First watched : 1977
One of the great TV phenomena came to the UK at the start of 1977.
The series which had three glamorous women working undercover as private detectives to solve tricky cases taken on by unseen boss Charlie ( voiced by a pre-Dynasty John Forsythe ) was a hit on both sides of the globe. The three original Angels, Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett Majors and Jaclyn Smith became instant superstars. Jackson was already a popular actress through a series called The Rookies which I'm not sure ever came over here so she had the most clout. Fawcett Majors was best known for her supporting role in Logan's Run and being the wife - for the time being - of Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors while Smith was a complete unknown.
As well as being classic seventies kitsch, the series was riotously un-pc from the first line of the credit sequence describing them as "three little girls" to the loose fitting outfits and frequent recourse to swim and night wear in the stories which led to the tag of "jiggle TV". The phrase was actually coined by a sour rival of the ABC company who made the series but it stuck. Fawcett herself endorsed this view with the comment "When the show was number three I figured it was our acting . When it got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra". It should be noted that Jackson, though no frump, usually stayed pretty covered up to emphasise her role as the brains of the trio.
Though they had equal billing Fawcett got the most attention and her lion's mane style has become a seventies icon. After just one series she wanted to leave and try for movie fame. After a protracted legal struggle she was allowed to go, on condition that she made half a dozen guest appearances in future series which were spread over seasons Three and Four . She was capably replaced by Cheryl Ladd playing her sister. Audiences accepted her and the series' high ratings continued.
In 1978 Jackson was offered the role of the mum in Kramer vs Kramer but ABC would not accommodate her. Meryl Streep got the role and won an Oscar. The enraged Jackson quit the series at the end of Season Three and from then on it was in trouble . She was replaced by another blonde , Shelley Hack but the ratings declined and she was bumped for the final series and replaced by the drop-dead gorgeous but modestly-talented Tanya Roberts.
The series was put out of its misery in 1981. In the wake of two successful film versions in the noughties, the second of which gave Smith a cameo role , a new TV series without any of the original cast was made in 2011. It was a complete disaster with only four of its eight episodes aired although E4 broadcast them all over here.
The various Angels had broadly similar careers after the show, largely remaining in TV rather than the big screen. Fawcett was the only one who remained a high profile celebrity through her long relationship with Ryan O Neal which lasted to her death in 2009. Jackson had another successful TV series with Scarecrow and Mrs King before her career was afflicted by breast cancer, something that has also affected Smith. Hack stopped acting in the nineties to become a media consultant working in newly democratised countries and a lobbyist for the Pacific Coast area. Roberts landed the biggest film role of any former Angel as the Bond girl in A View To A Kill but her performance was savaged and thereafter her films were usually soft porn affairs. She did maintain a career in TV until the mid-noughties.
No comments:
Post a Comment