Classic TV

Classic shows that have almost been forgotten, as well as shows that should probably have been forgotten

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Hardcastle & McCormick (1983-1986)

4 August 2011 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Hardcastle & McCormick

1983 was a time of change in the US. Ronald Regan was president. The power of technology was on the ascendant. Manliness was back in vogue. And people were worried about law and order and being soft on crime. Indeed, one frequent claim made was that guilty criminals were escaping the justice system on technicalities.

Hardcastle & McCormick was one of the shows that latched onto all those concerns and prospered for three seasons on ABC as a result. The show was created by TV wunderkind Stephen J Cannell, who wrote 450 episodes of TV shows, produced or exec-produced over 1,500 episodes, and created or co-created no fewer than 40 television series including The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Wiseguy, 21 Jump Street, Silk Stalkings and The Commish.

Its set-up was relatively simple: Judge Milton C Hardcastle (Brian Keith) is about to retire. However, he’s kept track of 200 criminals who escaped on technicalities and he plans to go after them in retirement and get them locked up. His final case is Mark McCormick (Daniel Hugh Kelly), a car thief who steals a prototype sports car, the Coyote X, which was designed by his best friend before he was murdered. Through a legal technicality, Hardcastle is able to take McCormick into his custody and McCormick accepts rather than go to jail. With McCormick living in the judge’s guest house, together they go after those 200 crims, helped just a little – and with a compulsory number of award-winning stunt scenes – by the Coyote X.

Curiously, the show had three different title sequences and two different theme tunes. The more famous and the best theme tune was ‘Drive’, written by another TV wunderkind, Mike Post, who composed the themes for shows including Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, LA Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, CHiPs, MacGyver and Murder One. That accompanied the first season’s title sequence:

Then for the second season, the show switched to a dreadful country music theme.

Viewer outcry was enormous and it wasn’t long before ‘Drive’ was reinstated for the rest of the second season as well as for the third season.

While no classic of writing, Hardcastle & McCormick‘s appeal was relatively clear: as well as the camaraderie between the two leads, this was largely an adrenaline-fuelled show, with some surprisingly well directed high-speed car scenes involving the Coyote X, in actuality a Manta Montage kit car based on the McLaren M6GT with a Porsche 914 engine.

All the same, after three years, Hardcastle & McCormick‘s appeal had diminished enough that it wasn’t renewed for a fourth season. But for adrenaline junkies, it is at least all all available on DVD.

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Jake and the Fatman (1987-1992)

21 July 2011 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Jake and the Fatman

Yes, time for a show’s whose title wouldn’t get it past the approval stage these days: Jake and the Fatman. The story of an obese police officer from Honolulu who becomes an LA district attorney (that would be ‘Fatman’) and Jake, the special investigator he works with, Jake and the Fatman was one of a long slew of not especially good cop shows that dominated 80s TV (and, ahem, CBS in general to this day). It’s pretty much what you think – Jake and “the Fatman” fought crime each week, with Jake eyeing up lots of LA women along the way and the Fatman being gruff. He also brought his bulldog along with him to help.

Strangely, the show was originally set in LA, but come seasons two, three and four, it moved to Hawaii. Then it moved back again to LA midway through the fourth season and stayed there until the end. It also launched a spin-off show, Diagnosis Murder, the repeats of which still dominate daytime TV in the UK.

But have some weird old titles to confirm you that yes, William Conrad was overweight.

Classic TV

Lost Gems: It’s Your Move (1984-85)

7 July 2011 Rob Buckley Post a comment

It's Your Move

Today, Jason Bateman is a big movie star. If you never caught him in Arrested Development on Fox, in just the last few years, you could have seen him in Paul, The Switch, Juno, Couples Retreat, Up in the Air, The Invention of Lying, State of Play and Hancock, and he’s in the forthcoming Horrible Bosses and swapping bodies with Ryan Reynolds in The Change Up, too.

But what you might not know is that Jason Bateman was actually a child star back in the 80s, getting his first shot at the big time in Little House on the Prairie. Look, here he is getting a spanking.

But in 1984, Bateman got to star in his own show, It’s Your Move. Created by Michael G Moye and Ron Leavitt, the show was actually a surprisingly dark affair for an early 80s sitcom – although since they went on to create Married… With Children maybe it’s not that surprising. In it, Bateman played Matthew Burton, a teenage conman who’s always scamming someone at school, his relatives or anyone else he could make money from.

