Mon 12 Mar 2012
MAKE A LIST: American TV Series with Female Licensed PI’s, by Michael Shonk.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , TV mysteries[25] Comments
American TV Series with Female Licensed PI’s
by Michael Shonk
This is a list of the female licensed PI’s featured in American TV series only. We will save the amateurs such as Murder She Wrote ’s Jessica Fletcher, female spies such as Mrs. Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and female cops such as Samantha Spade in Without a Trace for other lists.
THE LIST:
HONEY WEST (ABC 1965-1966). Based on a series of books by G.G. Fickling (Gloria and Forrest Fickling), the series starred Anne Francis as licensed PI Honey West. Honey West’s first television appearance was in Burke’s Law episode “Who Killed the Jackpot†(April 21, 1965).
MOST DEADLY GAME (ABC, 1970-1971) Yvette Mimieux played Vanessa Smith, one of three criminologists who worked together solving unusual murders.
CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 1976-1981) Charlie’s “angels†were female PIs Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), Jill Munroe (Farah Fawcett), Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack), and Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts).
REMINGTON STEELE (NBC, 1982-1987) PI Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) created a fictional male boss for her agency to attract clients who thought the idea of a female PI was too feminine. Then one day he walked in…
TUCKER’S WITCH (CBS, 1982-1983) Catherine Hicks as Mrs. Amanda Turker. PI and witch. See: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=6805
PARTNERS IN CRIME (NBC, 1984) PI Raymond Caulfield left his agency to his ex-wives, proper brunette Carole Stanwyck (Lynda Carter) and fun loving blonde Sydney Kovak (Loni Anderson).
ME AND MOM (ABC, 1985) PI Kate Morgan (Lisa Eilbacher) solved crimes with her mom’s (Holland Taylor) help.
LEG WORK (CBS, 1987) Margaret Colin as former assistant district attorney turned PI Claire McCarron, who liked to live beyond her means in New York.
DIAMONDS (CBS Lste Night, 1987-1988) Married couple Christina Towne (Peggy Smithhart) and Mike Devitt (Nicholas Campbell) played PIs on a TV series. The series got cancelled and they got divorced. Later they decided to start their own PI agency.
SYDNEY (CBS, 1990) Sitcom starring Valerie Bertinelli as PI Sydney Kells.
BAYWATCH NIGHTS (Syndicated, 1995-1997) Ryan McBride (Angie Harmon) and Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) leave the beach to become PIs.
SNOOPS (ABC, 1999) PI agency owned by PI Glenn Hall (Gina Gershon). The staff featured Dana Plant (Paula Marshall), Roberta Young (Paula Jai Parker) and token guy Manny (Danny Nucci).
WILD CARD (Lifetime, 2003-2005) Zoe Busiek (Joey Fisher) teamed up with Dan Lennox (Chris Potter) as PIs for an insurance company. Rae Dawn Chong played PI Sophia Mason in the first season.
VERONICA MARS (UPN 2004-2006) (CW, 2006-2007) Veronica (Kristen Bell) was a student and part time PI in her father’s PI agency.
SEX DECOY (Fox Reality, 2009) Reality series with PI Sandra Hope. She and her operatives entrap cheating husbands for our viewing pleasure.
THE GOOD WIFE (CBS, 2009–present). Law drama. PI Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjab) works for the law firm Lockhart Gardner.
CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 2011) Remake with new “angels,†Kate Prince (Annie Ilonzeh), Eve French (Minka Kelly), and Abby Sampson (Rachael Taylor).
PI or Not PI:
KHAN (CBS, 1975) PI Khan (Khigh Dhiegh) was helped by his two college aged children, a son, and his criminologist student daughter Anna (Irene Yah-Ling Sun).
MOONLIGHTING (ABC, 1985-1989) Model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) was horrified to discover she owned the Blue Moon detective agency. The agency employed one PI, David Addison (Bruce Willis). David and Maddie solved crimes and found ways to drive up each other’s blood pressure.
EYE TO EYE (ABC, 1985) PI Oscar Poole (Charles Durning) teams up with ex-partner’s young sexy daughter, Tracy Doyle (Stephanie Faracy).
TOTAL SECURITY (ABC, 1997) High-tech security firm with large staff including Jody Kiplinger (Debrah Farentino) and Ellie Jones (Tracey Needham).
