists are done reasonably well but some key aspects of the story are a bit too predictable.

Dean Stockwell (an actor I have never been able to warm to) plays an American diplomat in England. Shirley Knight plays his wife Ann. Someone seems to be out to get Ann, although it’s not clear just how serious the threat might be. The prologue suggests to us that there’s a connection to events in New York ten years earlier.

There’s an obvious suspect on whom the police focus their attention but the viewer will immediately realise that there are three or possibly even four alternative suspects.

Peter Sasdy directs the episode competently. It’s an OK episode but just a bit on the bland side.

A Distant Scream, written by Martin Worth and directed by John Hough, is more interesting. An elderly man is dying. He spent the lest few decades of his life locked up for the murder of his girlfriend years earlier. He has always proclaimed his innocence and has been obsessed with finding the real killer. Close to death, he is transported back in time (presumably by supernatural or paranormal means) and is able to witness the two days leading up to his girlfriend’s murder.

The old man is Michael (David Carradine). At the time of the murder Michael was a freelance photographer spending a holiday at a fishing village with his girlfriend Rosemary (Stephanie Beacham). She’s a married woman with whom he is having an affair.

Michael as an old man is not only able to witness the events leading up to the tragedy, he can interact with the people involved. Rosemary can see him. He can talk to her. At times others can see him and speak with him. Even his younger self sees him at one point.

This of course involves one of those famous time travel paradoxes. If he can interact with people in the past then he should logically be able to change the past. I was rather interested to see whether the scriptwriter (Martin Worth) was aware of the time travel paradox and if so how he was going to deal with it. Or whether he was simply going to ignore it.

The weak link in this episode is David Carradine. He just can’t act. There’s another problem - as a dying old man he looks younger healthier than he does as his younger self. Stephanie Beacham’s performance on the other hand is quite solid.

The Late Nancy Irving, written by David Fisher and directed by Peter Sasdy, concerns a lady golf champion. She has diabetes but it’s always been well controlled. She also has an incredibly rare blood type.

Then she wakes up in hospital. She is told that she crashed her car. She has only vague garbled memories of some kind of car accident. She is assured that her injuries are not all that severe. What worries her is that she feels rather confused. Her mind seems foggy. She is a bit disturbed by the bars on the windows of her private room but she is given a reasonably plausible explanation. The bars date from a time when the clinic treated mental patients who might try to throw themselves from windows. Of course she isn’t being locked in and she’s silly to think such a thing.

Gradually she becomes a little worried. Why hasn’t she heard from her fiancé? Why hasn’t she heard from anyone? Why does she feel so weak? And why are they giving her blood transfusions? And then she sees a story on the TV news and she starts to get the picture.

The main problem here is that while the basic idea is excellent there are not enough plot twists to sustain a 70-minute running time. The excessive length weakens the suspense. Cristina Raines in the lead rôle is also just a little bland. This is an OK episode that could have been a great episode.

Black Carrion was written by Don Houghton and directed by John Hough. Journalist Paul Taylor (Leigh Lawson) is hired to write an article about the Verne Brothers. They were (according to the story) a hugely successful pop duo who disappeared in 1963. Totally disappeared. No-one knows what happened to them. They were never heard from again. To Taylor it’s obvious that this is a promising story. Researcher/photographer Cora Berlaine (Season Hubley) has been assigned to assist him. Cora has a prodigious knowledge of 60s pop music.

Cora is troubled by memories. Disturbing but totally disjointed memories. Are they real memories? She thinks so but of course she can’t be sure.

The search for the Verne Brothers takes Paul and Cora to the village of Briar’s Frome. It was rumoured that the Verne Brothers were going to buy the palatial manor house there. The village is deserted. It’s a ghost town. But weird things are happening in Briar’s Frome, and Cora’s memories are getting more vivid.

The plot is all over the place and there’s some silliness but there are lots of great ideas (and even original ideas) in this episode. And lots of creepy atmosphere. I enjoyed this episode a great deal.

In Possession was written by Michael J. Bird and directed by Val Guest. Frank Daly (Christopher Cazenove) and his wife Sylvia (Carol Lynley) reach their hotel room only to find that it’s already occupied by a woman and an old lady. When they fetch the manager to sort things out the woman and the lady have vanished. Then Frank sees them again by the river, and again they vanish.

Frank and Sylvia start seeing various people in their flat. People who are not there. But they seem very real. Slowly it becomes obvious that in some way Frank and Sylvia are witnessing events that lead to a murder. Is this a shared dream? Or is it something that happened in the past?

Whether you consider this episode to be a haunted house story depends on how broadly you define that term. Whether this counts as a haunted house story doesn’t really matter. It’s a fascinatingly weird and disturbing tale with some real moments of terror and creepiness. An excellent episode.

And the Wall Came Tumbling Down was written by Dennis Spooner and John Peacock and directed by Paul Annett. An old deconsecrated church is being demolished by the Ministry of Defence. There’s a mysterious accident on the site, and we then get a flashback to events in 1949, events involving a coven of devil-worshippers. The devil-worshippers are betrayed by a young man. More than three centuries later another young man has a peculiar interest in this old church.

As you may have guessed the world of the 1980s is about to encounter evil from the 17th century. Maybe not wildly original but it plays out in a very satisfactory manner with plenty of gothic atmosphere and some real creepiness. Caroline Trent (Barbi Benton) works for the government but her real interest is in the occult. She isn’t sure what is going on with that old church but she knows that Dark Forces are at work. The site manager Peter Whiteway (Gareth Hunt) doesn’t believe her, at least not at first.

This one has an interesting cast. There’s Gareth Hunt (best-known for The New Avengers), the wonderful Peter Wyngarde from Department S and Jason King and there’s Barbi Benton, best known as a Playboy model. Hunt is very good, Wyngarde is sinister and charismatic and Barbi Benton is quite OK. It all builds to a satisfying conclusion. A very good episode.

Child's Play was written by Graham Wassell and directed by Val Guest. Mike and Ann Preston are a young couple with a daughter. They wake up in the middle of the night to discover something very odd and disturbing. They have been walled in. Their whole house has been walled in. And it’s getting rather hot. The telephone doesn’t work. The radio doesn’t work. The TV works, but every station has nothing but a station identification logo and it’s the same logo on every channel.

They haven’t noticed it yet but that logo has appeared on all sorts of items in the house. It’s getting hotter and they’re close to giving way to panic.

Mike comes up with various plans to break through the wall but it seems impossible. The two of them also come up with possible explanations. The actual explanation is one they hadn’t considered, and it’s pretty clever. There are some clues but I certainly didn’t guess the solution. This is a nicely scary creepy story, a bit like a good Twilight Zone episode. A very fine episode.

Paint Me a Murder was written by Jesse Lasky Jr and Pat Silver and directed by Alan Cooke. Painter Luke Lorenz finishes a painting then gets into a rowing boat and heads out to sea. He then smashes through the planking of the boat. His body is not found. Suicide is assumed.

