Monday 16 November 2015

277 Starsky & Hutch


First  watched  :   5th  February  1977

My  mum  had  been  watching  this  on  Saturday  nights  after  we'd  gone  to  bed  for  a  while . I've  got  a  Boots  Scribbling  diary  for  1977,  the only  year  where  I  religiously  kept it  up  for  the  full  twelve  months ,  and  the  entry  for  5th  February  1977  reads  "Mum  let  me  stay  up  to  watch  Starsky  and  Hutch "  which  would  indicate  it  was  the  first  time.  This  of  course  coincided  with   David  Soul  ( Hutch )  being   at  the  top  of  the  UK  charts  with  Don't  Give  Up  On  Us  Baby.  The  irony  of  Hutch  getting  all  that  teenybop  attention  was  that.  if  the  11-13  year  old   girls  at   my  school  were  anything  to  go  by, it  was  Paul  Michael  Glaser  ( Starsky  )  who  was  the  real  heart-throb.

Starsky  and  Hutch   emerged  a  couple  of  years   after  the  demise  of  Alias  Smith  and  Jones  and  transferred  the  idea  of  two  young  male  buddies   to  a  crime-ridden  neighbourhood  of   1970s  Southern  California  and  put  them  on  the  right  side  of  the  law  as  police  detectives.  It  broke  new  ground  by  making  them  subordinate  to  an  Afro-American  police  chief, Captain  Dobie  ( Bernie  Hamilton )  . The  series  also  tapped  into  contemporary  urban  black  culture  with  the  character  of  streetwise  informer  Huggy  Bear  ( Antonio  Fargas )  and  a  jazz  funk  soundtrack  including  the  memorable  theme  tune.

Soul  and  Glaser  were  capable  young   actors  who  hadn't  quite  capitalised  on  early  breaks. Soul  was  best  known  as  the  leader  of  the  vigilante  rookie  cops  in  Magnum  Force  while  Glaser  had  a  good  role   in  Fiddler  On  The  Roof  as  a  student  revolutionary.  They  gelled  perfectly  as  the  unlikely  pair; Starsky  being  an  impulsive  Jewish  New  Yorker   and  Hutch  a  more  laid  back  mid-Westerner.

The  series  quickly  established  itself  as  both  the  most  exciting   and  the  funniest  - the  episode  where  they're  hunting  a  supposed  vampire  is  absolutely  hilarious  - of  the  seventies  detective  shows.  However  after  the  second  series  ended  in  1977   a  widespread  concern  about  the  effects  of  TV  violence  led  the   producers  to  tone  down  the  action  and  delve  into  the  pair's  personal  lives  to  a  greater  extent.  While  still  highly  watchable  the  series  did  lose  some  of  its  edge  after  that.

Although  he  approved  of  the  changes  Glaser  became  increasingly  dissatisfied  with  the  show  and  throughout  the  latter  two  series  the  producers  struggled  to  keep  him  on  board  , making  a  number  of  contingency  plans  to  keep  the  series  going  if  he  bailed  out. Glaser's  desire  to  quit  became  public  knowledge  and  the  audience  for  the  final  series  began  to  drift  away. He  therefore  got  his  wish  when  a  proposed  fifth  series  was  cancelled  in  1979.

Neither  of  the  pair   have  had  a  particularly  easy  time  since then. After  a  run  in  so-so  TV  movies  and  mini-series,  Soul  ended  up  in  jail  for  alcohol-fuelled  domestic  abuse   in  1987  although  he  has  resurrected  his  acting  career in  England  which  led  to  his  bizarre  involvement  in  the  1997  General  Election  campaign  in  the  constituency  of   Tatton.  Glaser's  preferred  career  as  a  director  largely  ran  into the ground  after  The  Running  Man  in  1987  and  he  lost  both  a  wife  and  child  to  AIDS.  Fargas  has  maintained  a  steady  career  as an  actor  while  Hamilton  more  or less  retired  in  the  mid-eighties  and  pursued  a  low-key  career  in  music  until  his  death  in  2008.
 

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