V.I.P. (Syndicated, 1998-2002) Pamela Anderson plays Vallery Irons, the “Remington Steele†of bodyguards. While the public believes Vallery is the world’s greatest bodyguard, it is her staff that does all the work. The staff included ex-spy Tasha Dexter (Molly Culver), Nikki (Natalie Raitano) weapons expert, Kay (Leah Lail) computer expert, and Quick (Shaun Baker) marksman and ex-boxer.
THE HUNTRESS (USA, 2000-2001) Dorothy “Dottie†Thorson (Annette O’Toole) and her daughter, Brandi (Jordana Spiro) ran a bounty hunting business.
EYES (ABC, 2005) Harlan Judd (Tim Daly) ran a high-tech investigation firm. The female members of the staff included Nora Gage (Garcelle Beauvais), Meg Bardo (A.J. Langer), Leslie Town (Laura Leighton), and Trish Agermeyer (Natalie Zea).
Did I miss anyone?
I recommend the Thrilling Detective website as a good place to look, especially this page: https://www.thrillingdetective.com/tveyes.html
Other sources include the usual “suspectsâ€: IMDB.com, TV.com, and Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine, Ninth edition).
March 12th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Forgot to add a link to my review of REMINGTON STEELE (my first review here).
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=6245
Back in the eighties I always found it hard to accept Laura Holt’s claim that people would not hire a female PI. Now I see REMINGTON STEELE was the fourth series in TV history to feature a female PI, maybe Laura had a point.
You can find more female PIs in books, films, TV pilots and TV Movies, as well as overseas. But the woman private investigator is rarer in TV series than I expected.
March 12th, 2012 at 9:10 pm
Talk about synchronicity! I was browsing through ioffer.com this evening and came across someone offering (duh) a cobbled together movie consisting of two episodes of a PI series called VERONICA CLARE.
IMDB describes it this way: “Jazz club owner and gumshoe Veronica Clare solves a variety of cases (10 episodes). Set in an LA of the film noir style.”
I’d never heard of it before. It starred Laura Robinson as Veronica Clare, and apparently was on the Lifetime channel. Starting date: July 1991.
It seems episodes #1 and #9 were combined and called “Affairs with Death,” which is the film I happened across just now.
Aha. Here’s its listing on the Thrilling Detective website. Lots more information there:
https://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/clare.html
March 12th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
Thanks, Steve. I hope this will get us a complete list of female PIs with TV series.
March 13th, 2012 at 11:07 am
I think what is interesting here is how few of these shows achieved any real success. Honey West has lasting cultural resonance but ran for just one season. By my accounting that leaves just Charlie’s Angels (five seasons, not including the remake), and Veronica Mars (three seasons). I put Remington Steele and Moonlighting in a different category because of the mixed-gender teams; I doubt either series would have enjoyed the success it did without the inclusion of the male partner. So does this mean American viewers can’t accept female private eyes? Or female private-eye shows have for some reason tended to attract particularly awful writers? Or something else?
March 13th, 2012 at 11:07 am
I sure would love to see an episode of Veronica Clare. If anyone has one they would be willing to donate to the Paley Center (we would make a copy and return the original) please let me know.
March 13th, 2012 at 11:28 am
David, I’ve sent you a link to the ioffer seller who has three of the movies made by combining episodes together in pairs. I’ll see if I can obtain copies elsewhere by trading, but if not, I’ll probably buy these, in which case I’d be happy to send them to you to make duplicates of.
March 13th, 2012 at 11:39 am
David, in Comment #4. I have been wondering the same thing. Michael alluded to this also, in his Comment #1. Why so few really successful female PI shows on TV? There have been a lot more in printed form, and I mean in recent years, a lot.
Maybe mystery fans, a lot of whom are women, are much more receptive to the idea than the general population is.
Of the three you call successful, and I agree with you, only one is really in the traditional PI mode, Honey West. Charlie’s Angels depends on Charlie (male) to come up with cases for them to work on and he’s always phoning them with tips and good advice along the way.
Veronica Mars, as a high school and college student, barely qualifies as a PI, in my opinion — it’s more of a gimmick in nature than anything else, not that her shows weren’t highly enjoyable.
Nobody but fans like us would remember any of the others on Michael’s list at all. You’re right. It is a mystery.
March 13th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Most of the successful women detectives of TV’s past were amateur detectives. The idea of a professional woman as the lead in any non-romance TV series has rarely been successful without an equal male.
Even the policewoman as star has a spotty success rate, usually involving an undercover female working Vice to keep the men watching.
The exceptions are always interesting. PRIME SUSPECT comes to mind, as the British version was timely and successful, the American version was not.