He wasn’t a very successful painter when alive but now that he’s dead his paintings start to fetch huge prices. That’s good news for his widow Sandra (Michelle Phillips). And for art dealer Vincent Rhodes (David Robb).

The major early twist won’t come as much of a surprise but the twists do keep coming. I liked this episode.

Tennis Court was written by Andrew Sinclair and Michael Hastings and directed by Cyril Frankel. This is a haunted tennis court story. A middle-aged woman, Maggie (Hannah Gordon), inherits an old but moderately palatial country house. She has recently married Harry Dowd, a Member of Parliament. In the grounds of the house is an indoor tennis court. Slightly odd things happen on that tennis court. It has some connection to events many years earlier, during the war. A British bomber was shot down. One member of the crew survived. They other did not.

The local vicar, John Bray (Peter Graves), knows something about that wartime incident. At the time he was a Canadian volunteer in the R.A.F. and he was there.


Maggie is becoming increasingly terrified of whatever is in that tennis court.

Not one of my favourite episodes, but entertaining enough.

The Corvini Inheritance was written by David Fisher and directed by Gabrielle Beaumont. This one starts with a young woman, Eva Bailey, encountering a peeping tom. She is unharmed but rather scared. And it starts with a robbery at a fine art auction room.

Frank Lane (David McCallum) is in charge of security at the auction room. He also happens to live in the same building as Eva. Frank offers to help make Eva’s flat more secure. They have dinner together. Frank is divorced and a bit lonely but he’s a nice guy.

Frank has a big security job on. The Corvini inheritance, a fabulous collection of jewels amassed in Italy during the Renaissance by a family of professional assassins, is to be auctioned. It will be in the keeping of the auctioneers for several weeks. It’s an obvious target for professional thieves. The most valuable piece in the collection is a necklace with a grim history. It may be cursed.

There are two plot strands here. Someone seems to be stalking Eva, and there’s the possibility of an attempt to steal the Corvini jewels. I liked this one a lot. There’s some nice ambiguity here.

Czech Mate was written by Jeremy Burnham and directed by John Hough. This is a straightforward Cold War spy thriller but it’s nicely executed with plenty of cynicism and paranoia. Susan George plays an Englishwoman, Vicky Duncan, caught up in a web of deceit and betrayal behind the Iron Curtain. In this story there is no difference whatever between the good guys and the bad guys. People disappear and corpses turn up and Vicky discovers that she can’t trust anyone.

Susan George and Patrick Mower (as her ex-husband) give excellent performances and it’s always nice to see Peter Vaughan in anything. This episode is a bit out of place in this series but it’s entertaining.

Last Video and Testament was written by Roy Russell and Robert Quigley and directed by Peter Sasdy. Victor Frankham (David Langton) owns a vast electronic empire. He has a heart condition and he has a much younger wife, Selena (Deborah Raffin). A much younger wife who may be looking elsewhere for certain pleasures which her husband can no longer provide. Victor’s doctor has been encouraging him to have an operation. An operation which will restore his vitality in the bedroom, which may not be to Selena’s liking.

Victor has a surprise in store for Selena, in the form of a videotape.

This one has quite a clever central idea and it works very nicely.

Final Thoughts

This is an extremely good series, much much better than its reputation would lead you to believe. Highly recommended.

The German Pidax DVD boxed set includes all thirteen episodes, in English with removable German subtitles. The box cover suggests that it only includes eleven episodes but it definitely includes all thirteen. The transfers are perfectly acceptable.

Hannay (1988-89)

Hannay is a thirteen-episode (spread over two seasons) TV series featuring the hero of John Buchan’s classic thrillers, Richard Hannay. The series serves as a kind of prequel to The 39 Steps.

The episodes really have nothing to do with Buchan, apart from borrowing his hero. They’re all original stories. If you’re expecting the stories to be in the same class as Buchan’s novels you’ll be disappointed.

The stories are all over the place as far as tone is concerned. The best episodes are very lightweight and rely to an embarrassing degree on unlikely narrow escapes carried out by methods that are both silly and corny. These stories are much more like a cross between an Edwardian Boys’ Own Adventure Paper tale and an episode of Ripping Yarns. But they are fun in their own way. Other episodes are much more humourless and try to be serious. Many episodes are not spy tales at all but mysteries, some good while others are not so good.

The series does have one huge asset - Robert Powell as Hannay. He played Hannay in the 1970s movie version of The 39 Steps and he was by far the best thing about that film. In fact I’d go so far as to say that Robert Powell is the definitive screen Richard Hannay. Even better than Robert Donat in Hitchcock’s 1935 movie (which I rate as one of the ten best movies ever made).

At least he should be a huge asset. Unfortunately his performances are uncharacteristically restrained. A bit too restrained. If you’re going to put Robert Powell in an adventure series then you expect him to go totally over-the-top. You expect him to sparkle. But he doesn’t.

I can’t help thinking this series would have been much much better had it been made fifteen years earlier. For starters a younger more vigorous Robert Powell would have been a lot more fun. And it would have featured fewer ludicrously anachronistic social attitudes.

The biggest problem with this series is that not a single character behaves as you would expect people to behave in 1912. They’re all 1980s people wearing period costume. All the political, social and cultural attitudes are pure 1980s.

The characters we’re supposed to find sympathetic never express a single thought that is at variance with the orthodoxies of late 1980s social attitudes. This has the effect of making them seem self-satisfied and at the same time lacking in any actual personality. The characters we’re supposed to find unsympathetic come across as cardboard cut-out villains. Richard Hannay himself has no real personality whatsoever.

The TV series was shot entirely on videotape. Even the location shooting (of which there’s quite a bit) was shot on videotape. In spite of this looks it looks quite handsome. This is British TV at the tail end of its golden age so the costumes are terrific and it takes advantage of the abundance of superb character actors in Britain at that time.

Episode Guide

The first episode, The Fellowship of the Black Stone, opens with Hannay getting shot in South Africa. He is left for dead and is found clutching a black stone. His would-be assassin was notorious German spy Count von Schwabing (Gavin Richards). And a fine melodrama villain he turns out to be. He doesn’t actually twirl his moustache before carrying out dastardly deeds but you know that he’d like to.

On the ship carrying him back to Britain Hannay encounters the Earl of Haslemere (David Waller) and the earl’s daughter, the Lady Anne. Hannay is charmed by Lady Anne, to say the least.

Hannay had worked for the British Secret Service but had left their employ some years earlier. He finds himself caught up in a spy drama anyway, with the Germans hatching dastardly plots and poor Hannay getting himself repeatedly captured, tortured and threatened with certain death. Fortunately, although the German secret service is very efficient their agents have never been taught to tie a knot properly. Hannay keeps escaping by slipping out of his bonds.

The highlight of this episode is Charles Gray as a senior Scotland Yard man.

It’s all breathless stuff with a reasonable amount of action. A fine episode.

In A Point of Honour Hannay meets Lady Madrigal Fitzjames on a train. They get off at the wrong station and then arrive at the wrong country house. The staff assume they are the honeymooning couple whose arrival they were expecting. Hannay and Madrigal decide to have a bit of fun. They pretend they really are the honeymooners.

