Before there was Moonlighting and Scarecrow and Mrs. King, there was Remington Steele.
When the show was pitched, Pierce Brosnan’s character was supposed to be a figurehead in the show as well as in the detective agency, but fiction mimicked TV plotting, and Remington Steele became a major character and a major headache for Laura Holt.
I feel like my feminist instincts (admittedly lazy and often dormant) should be offended that a woman (Stephanie Zimbalist) alone could not only not front a detective agency, she couldn’t carry a TV show.
But I just love it: the corny romantic elements, the (unintentional?) double entendres, and the hokey murder investigations with early-80s special effects and dramatic red herrings.
The music is great and sometimes the suspense is almost Hitchcockian. And, oh! The dialogue is some of the best ever. Witty repartee? Zinging one-liners? Fun bantering? Love it.
Here are a few lines from just one episode (Season 1 Episode 13, A Good Night’s Steele):
(reasons for suspecting a doctor/salesman of murder)
“Well, for one thing, I hate people who are abusively nice.”(while infiltrating and investigating a Sleep Clinic)
“I’d say good night, but honesty prevents me.”(picking a lock, unsuccessfully)
“Patience, Ivan. Fatigue has blurred my natural gifts.”
I think I can work all those lines, with minimal modification, into my daily speech. Do you have a favorite classic TV show?
Drive to the library: seven minutes with surprisingly quiet kids (maybe they hit the Benadryl?)
One library card: free with proof of residence and one nation’s tax dollars
Remington Steele Seasons 1-5: priceless.
Here’s a classic clip that reminds me of that other great classic, Murder By Death.
Tags: feminism, remington steele, tv shows
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Oh, one more reason we are friends. I loved Remington Steele! And Pierce Brosnan – he’s my favorite Bond. My mother never missed an episode back then and my sisters and I usually watched too. I love the British accent (or Irish) and his classic good looks. He was great in the Thomas Crown Affair, as was Rene Russo. I heard they’re making a sequel.
Remington Steele brings back memories of college, surprisingly, because we procrastinated our assignments and stayed up late in the dorm playing California speed and watching it on my really outdated VCR/TV combo…oh, and I used to have really crazy dreams about him when I was younger which involved him falling madly in love with me or something like that…ah, the memories
I think the earliest memories I have of TV are of Remington Steele. Either that or the cartoon “She-ra” who was the sister of He-man. My mother still talks about how much she loved Stephanie Zimbalist’s hair as Laura Holt, or as Daniel Chalmers would say, “Ms. Bolt.” She does have good hair, and great hats, except in the very last season, those bangs she gets certainly don’t flatter her. I love it when Mr. Steele plays the character Johnny Todd, from the backstreets of London. His greasy, slicked back hair, and the constant gum-chewing, along with the accent are so funny. “Sting of Steele” has got to be one of my favorite episodes.