March 13th, 2012 at 3:48 pm
I think there are two reasons :
1. TV-viewers and readers are NOT the same.
2. Most TV-viewers would be either women, or groups with predominantly female parts.
And they want a ‘romantic interest’, at least this applies to the majority.
The Doc
March 13th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
#9 Doc 2. While that is basically true the career of Angelina Jolie has proved men, especially younger men, enjoy kick ass women. Lara Croft was more action hero than romance.
However, here in America, most kick ass female characters are physically male fantasies. Check out comic books and movies. Oddly, this “form” (sorry) of entertainment has not crossed over yet to TV, except for an occasional attempt such as FEMME FATALES on Cinemax.
Meanwhile, Germany has BELLA BLOCK, England has ANNA LEE, etc.
Female detectives are common, but they are either in a group such as cop shows or an amateur such as Nancy Drew (who ended up getting stuck with the Hardy Boys on TV) or Jessica Fletcher. It is not the detective part that threatens viewers, it is the professional hardboiled part.
March 13th, 2012 at 7:55 pm
And, it’s notable, that Veronica Mars was a criminous Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer…adept at the same sort of tactics Jim Rockford might’ve used, rather than blunt force trauma, but Buffy was crazy strong and healed quickly…but both shows had strong congruences given one was crime drama, the other contemporary fantasy, beyond empowered petite blond teen heroines. (Contrast also the criminous fantasy ANGEL and the cod-sf/espionage drama JAKE 2.0, where producer David Greenwalt moved from the first to the second and remade the second as the first).
March 13th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Of course, the US version of PRIME SUSPECT, despite the excellent Maria Bello as star, was aggressively stupid, wherein Bello’s Tennyson faced more flagrant hostility from her colleagues essentially for her gender than did the early ’70s policewoman played by Gretchen Mol in the US version of LIFE ON MARS, which was at least within shouting distance of the quality of the original, and had some nice flourishes missing from the Brit version.
March 13th, 2012 at 9:11 pm
For those who don’t know, and because I would like this post and comments come as close as possible to a complete list of female licensed TV series PIs, Todd does a weekly salute to “Overlooked Films and A/V. I slip in under the V (video) part.
His running of this post had a photo of the cast from EYES. Having not seen it I ask him if he had, and if the women were PIs or eye candy assistants.
He remembers at least two were “acting as full-fledged PIs…”
http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/03/tuesdays-overlooked-films-andor-other_13.html
Some may wonder what is the difference between licensed PI and woman who solves crimes without a license. To me it is the difference in respect Jim Rockford gets vs Nancy Drew.
Who cares? So much of the value of studying pop culture history such as TV and mysteries is how it illustrates society of the era.
MAVERICK and ROCKFORD FILES changed how we view our heroes.
This list shows how the role of the professional woman still has a ways to go to fit the role of licensed PI.
The list also illustrates how the role of the PI has gone from lone knight on the mean streets to a large group with lots of gadgets.
It also shows how timeless Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles type is versus a character trapped in one section of time such as Hammett’s Sam Spade.
March 13th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
How about Betty Jones (Lee Meriwether) on Barnaby Jones.
March 13th, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Good question, Joel. She was co-owner of the family PI agency which makes her equal to MOONLIGHTING’s Maddie Hayes.
BARNABY JONES fans. Did Betty ever work in the field? Did her role ever go beyond answering phones and handling the bills? Was she a licensed PI or a business owner?
She and BARNABY JONES belong on the list, even if it is the Not PI but close section.
March 14th, 2012 at 12:59 am
All good questions. I’ve been researching this, and none of the usual sources go far enough into detail. I remember watching most of the first season, back when it was on, but it’s going to take someone with a better memory than I do — or someone who bought the first season on DVD — to say for sure. (Am I right, that only the first season has been released on DVD?)
March 14th, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Also…to a much lesser extent, didn’t Peggy have a role in some investigations Mannix was working on? Vaguest of memories from childhood viewing there.