As it happens there’s an immensely valuable diamond necklace sitting in the safe. And things will soon get complicated and dangerous.

Historical anachronisms are always a problem in series such as this. I have to say that in this episode I just didn’t buy Lady Madrigal’s behaviour. The story takes place shortly before the First World War. We assume it’s around 1912. I don’t believe any well brought up lady at that time would have risked her reputation so recklessly. It would have been social suicide and would have wrecked any chance she might have of making an even halfway respectable marriage. Had she been one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s then I might have found it plausible. But not in 1912.

It’s still an amusing, clever and entertaining story with a certain amount of charm.

In Voyage into Fear Hannay is accosted in an art gallery by a young girl who insists that there is a dangerous man who is trying to kidnap her. She insists that Hannay should pretend to be her father, to get her out of the gallery and back home safely. Hannay is inclined to think it’s all nonsense until he realises that the girl might be telling the truth.

Then things start to go badly wrong, Hannay and the girl are drugged and they wake up on board a ship, having absolutely no idea where they are. This is a really fun episode.

Death With Due Notice is a murder mystery story. Several men have received anonymous threatening letters, all in the form of quotations from Shakespeare. A routine episode that doesn’t really have the right flavour.

Act of Riot is one of the worst pieces of television I have ever seen in my life. A clumsy embarrassingly obvious script, stodgy direction, heavy-handed political messaging, atrocious acting, leaden pacing, a total lack of action, dull and humourless. Robert Powell is clearly bored and uninterested and I can’t say that I blame him.

The Hazard of the Die is better. At least it’s a spy story. The wife of a Cabinet Minister loses heavily at the casino at Monte Carlo and is trapped into espionage. The first problem is that there really aren’t enough plot twists. It’s a bit predictable. The second problem is a total lack of action. This is an adventure series. We’d like to get some adventure. It all falls just a bit flat.

So the first season of six episodes is a mixed bag. The first three are terrific fun. The next three are pretty dull.

The second season opens with Coup de Grace. Hannay gets involved with a woman and he’s charmed by her, and he meets charismatic hard-driving businessman and gambler Sir Marcus Leonard (Anthony Valentine). And Hannay gets caught in the middle. With Anthony Valentine as guest star you assume you’re going to be in for some fun and Valentine certainly delivers the goods. What’s strange is that Robert Powell allows himself to be totally overshadowed by Valentine. It’s a crime plot rather than an espionage or adventure tale but it’s a decent story.

The series gets right back on track with The Terrors of the Earth. Not only is it a spy story, it’s a totally outrageous spy tale. There’s actually some action and Hannay gets to be much more energetic and pro-active than usual. And Robert Powell’s performance has some zest. A very entertaining episode.

In Double Jeopardy a rich dying man entrusts Hannay with some diamonds. Hannay is to pass them on to a man named Desmond Leigh but only on certain conditions. This puts Hannay in a very awkward spot. Leigh has failed to meet those conditions but he has a young wife. Then the plot gets really convoluted with a murder and a kidnapping and Hannay under suspicion and all manner of conspiracies. The plot might be convoluted but it’s quite nicely constructed with some fine twists. A very good episode.

The Good Samaritan gets off to a promising start. Hannay is in central Europe, he’s on a train and he’s just met a beautiful mysterious woman. There’s a shady oilman of indeterminate nationality. And oh yeah, there’s a corpse. And a vanishing lady. It’s hard to go wrong with those ingredients. This is a terrific episode which movies along at break-neck pace.

In That Rough Music an old friend of Hannay’s dies and leaves his estate and fortune to his half-African daughter. A totally unconvincing story told in a very clumsy manner.

The Confidence Man is a major improvement. Hannay comes to the rescue of a music-hall proprietress menaced by an extortion racket. Hannay’s initial attempt to help ends in disaster. He realises he’s going to have to be much cleverer and he turns out to be a rather goof confidence trickster, all naturally in a good cause. A lightweight episode but it moves along briskly and it’s fun.

Say the Bells of Shoreditch involves a disappearing bridegroom. The young man works for his father who runs a shipping and insurance empire. There’s something strange going on in the company with all sorts of rumours flying around.

The jilted bride is Hannay’s goddaughter so he feels compelled to find the missing young man. Hannay discovers an ingenious and dangerous conspiracy.

Final Thoughts

Most of the episodes are quite entertaining but the series just doesn’t quite ring true. It’s very very uneven. The bad episodes are absolutely terrible but the good ones are very good. And the good episodes do outnumber the bad.

The biggest problem is that the series can’t decide if it wants to be fun or if it wants to be serious. Hannay is a slight disappointment but it’s still worth a look.

Network have released the complete series on DVD.

Knight Rider season 3 (1984-85)

Knight Rider returned for its third season in 1984. Knight Rider was one of the three great American action/adventure series of the early 80s, along with The A-Team and Airwolf. They were all thoroughly enjoyable and while the first season of Airwolf was the supreme achievement of the genre Knight Rider was still enormous fun.

The premise was pretty darned cool. An undercover cop is badly wounded but his life is saved by a mysterious tycoon. The cop gets a new identity and a new partner - an ultra-high tech car named K.I.T.T. (pretty much a mobile fortress) - and a new career as an unofficial crime-fighter. He works for a kind of vigilante justice outfit (but a respectable one) called the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG), headed up by a suave if somewhat pompous Englishman named Devon Miles (Edward Mulhare).

The series had just the right mix of science fiction, fun, action, stunts, car chases, gadgets, humour, occasional seriousness and romance. Getting that mix right is quite an art and it’s something that the show’s creator, Glen A. Larson, was pretty good at.

David Hasselhoff may not be a great actor but he was perfect for this series. There’s one thing that has to be said for him - his performance is always enthusiastic. The car itself has its own personality and qualifies as the fourth regular cast member. It’s not easy to have chemistry with a machine but the chemistry between Michael and K.I.T.T. really does work.

For the third season some cosmetic changes were made to K.I.T.T.’s interior and the car gained even more formidable capabilities but the big news for fans was that Bonnie was back. Bonnie Barstow (played by Patricia McPherson) was the genius girl scientist/engineer who maintained K.I.T.T. and added various refinements to the car. She left after the first season to be replaced by April Curtis (Rebecca Holden). Rebecca Holden was an OK actress, April was pretty, she wasn’t an irritating character and I don’t think any Knight Rider fans actively disliked her but she wasn’t Bonnie. Bonnie just seemed to be an essential part of the team. So, wisely, the producers brought her back for the final two seasons.

K.I.T.T. is not just a super-car but a super-computer as well. The trick to making this series work was to ensure that K.I.T.T. could play a real rôle in each episode. It wasn’t enough to just throw in a car chase every time, there had to be something that needed doing that Michael could not possibly do without K.I.T.T. and could not possibly do with an ordinary car - something that required K.I.T.T.’s array of gadgetry and ability to do things that no conventional car could do. And ideally Michael had to get himself in a jam from which only K.I.T.T. could rescue him.

