‘When they met, it was murder’: Some cheesy TV memories of decades past
On my most recent appearance on a trivia episode of CBC Radio’s The Signal with Adam Walsh, I called back to a show that had a particularly cheesy quality.
The actor Lionel Sander, playing Max, laid it on thick for the intro of Hart to Hart, which featured a catchphrase that has lasted well into the 21st century: “Because when they met, it was murder!”
Hart to Hart launched in 1979, and the theme — right down to the chicka-chicka-chicka disco rhythm — is very much of its time.
The show featured a crime-solving industrialist (you read that right) and his freelance journalist wife (not quite as powerful a profession, in my own experience) who each week would do glamorous things.
It was bit like The Thin Man for the Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? era, at least at the start.
Conceived in the late Seventies, Hart to Hart got a jump on the Eighties: it was flashy, conspicuous-consumption fluff, and paired well with Dallas and Fantasy Island. Soon after came Dynasty, Remington Steele and other shows that delivered some light thrills and looked better on the screen than the scripts probably read on the page.
I remember watching Hart to Hart as a teenager, but I gave up on it soon enough. Years later, Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers teamed up for Hart to Hart reunion movies, but I never tuned in.
I’ll leave you with that cheesy promotional pic at the top, of Wagner and Powers clinking wine glasses in bed (with an ice bucket!) while each holds up a gun.
Against intruders? Master criminals? So much to smile about!