Audio/visual, actually, for the Tuesday roundup, so that stage drama and such other matters as conventions can be included with no problem…I think I’ve had one or two slide shows…
March 14th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Thanks for the link, btw! Always glad to include Mystery*File material…and will Friday for “Forgotten” Books, where I’m subbing as link-gatherer…
March 14th, 2012 at 1:01 pm
The Paley Center has two episodes of “Barnaby Jones,” both from the fall of 1976. Betty Jones (the Lee Meriwether character) does spend time out of the office, but only in controlled settings, like the office of her friend’s husband, or a restaurant with Barnaby and JR, or the police station in the concluding scene. I get the reasoning behind Michael’s comparison to Maddie Hayes, but I would say that based on these two episodes (admittedly a very small sample), the characters have very little in common, and that Maddie is a far more liberated woman who was much more involved in the investigations. However, I have read that the Betty and JR characters became much more prominent during the last two years of the series, when Buddy Ebsen reduced his role. The guy must have been 300 years old by then. It would be interesting to learn what the Betty Jones character was like during those last two seasons. I personally never could stand this show. By the way, Todd, not to be argumentative, but I would say that Gretchen Mol’s character took plenty of abuse on the US version of Life on Mars, yet because she was not an authority figure, like Bello’s Tennyson, she was far less threatening to the men in the squad, who reacted accordingly. I do completely agree with your assessments of both shows. I think the US Life on Mars was a terribly under-appreciated show that deserved a much longer life, though I found the final episode to be a disappointing cop-out (no pun intended).
March 14th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
#17. I need to do an overlooked movie once in awhile (SIMON, TROUBLE IN MIND, TRIXIE, BALTIMORE BULLET, HOLLYWOOD HARRY, etc). My taste in films is as obscure as mine in TV.
Todd is no doubt smiling now or soon will be as Deadline.com just reported CBS has renewed THE GOOD WIFE for next season. Other series of interest to crime drama fans that got renewed by CBS were PERSON OF INTEREST, HAWAII FIVE-O, BLUE BLOODS, NCIS, NCIS:LA, CRIMINAL MINDS, CSI, and THE MENTALIST.
On bubble for CBS dramas are UNFORGETTABLE and CSI MIAMI. It really does not look good for CSI NY or A GIFTED MAN.
Back on topic, notice the absence of single star series. The MANNIX, COLUMBO, BANACEK,etc type of series is rare to find today. And the lone hardboiled PI male or female has nearly disappeared.
March 14th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
#17 part two. Todd, you asked about Peggy and Mannix. Nearly all secretary characters got involved in the action at one point or another. Della Street was often involved in Perry Mason’s schemes to save his client. But I put those ladies into the amateur detectives group for doing something they were not paid to do. While I don’t consider Betty Jones a licensed PI, as co-owner of the agency she was paid to do whatever she did for the PI agency.
April 21st, 2016 at 4:14 pm
I WAS CHECKING OUT BURKE LAW FOR INTRO OF HONEY WEST AND INTRIGUE ON THE SPARKS BETWEEN THE TWO AND GREAT DUO
IT WAS A SHAME THE SERIES FOLDED I WAS WATCHING ON CABLE CALLED DECADES I USED TOWATCH WHEN I WAS 11 OR 12 NOW MY GODSON WHO IS MYAGE IS WATCHING AS WE TYPING THIS EMAIL , NOW I’M 65 Y/O
AND JUST LOVE THE RERUNS .
October 31st, 2017 at 6:29 am
Nice collection of old memories. They are living in my heart.
November 7th, 2018 at 1:05 pm
I sure would love to see an episode of Veronica Clare. If anyone has one they would be willing to donate to the Paley Center (we would make a copy and return the original) please let me know.
November 26th, 2018 at 7:26 am
The Paley Center has two episodes of “Barnaby Jones,†both from the fall of 1976. Betty Jones (the Lee Meriwether character) does spend time out of the office, but only in controlled settings, like the office of her friend’s husband, or a restaurant with Barnaby and JR, or the police station in the concluding scene. I get the reasoning behind Michael’s comparison to Maddie Hayes, but I would say that based on these two episodes (admittedly a very small sample), the characters have very little in common, and that Maddie is a far more liberated woman who was much more involved in the investigations. However, I have read that the Betty and JR characters became much more prominent during the last two years of the series, when Buddy Ebsen reduced his role. The guy must have been 300 years old by then. It would be interesting to learn what the Betty Jones character was like during those last two seasons. I personally never could stand this show. By the way, Todd, not to be argumentative, but I would say that Gretchen Mol’s character took plenty of abuse on the US version of Life on Mars, yet because she was not an authority figure, like Bello’s Tennyson, she was far less threatening to the men in the squad, who reacted accordingly. I do completely agree with your assessments of both shows. I think the US Life on Mars was a terribly under-appreciated show that deserved a much longer life, though I found the final episode to be a disappointing cop-out (no pun intended).