Of course this was the 80s so there had to be babes as well. Every case seems somehow to involve at least one glamorous young person of the female persuasion. The difficulty is that the whole concept of the show is that (apart from K.I.T.T.) Michael is a loner so you always know that any budding romance isn’t going to go anywhere. So any romances have to end one way or another before the closing titles but without making Michael appear to be a heel. This is something that the series managed to do pretty successfully.

A lot of K.I.T.T.’s super-abilities are in fact pretty much magic. They’re totally impossible and there’s no attempt to make them even the slightest bit plausible. K.I.T.T. can do just abut anything. This should be a weakness of the series but somehow it never seems to matter - Knight Rider, like The A-Team, has very much a comic-book feel.

Knight Rider has had several DVD releases. The Mill Creek complete series releases on DVD and Blu-Ray are extremely good value. The transfers on the DVD set (which is the one I own) are pretty good.

Episode Guide

Season three kicks off with the two-parter Knight of the Drones. Which starts promisingly - a prisoner (a killer named C.J. Jackson played by cult movie icon Jim Brown) breaks out of jail with the help of a cassette player that is really a robot, and a self-driving car. And there’s a glamorous female diabolical criminal mastermind named Margo Sheridan. She has plans for Jackson but neither Jackson nor the viewer has any idea what her plans actually are. Since Jackson killed Michael’s predecessor at FLAG the Foundation is taking a very keen interest in his recapture. A fine episode to kick off season three.

In The Ice Bandits diamonds belonging to the estate of an elderly lady and earmarked for the Foundation are stolen. Michael discovers that he is not the only one able to get a new face, and he also discovers that monks are not always what they seem to be. A fun episode.

Knights of the Fast Lane introduces Michael to the world of banzai racing - illegal street races for the super-rich, with super-cars. A young woman is a victim of a hit-run driver and she happens to be the daughter of a cop who was Michael’s partner when he was a rookie in the police force. And Michael used to know the daughter so this case is very much a personal matter for him and he thinks banzai racing is involved. So naturally we get lots of automotive action in this story. Plus football is involved, so K.I.T.T. has to learn to play football. And where there’s football there will be cheerleaders so we get lots of scantily-clad cheerleaders. Car racing, murder, football, babes. Is there anything else that the target audience for this series could possibly want? It works for me.

Halloween Knight I've talked about elsewhere.

In K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R. Michael and K.I.T.T. come up against the K.I.T.T.’s original prototype, K.A.R.R. (Knight Automated Roving Robot). K.A.R.R. looks the same as K.I.T.T. and has much the same capabilities but unfortunately he also has a bad attitude. K.A.R.R. was found buried in the sand by a guy with a metal detector. He was foolish enough to dig up his find and K.A.R.R. thereupon offered to take him for a ride. It’s going to prove to be quite a ride. K.A.R.R. made his first appearance in season one and he wants revenge. The evil twin idea has been used countless times and using it for a super-car works pretty well in this case. It culminates in an epic machine vs machine showdown. Good stuff.

Michael and K.I.T.T. battle cattle-rustlers in The Rotten Apples. Rancher Rebecca Hammond isn’t really a rancher, she’s a child psychologist. And her ranch isn’t really a ranch, it’s a kind of halfway house for New York street kids. But if those cattle-rustlers can’t be stopped she’ll lose the ranch. K.I.T.T. has a disagreement with a horse and has to battle not one but two giant trucks. Michael has to ride a mechanical bucking bronco. The silliness level is off the scale in this episode but it’s good fun silliness. It’s like a western but somehow it works and it’s a lot of fun.

In Knight in Disgrace Michael is framed by a big-time New Orleans gangster named LaSalle. Michael is kicked out of the Foundation but LaSalle offers him a job - the job being to steal K.I.T.T.. Surely Michael is not going to go to work for a mobster? OK, so this one is a bit predictable but it’s OK.

In Dead of Knight Michael is on the trail of a criminal selling deadly chemicals to revolutionaries. An attempt to kill Michael ends with a girl dead by mistake, which gives him an added incentive to crack the case. There are deadly orchids and there’s a race against time with two lives at stake, including Michael’s. Not a bad episode, even with K.I.T.T.’s jokes.

The episode is called Lost Knight but it’s not Michael who is lost, it’s K.I.T.T. - he gets electrocuted and loses his memory. They were chasing some bad guys who’d stolen some new super high explosives. K.I.T.T. doesn’t know who he is any more but he befriends a boy. And the boy could be a key witness.

In Knight of the Chameleon Michael is up against a renegade arms dealer known as the Chameleon. He’s a man of a thousand faces, a master of disguise. The Chameleon has just escaped from custody and he has two objectives - to pull off a huge arms coup and to kill Michael Knight. Of course you know that at some stage he’s going to disguise himself as Michael. The gee-whizz jetpack is amusing and finally someone has found a real use for K.I.T.T.’s ejector seat mechanism. Good fun.

The garment trade is the scene for murder in Custom Made Killer. A series of murders in fact, all involving a deadly custom car. This episode is a good blend of action and glamour and it gives K.I.T.T. a worthy opponent in the form of the fairly scary killer car. Good stuff.

In Knight by a Nose Michael gets mixed up with a girl and a racehorse. Maxine’s beloved horse King Jack, a rising champion, has to be put down after a fall. Michael suspects that whatever happened it wasn’t as simple as that. A fairly innocuous episode in which K.I.T.T. develops a gambling habit.

Junk Yard Dog pits Michael against a ruthless toxic waste dumper but it’s K.I.T.T. who ends up in real trouble. He gets dumped in the toxic waste and it may be the end of the line for him. Even if he can be fixed, will he have lost his nerve? Can a car lose its nerve? Apparently so. This one could have been an embarrassing misfire but somehow it works. It works because David Hasselhoff makes it work - he really makes us believe that Michael believes that K.I.T.T. has emotions and since Michael believes it we believe it.

In Buy Out a company specialising in ultra high tech armoured limousines is about to make an important sale when their sales demonstration is spectacularly sabotaged. Michael has to find out what was behind the disaster. The employees were planning a buy out of the company so they stand to lose everything if the company goes under. Plenty of explosions, plenty of opportunities to show off K.I.T.T.’s capabilities and plenty of automotive mayhem. A good solid episode.

In Knightlines an employee at a high-tech corporation is accidentally killed while stealing company property, although maybe that wasn’t what he was doing and maybe it wasn’t an accident. It’s all about bugs and it’s a pretty good episode.

In The Nineteenth Hole the grand-daughter of one of Devon’s friends is organising a car race in a small town but someone is trying to stop the race. And they’re prepared to kill her to do it. The story also involves gangsters and golf, and it’s pretty entertaining.

Knight & Knerd is an obvious attempt to cash in on the unexpected success of Revenge of the Nerds. The Foundation gets a new recruit, a nerd named Elliott. The case involves the use of a new top-secret laser in a diamond robbery. It’s strictly played for broad comedy and you’ll either love it or hate it. I’m afraid I hated it. Rather cringe-inducing.