Then a writer called Norman (David Garrison who also went on to Married… With Children) moves in across the hallway and gets friendly with Burton’s widowed mother, Eileen (Caren Kaye). Matthew gets protective and tries to scam Norman into abandoning interest in Eileen… only to discover that Norman is just as much of a scam artist as he is.

As the show’s title suggests, subsequent episodes are then essentially a chess match between Matthew and Norman, Matthew trying to sabotage Norman and Eileen’s relationship, Norman trying to foil Matthew, each without exposing his true nature to Eileen.

The series was well received, but unfortunately was up against ratings dynamo Dynasty. As a result, the show was retooled after episode 14. Matthew tries to help his mother at work, but by doing something blatantly illegal. Eileen finds out and as a result, Matthew can’t scam anyone any more. After that, the show became a regular sitcom. All the same, ratings didn’t improve and the show was eventually cancelled after 18 episodes.

It’s not well remembered, it’s not available on DVD: it’s a Lost Gem. All the same, you can watch pretty much every episode – and a very young Jason Bateman – on YouTube. And here’s the pilot episode

Weird old title sequences: The Wild Wild West (1965-69), The Man From UNCLE (1964-68), I, Spy (1965-68), Get Smart (1965-69)

30 June 2011 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Normally for “Weird old title sequences” I like to confine myself to one show at a time. Had I remembered the show I was going to do this week, I’d be doing that right now. But I can’t and I forgot to write it down, even though I’m always forgetting things, so instead, I’m going to do a brief whistlestop tour through a whole host of title sequences for 60s spy shows which are gone, but thankfully not forgotten.

Here’s a tribute video for the shows I’m going to feature – The Wild Wild West, The Man From UNCLE, I, Spy, and Get Smart – but there are tributes to shows I’ve already covered, including The Avengers, The Champions, Honey West and Mission: Impossible as well, which should show you just how popular spy shows were in the 60s (and that’s barely scratching the surface).

Continue reading “Weird old title sequences: The Wild Wild West (1965-69), The Man From UNCLE (1964-68), I, Spy (1965-68), Get Smart (1965-69)”

Classic TV

Lost Gems: Pulaski (The TV Detective) (1987)/The World of Eddie Weary (1990)

23 June 2011 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Pulaski

Cast your mind back to the 80s if you will. In the realm of crime fiction, ITV had largely been known for its police series: The Gentle Touch, The Professionals, The Sweeney et al. You know, great big action-packed, gritty affairs. Over on the Beeb, crime fiction had largely been confined to more sedate detective shows, such as Shoestring, The Chinese Detective, Bergerac and the like.

Now over on ITV on Saturdays, between 1984 and 1986, is ratings juggernaut Dempsey & Makepeace, in which upper class, blonde English police detective Harriet Makepeace is assigned a new partner, the streetwise New York police lieutenant James Dempsey and together they fight all manner of criminals in an implausible, slightly silly series of adventures, while flirting a lot in way that veers dangerously close to sexual harassment in Dempsey’s case.

Now for some reason, the BBC thought it would be a cracking idea to take the piss out of ITV, while simultaneously launching a new private detective show. And to do this, they decided to hire Roy Clarke, best known as the writer of Last of the Summer Wine but also of the comedy police show Rosie. His cracking wheeze – and it was cracking – was “let’s go meta”.

So he dreamed up the idea of Pulaski (which in the US was known as Pulaski: The TV Detective). This saw the eponymous hero, ‘Pulaski’, an upright, brave former New York Catholic priest turned private detecitve, fighting crime in a series of ridiculous adventures with the help of his beautiful blonde, upper class English wife, ‘Briggsy’. And their adventures were ridiculous… because they were just a TV show inside this particular TV show. Once the director shouted cut, they were just actors again – a married couple now no longer really on speaking terms. And Larry Summers (David Andrews), the actor who plays Pulaski? A pampered, selfish movie star, forced to slum it in the UK – a complete dick and a drunk.

But this complete dick of a guy lets the role mess with his head. While he’s filming this show, he decides that he’s also going to help solve real crimes, just like the Pulaski he plays – his motto at all times effectively being ‘What Would Pulaski Do?’. And he’s going to drag his wife, Kate Smith (Caroline Langrishe), along for the ride.

Here’s the first few minutes of the first episode to give you an idea of what the show was like. There’ll be more later:

Continue reading “Lost Gems: Pulaski (The TV Detective) (1987)/The World of Eddie Weary (1990)”