Ten Wheel Trouble deals with an attempt by a big trucking combine to put independent operators out of business, and with a trucker who may or may not have resorted to murder in order to stop them. Michael also has to deal with a precocious and feisty fifteen-year-old girl who’s as hot-headed as her big brother (the one accused or murder). It’s a pretty standard episode but there’s plenty of big rig action and K.I.T.T. takes on a truck loaded with ten tons of concrete.

An old friend of Bonnie’s is found dead in Knight in Retreat and since he was involved in top-secret work there’ll have to an investigation. Bonnie wants Michael to do the investigation even though she might not like what he finds out. There’s a glamorous lady criminal mastermind with lots of glamorous henchwomen. There’s a plot to steal a missile and a guidance system. It’s typical Knight Rider over-the-top nonsense and it’s fun.

In Knight Strike a cache of impounded weapons has been stolen from a police lock-up. The cache includes a couple of super high tech laser rifles. The case takes Michael to a survivalist convention were he gets to play with cool guns and a cute blonde. And there’s another babe who seems to want to play as well. It’s standard Knight Rider stuff but it’s executed with style and energy.

Knight Rider goes to the circus in Circus Knights. And there’s murder and mayhem. Michael decides to go undercover as a daredevil, complete with super car. I just love TV shows and movies with circus settings. K.I.T.T. gets to jump through the ring of fire, there’s a sexy tiger lady and there’s a great fiery action scene at the end. It’s good stuff.

Final Thoughts

The third season of Knight Rider is just as much fun as the first two seasons. Michael and K.I.T.T. remain a great team and there’s the right mix of action, humour and pretty girls. It’s great comfort TV. Highly recommended.

I've also reviewed season one and season two of Knight Rider.

Magnum, P.I. season 3 (1982)

The third season of Magnum, P.I. went to air in late 1982 and early 1983.

More than most television series a private eye series has to have a charismatic lead actor. Magnum, P.I. has no problems there. Tom Selleck’s middle name is charisma.

If it’s going to keep us interested over multiple seasons such a series also has to have a protagonist who is more than just a stereotype. And while Thomas Magnum might initially seem like a stereotyped self-centred playboy it’s soon evident that he’s actually a pretty complicated guy. Thomas went through some very bad stuff in Vietnam and he’s still haunted by it. That gives the character a touch of darkness and a touch of pathos.

What makes this series unusual for a P.I. series is that its great strength is the ensemble acting. There are four regular characters, all of them different and all of them interesting. And the interactions between them are subtle and complex. Magnum is a guy who is only too happy to shamelessly manipulate his old wartime buddies TC and Rick into giving him outrageous amounts of help in his cases, often at considerable expense, inconvenience and even danger to themselves. But he’d do the same for them if they needed help. He’s not really selfish. He is a very demanding friend, but he’s a loyal one as well. Magnum can be childish and petulant, and then turn on a dime and behave in a noble and generous way. And as much as Higgins irritates him, when the chips are down he’ll stand by Higgins just as he’ll stand by his wartime buddies. Magnum is a flawed hero but he’s a hero just the same.

As in the earlier seasons there’s an obsessive preoccupation with the shadow that the past is able to cast over the present. The strength of this series is that this theme is explored so often, but never in quite the same way twice. In fact it’s a series that is constantly trying to take familiar themes and give them an original twist. Sometimes this is risky, but it’s a risk worth taking.

One important point has to be made about watching TV series on DVD. There’s a real danger of indulging in too much binge-watching. If you’d been a Magnum, P.I. fan back in the 80s you’d have seen the 162 episodes over the course of eight years. If you watch too many episodes (and this applies to every TV series) in too short a space of time you can overdose. This is important particularly when you get to the third season of a series. 

Like Hawaii Five-O this series tends to blend crime and espionage elements, sometimes in the same episode. It’s one of the things that makes Magnum, P.I. a slightly unusual private eye series.

Thomas Magnum is a guy who appears to be big, loud and dumb but he isn’t. He’s smart and he’s sensitive. And you can say the same thing about Magnum, P.I. as a series. Like Magnum the man it’s deceptive. It seems superficial but actually it’s thoughtful and it has some substance. It’s intelligent fun.

Magnum, P.I. is also incredibly stylish. Like Mannix it has that glossy polished look that American television perfected in the late 60s.

This seems at first to be a traditional private eye series but Magnum, P.I. often takes unexpected risks and unconventional approaches. More surprisingly, the risks usually pay off. It really has a distinctive flavour of its own. The polished and very stylish surface has led to its being very underrated. And in its third season it’s still taking risks.

Episode Guide

Did You See the Sun Rise? opens the season in a very impressive manner. It’s one of the many Vietnam-related episodes and it’s one of the best. A guy Magnum served with in Vietnam is convinced that a Russian named Ivan is out to kill him. Ivan had been attached to the North Vietnamese Army and Magnum and his buddies had encountered him when they were P.O.W.s and he’s one nasty customer. But why would he be trying to kill one of them now? And why is Colonel Buck Green, a Marine intelligence officer for whom Magnum has an undying hatred, involved? This is a very dark episode (and Magnum, P.I. had some very dark moments).

In The Eighth Part of the Village Thomas picks up a carton of books from the docks for Higgins. But the carton doesn’t contain books, it contains a young Japanese woman named Asani. She is the daughter of a man named Sato, a Japanese officer Higgins had befriended during the war. But why are a couple of hoodlums now trying to kill Thomas? And why is it so hard to find Asani’s husband who is supposed to be in Honolulu? Not to mention Asani’s stories of the cruelty of her father, even though Higgins assures Magnum that Sato is a very kind and honourable man. It’s a decent episode.

In Past Tense TC’s chopper is skyjacked and used in a daring prison escape and TC and Higgins find themselves held hostage on a small island by a bunch of desperadoes. The question is why a small-time white-collar criminal nearing the end of his sentence would stage a violent prison break, and what does it have to do with Magnum? Magnum will have to find the answer to both questions. A good episode.

There are quite a few Magnum episodes dealing with Thomas’s nightmare memories pf the Vietnam War. In Black on White it’s Higgins who has to confront such memories. He was in Kenya in 1953 during the Mau Mau Rebellion. Lots of terrible things occurred at that time and one of those things involved his regiment. Now three members of the regiment have been murdered, by the same methods the Mau Mau used. A certain member of the regiment, Edwin Clutterbuck by name, is on the list to be killed. And so is Higgins. But why? This is a welcome change from the Vietnam episodes although it explores similar themes. Some thing you just can’t ever forget. A very good episode.

Flashback is a dream episode. Most of the episode is one long extended dream sequence. This is the kind of thing that is usually best avoided but in this instance it’s done very cleverly and with style and wit. Magnum wakes up to find that it’s 1936 and his client has just arrived in Hawaii, by flying boat. Her father is going to be charged with murder. Magnum has to prove his innocence. He has T.C. and Rick to help him, only they’re not quite the same people that they are in 1982. Similar, but not quite the same. He has Robin Masters’ car, only now it’s a 1927 Bugatti. Magnum knows it’s a dream. The viewer knows it’s a dream. But it’s a dream that has unexpected significance. A clever idea superbly executed, and it looks fabulous with the 1930s cars, planes and fashions. It’s offbeat episodes such as this that make this such an intriguing series.

In Foiled Again Higgins becomes reacquainted with an old enemy from his school days, and there is no hatred that can compare to the hatreds formed in schooldays. He also becomes reacquainted with an old love from the same period of his life, and these two encounters lead to disaster. A good episode. 

In Mr. White Death an ageing professional wrestler by that name (played by Ernest Borgnine) saves Magnum from being beaten up. The wrestler loses his job and his apartment as a result so Magnum puts him up in the guest house. You’d expect Higgins to be appalled but amazingly he and Mr White Death get on like a house on fire. The wrestler wants Magnum to find his long-lost son. Magnum becomes suspicious that there’s more to it, and there is, but the plot twists are genuinely clever and offbeat. Ernest Borgnine is in fine form, Rick gets knocked unconscious every few minutes and it all builds into an emotional climax. This is vintage Magnum.

In Mixed Doubles Thomas and Rick are playing in a pro-am tennis tournament and Thomas likes the idea because he thinks he’ll be partnering an old flame, Ginger Grant, who’s now the top women’s tennis player in the world, But instead he has to partner an obnoxious brat named Carrie Reardon, a rising star on the women’s circuit. He has to partner because she’s been threatened and he has to act as her bodyguard. The case gets complicated and Magnum’s personal life gets mixed up in it as well. It’s another Magnum episode dealing with the fact that we can never quite escape the past and we can’t put it right either. Quite a good episode.

With Almost Home we have another episode dealing with the past. Magnum is hired by cocktail waitress Bridget Archer who wants to clear her father’s name. He was court-martialled by the Navy 40 years ago. Her case seems hopeless and Magnum knows the smart thing would be to put Bridget on the next plane back to Omaha, but Magnum does have a weird thing about the Navy and honour and all that sort of thing. As a result he has to deal with an enraged admiral and an annoyed gangster, and he manages to get the Ferrari stolen. It’s an episode that deals not just with the past but with conflicting loyalties and differing interpretations of honour, themes that this series often tackles. And in this case tackles very well. A very good episode.

In Heal Thyself a nurse named Karen whom Magnum knew in Nam is now a doctor and she may be facing a triple murder charge. Thomas is sure she’s innocent but she did crack up after Nam so that makes things more awkward for her. She’s not even sure herself that she’s innocent. This one has a decent mystery plot with multiple plausible suspects (including Karen herself). Another story with Vietnam flashbacks but it’s a good episode.

In Of Sound Mind a former client named MacLeish is killed in a plane crash and leaves his $50 million fortune to Magnum, but there’s a catch. Magnum has to find MacLeish’s killer. Not an original idea but it’s given some new twists and it’s executed with enormous wit and style. The ending is very very clever. A fun lighthearted episode, and a very very good one.

The Arrow That Is Not Aimed is typical Magnum, P.I. - you take a conventional private eye plot and then add some wildly unconventional elements. A valuable Japanese porcelain on its way to Robin Masters is stolen. What’s unconventional is that it was stolen by ninja, and the courier was a samurai named Tozan and he’s going to commit ritual suicide if the plate is not recovered. Magnum learns about the samurai code of honour, and Tozan learns a few things about himself as well. A very good episode.

In Basket Case Magnum and T.C. are coaching rival kids’ basketball teams and Magnum has a secret weapon - a girl named Willie. But Willie has a few secrets. This is an interesting low-key episode focused on questions of loyalty and trust. It avoids sentimentalising and works surprisingly well.

The Birdman of Budapest is a mad Hungarian ornithologist and Magnum has to find him so that Robin Masters’ old high school English teacher Elizabeth can interview him for her book on ornithology. But there’s something to this story that Magnum doesn’t know. And Magnum has to find the ornithologist before Higgins is driven to murder. There’s also a homicidal macaw. Quite a good episode.

Magnum gets married in I Do? but of course you’re going to suspect that it’s not quite so straightforward. And it isn’t. In between squabbling with his new bride Marsha MacKenzie he has to find out why so much money has gone missing from the MacKenzie corporation. It’s not a complicated plot but it’s well executed and the repartee between Magnum and Marsha is amusing.

Forty Years from Sand Island is another story dealing with the past. Forty years earlier Japanese-Americans were interned in a camp on Sand Island in Hawaii. One night something terrible happened, and that long-ago event could get Higgins killed. Maybe sometimes it’s best to forget the past but some things can’t be forgotten. Another strong episode.

In Legacy from a Friend Magnum acquires a partner. Sort of. Very reluctantly. It starts with Magnum’s friend Marcus drowning. Only that doesn’t make sense. Marcus was a lifeguard. And always penniless, so where did he get the very expensive brand new sports car he’d been driving? Then Tracy turns up with a story that she was Marcus’s fiancée but then she says she’s an undercover cop but Tracy changes her story numerous times. Either way she forces herself on Magnum as a partner. The comic interchanges between Magnum and Tracy are the highlight of the episode but there’s also a decent plot which will eventually explain the sports car, and Marcus’s death. Magnum P.I. is at its best in the darker episodes but the more comic stories such as this can be quite delightful. And while Tracy is irritating she’s also likeable even if as a detective she can be more of a hindrance than a help.

Two Birds of a Feather is another episode with Vietnam flashbacks. During the war Magnum was trapped by Vietcong forces in Cambodia and he only escaped because a Marine Corps Phantom pilot, Sam Houston Hunter, bent the rules and gave him air support. Now Hunter has crashed a light plane in Robin Masters’ tidal pool. Magnum and Hunter never actually met in Nam but they both have a weird feeling that they should know each other. What puzzles Magnum is what he found in the wreckage of the light plane.

Sam Hunter is the kind of character who pops up regularly in Magnum, P.I. - he’s a nice guy but he’s a dreamer. One of his dreams is connected to the fateful day in Nam more than a decade earlier. This is an unusual episode in that Magnum plays virtually no part in the story. Maybe there were thoughts of a spin-off series featuring Sam Hunter?  It’s at best an OK episode (the plot is a bit thin). Magnum, P.I. without Magnum falls a bit flat. There are some good flying sequences though.

The guest star in ...By Its Cover is Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel in The Rockford Files. And in this episode he plays Rod Crysler, a character who is simply a slightly older version of Angel. But it has to be said that he’s the sort of character Margolin plays incredibly well. Rod was in Nam with Magnum. Now he sells encyclopædias and he persuades Magnum to deliver a crate of encyclopædias for him, except that the crate actually contains marijuana. Rod has an explanation for this. He has an explanation for everything. Magnum should just call Five-O but he owes Rod from Nam and maybe Rod isn’t lying this time. There’s some comic relief provided by Rod’s parole officer who is really excited about getting involved in Magnum’s plan to get Rod out of trouble because she’s never had the chance to play at being a real cop. It’s basically a fun episode (and it does have a very Rockford Files flavour) and it works.

The Big Blow is a hurricane that is just about to hit Oahu. That however is not going to stop Higgins from going ahead with Masters’ spring equinox party, one of the highlights of the social season. The party attracts three unexpected guests - two prison escapees one of whom has his pregnant wife in tow. There's also another complication that only Magnum knows about. He has a plan for dealing with that complication but it goes wrong. But that’s OK. He has another plan. But first there’s the problem of the two escaped convicts with guns. And there’s also the problem of the hurricane, and the phone lines being down and the power being out. There are both thriller and mystery elements in this story and both are handled pretty well. An excellent episode.

Faith and Begorrah begins with Magnum tailing someone when he runs into an Irish priest and the priest looks a bit like Higgins. So Magnum tells Higgins about the encounter and Higgins realises, to his horror, that his half-brother Father Paddy McGuinness is in Hawaii. It’s not just that Father Paddy is a somewhat disreputable priest with a fondness for whisky. The real embarrassment is that Father Paddy is illegitimate. That sort of thing bothers Higgins and it bothers him even more that Magnum knows about it. Father Paddy is looking for a relic stolen from his church in Northern Ireland and he blames the British and then another relic, this one a British relic in the keeping of Higgins, is stolen. Meanwhile Magnum is trying desperately not to find evidence that a boxer’s wife has been unfaithful.

This is a story in which not much happens and yet quite a lot happens. There’s no great mystery to be solved. What happens is all character stuff. It’s all very light-hearted. It’s the kind of quirky episode that makes this series so fascinating. I liked it.

Final Thoughts

Along with Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Mannix, The Rockford Files and Harry O this is one of the great American private eye series. Very highly recommended. 

I’ve also reviewed season one and season two.

a second look at Hart to Hart season 1 (1980)

I did a brief writeup of the first season of Hart to Hart a while back and I was a bit lukewarm about this series. Having watched a few more episodes I’m inclined to be a bit more generous.

Hart to Hart was created by Sidney Sheldon who as well as having a successful career in television was also one of the bestselling novelists of all time. Neither his TV series not his novels were ever going to be described as art but they weren’t supposed to be. Sheldon was perfectly content to be an entertainer and laugh all the way to the bank.

The executive producers on Hart to Hart were Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, who were of course also responsible (among many other series) for Charlie’s Angels. And Hart to Hart strikes me in much the same way that Charlie’s Angels does. Both shows have a winning formula. Both Hart to Hart and Charlie’s Angels have glamorous charismatic leads, and both feature comic relief (provided by Lionel Stander and David Doyle respectively) that can be a bit overdone. And both series suffer somewhat from lazy writing. You often find yourself thinking that a bit more effort put into the scripts might have paid dividends. Both both series were hugely successful. Which tends to indicate that Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg probably knew a whole lot more about making successful television than I do.

In fact it’s possible that in the case of both shows the secret of their success was that they didn’t try too hard. They were television comfort food. They didn’t alienate viewers (who just wanted something relaxing and entertaining to watch) by trying to be too clever or too arty.

And both series succeeded by creating an aura of glamour, by having very attractive leads and by offering good-natured fun. And occasionally both series would come up with episodes that were unexpectedly good.

Hart to Hart (to an even greater extent than than Charlie’s Angels) is all about glamour. This was after all a concept dreamed up by Sidney Sheldon - take rich glamorous beautiful people and have them murder each other, with style. In this case you have a husband and wife who are rich and famous and don’t need to bother with work unless they feel like it (which they rarely do). They amuse themselves by solving murders. Being rich they don’t need to get paid for this, and being rich they can rely on the police indulging their hobby. It was a formula that obviously appealed to viewers. And it does work. Jonathan and Jennifer Hart are rich and famous but they’re not obnoxious about it. They’re likeable and really they’re just like any normal married couple (who happen to be fabulously rich and famous).

Glamour is something that doesn’t really exist in modern television or movies. Sure there are rich people, but real glamour is a different thing. Real glamour comes from sublime self-confidence, it has to be effortless, and Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers have it. This is the glamour that movie stars used to have. They don’t make movie stars like Robert Wagner any more and even in the 80s they didn’t make movie stars like Robert Wagner any more. That’s why his performance works. The producers wanted a Cary Grant for the 80s and that’s what they got. His career started in 1950 and seventy years later he’s still working. His earlier series It Takes a Thief is well worth checking out. Stefanie Powers had already demonstrated her suitability for this kind of light-hearted television with The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. back in the 60s.

Compared to other hugely successful 80s TV series Hart To Hart is not so obviously 80s. The stories could just as easily have taken place in the 1930s and the characters could easily have been taken from golden age Hollywood movies. It’s a series that takes place in its own universe where money and class never go out of fashion.

What’s also great about this series is that there’s no fashionable irony, and no snarkiness.

The DVD release includes a documentary which features many of the key people behind the series - Sidney Sheldon, executive producer Leonard Goldberg, writer Tom Mankiewicz and the two stars, Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers.

Episode Guide

In Which Way, Freeway? A rich jeweller is murdered and the key witness is Freeway (the Harts’ dog). Actually here are two key witness, Freeway and his doggie friend Suzie. And the murderers will have to do something about those witnesses. The plot is really pretty thin and a bit far-fetched but there’s an excellent golf cart chase and there’s a luggage cart chase as well. And there are cute doggies in danger, to provide the necessary suspense (and emotional investment for the audience). It has no right to work, but somehow it does.

In Downhill to Death Jennifer is doing something unusual. She’s working (she’s supposedly a journalist). She’s in a restaurant interviewing a punk rocker when she overhears a conversation between a man and a woman in a neighbouring booth, and the subject of conversation is murder. And the man is an old friend of the Harts. Could he really be plotting to murder his wife? This one has a reasonably twisty plot and (something of a defining characteristic of this series) an unusual chase, this time with snowmobiles. Very entertaining.

The Raid is more of an action episode. A husband-and-wife scientist team is kidnapped in a mythical South American country. They work for Jonathan and they’re also friends of the Harts. The local police won’t help, nor will the State Department so Jonathan teams up with an old buddy (a would-be revolutionary but a good revolutionary not one of the bad ones) to foil the kidnappers. A routine episode.

Things take a decided turn for the silly in Sixth Sense. A young female psychic working for Jonathan has a precognitive vision of her own murder. This was 1980, when ESP was still fashionable and some people still thought it was just vaguely plausible. That vision turns out to be both true and false. The plot is a bit complicated and very silly and very goofy. To a large extent it’s an excuse for the two leads to really ham it up, with Jonathan playacting as a Sam Spade-style hardboiled private eye and Stefanie Powers really going to town as a gypsy fortune-teller. If you’re going to do an episode such as this you have to be prepared to go totally over-the-top and embrace the fun and the goofiness and that’s what Wagner and Powers do (Powers is particularly good). And it actually works. It really does come across as charming and fun.

A woman tries, unsuccessfully, to kill Jennifer’s hairdresser in Does She or Doesn't She? Barry (the hairdresser) doesn’t seem the type to get involved in that kind of romantic drama. He likes women but he won’t have anything to do with married women. And Sally Hutchins is married. The Harts figure that maybe something else is going on here and that’s enough to get them interested. Quite a decent plot in this episode. Good stuff.

Cruise at Your Own Risk takes the Harts to sea. There have been burglaries on several of Jonathan’s cruise liners (yes apart from all the other things he owns he owns three cruise liners). The insurance company is being difficult so the Harts set out to solve the burglary themselves. Jonathan will pose as a businessman taking his mistress on a cruise (with Jennifer playing the mistress). It’s fun to hear guest star John Hillerman (from Magnum, P.I.) talking with his natural American accent. OK, the plot is a bit thin but it’s enjoyable fluff which is what this series is all about.

The question in Too Many Cooks Are Murder is why anyone would want to try to murder a French chef. The answer is that he’s made a discovery, but no-one knows what the discovery is. All the Harts (who happened to be present when the attempt was made) know is that it’s something worth killing for. This one works quite well.

In Death Set the Harts’ friends Darryl and Blair Craddock are having marital problems. Darryl is starting to think that maybe his very rich family was right about Blair marrying him for his money. It all leads to a shooting tragedy. The Harts witnessed the shooting but even they don’t know what really happened. They are however determined to find out. What they uncover is a decent little mystery. You don’t want to think too much about some of the details of the plot but all in all a good solid season finale.

Final Thoughts

Watching Hart To Hart is like skipping dinner and going straight to dessert. Maybe it’s not nutritious but it goes down very easily. It aims to glamour and effortless charm and that’s what it achieves. This series has definitely grown on me. Recommended.

Columbo Goes to the Guillotine/Murder, Smoke and Shadows

In 1978, after an astonishingly successful run on NBC, Lieutenant Columbo finally hung up his crumpled raincoat for good. Or so it seemed. But it was not the end after all. In 1989 Columbo returned in a series of TV movies, this time on ABC, which continued intermittently until 2003. I approached this later incarnation with trepidation, fearing that it would be a disappointment.

It actually gets off to a pretty good start with an ambitious locked-room mystery, Columbo Goes to the Guillotine. It combines stage magic (always a winner in my book), psychic phenomena and some delightful mockery of the CIA.

We have to wait a long time for Columbo to make his entrance but the setup for the murder is extremely clever, genuinely puzzling and thoroughly entertaining. Elliott Blake (Anthony Andrews) is a psychic and he’s being studied at the Anneman Institute for Psychic Research. This time they’re convinced they have a real psychic on their hands and they’re very excited. The Pentagon and the CIA are excited as well - this will give them a vital weapon against the commies (the episode went to air in early 1989 when the Soviet Union still existed).

However the CIA wants to be sure. And what better way to be sure than getting renowned magician and sceptic Max Dyson (Anthony Zerbe) to try to debunk Blake. Dyson has exposed countless fraudulent psychics and phoney mediums and if Blake is using trickery then he’s the man to uncover that trickery. Of course you can see how tis might lead to murder, and it does. And it’s a wonderfully ingenious murder.

The way in which Columbo unravels the mystery is entirely satisfying. The vital clues are provided by a fifteen-year-old aspiring magician named Tommy. Introducing a precocious kid is always a risk but in this case it works. Tommy’s most important contribution comes when he tells Columbo that it’s not that difficult to figure out how a trick is done as long as you always keep in mind that it is a trick.

The murder is almost a perfect murder but there are a couple of tiny details that to Columbo’s mind just don’t quite fit. The plot is excellent, combining intricacy with the expected battle of wits between Columbo and the suspect.

Anthony Andrews is pretty good as the suspect constantly dogged by the rumpled homicide lieutenant. Pretty good, but I can’t help thinking this episode might have worked better with the two major supporting rôles reversed. Anthony Zerbe is a more colourful actor than Andrews and might have been a more formidable opponent for Columbo. Zerbe is an absolute delight as Max.

Oddly enough the one minor weakness in this episode is Peter Falk whose performance seems a bit mannered and a bit overdone. It had been eleven years since he’d played the part and he doesn’t seem entirely convincing. In the 1970s episodes Columbo was an outrageous but believable character, a very smart cop who was a bit eccentric but who carefully played up his eccentricities to put suspects off-guard. In this 1989 incarnation he just seems too obviously an actor. It’s almost as if he’s forgotten how he used to play the rôle and he’s trying too hard.

The magic stuff is terrific and the explanations of how the tricks were worked are fascinating.

All in all Columbo Goes to the Guillotine is surprisingly successful. Maybe not quite equal to the very best of the earlier episodes but still very good and very enjoyable.

Murder, Smoke and Shadows went to air in late February 1989. Once again there’s an attempt to make the setting as colourful, and as artificial, as possible. This time it’s the world of movies. Whizz-kid film director Alex Brady has a problem. A few years earlier when he and his friends Lenny Fisher and Buddy Coates were aspiring film-makers still making ultra low budget movies Lenny’s sister Jenny was killed when a stunt went wrong.  Alex panicked and left her to die. Lenny didn’t know about this but he does now and he’s arrived in Hollywood to wreck Alex’s career. Alex isn’t going to let that happen.

As in Columbo Goes to the Guillotine the murder is devious and ingenious. Alex’s attempts to cover his tracks are less clever. He knows a lot about making movies but as a murderer he’s at best a gifted amateur.

It just hasn’t occurred to Alex that the police are professionals at this sort of thing and they have vast resources. The ability of the police in general and Columbo in particular to piece together the story of a murder is as impressive as Alex’s ability to tell a story on film.

It’s another clever plot even if the theatricality is overdone at times. The ending is very theatrical indeed but it’s in keeping with the feel of the story.

Again Peter Falk’s performance seems not quite right. He just isn’t relaxing into the part they way he used to. Columbo’s malicious glee when he nails his suspect also seems a bit out of character.

A Columbo story depends a lot on the quality of the villain. Fisher Stevens as Alex is quite good but there is one big problem. At twenty-five Stevens was ridiculously young to be playing the part of a film director so well established that books have been written about his films. He looks even younger than twenty-five and comes across as being more like a precocious high school kid than a seasoned Hollywood veteran. Setting so much of the episode in Alex’s private little “boys’ club” hideaway with its train sets and pinball machines and soda fountain just makes him seem even younger. If only Stevens had been ten years older his performance might have worked splendidly - he certainly plays Alex as the kind of self-centred manipulative narcissist you’d expect to find in Hollywood.

Alex is also a Columbo villain who loses his cool quickly and seems cocky in a teenaged way rather than the type of smooth confident murderer who might present a real challenge to Lieutenant Columbo.

Steven Hill plays a small rôle as a ruthless producer whom Alex has made the mistake of crossing and Hill's assured performance, while very entertaining, also serves to make Alex seem like a naughty schoolboy.

So this episode has some problems. It does have its strengths however. The film studio setting is used very effectively and the story is basically excellent. So it’s a mixed bag but still enjoyable.

Was it a good idea to resurrect Columbo? Probably not. Both these episodes are brave attempts and they’re reasonably successful but the magic is not quite there.