“The Blue Moon Detective Agency is finally open again,” it was announced. Moonlight, the television classic produced between 1985 and 1989, will be available streaming for the first time in history starting October 10. It will do so on Hulu, a content platform owned by Disney. As if it were a great bet on television, the expectation is high, if we pay attention to the media coverage received and the volume of comments. “Oh, the charm, the quick wit of him, the Bruce Willis winks. If you have never seen it, you are in for a treat,” warned a fan upon the arrival of the five seasons.
As we have already said on more than one occasion (such as with the arrival of Friends, The Golden Girls or Doctor in Alaska in the universe of online content), the expectation is not explained solely by the nostalgia factor. It has to do with the context. In times of short or pretentious series, the quality, accessible and prolific entertainment of traditional television becomes invaluable. It is the memory of the experience that was had, yes, but also the possibility of returning to a television refuge with characters that are part of the collective and individual imagination due to the number of hours they spent in the viewer’s living room. It is the vindication of a television model that, after the arrival of premium channels, was looked down on as if it did not have its qualities.
The mold for Moonlight was created by Glenn Gordon Caron, who designed a case series centered on an unlikely pair of detectives. The pilot of more than an hour and a half laid the foundations. Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) is a former model who lives off the income from her job. When she discovers that she is broke after her managers have made off with her money, she decides to visit and close all the companies in which she had invested capital and that are making losses. She thus finds the Blue Moon detective agency which she is in the red but which, due to the enervating charisma of David Addison (Bruce Willis) she cannot close. Instead, she finds herself transforming into a private detective overnight.
The dynamic between Maddie and David, and the chemistry between Shepherd and Willis, allowed Moonlight to shine on ’80s television. “At first, I thought the series, at the very least, was unexpectedly promising. Now, having seen much of the season, it is clear that Moonlight, created by Glenn Gordon Caron, is truly something special,” wrote critic John J. O’Connor of The New York Times in December 1985. He highlighted “the courage of its unconventional humor”, the “irresistible chemistry” and the ability of the main characters to contradict each other. In the third season it entered the list of the ten most watched programs in the country and Willis won the Emmy for best actor. But, unlike other fictions of the time, his heyday was brief.
For decades, the most talked about version of its decline included two elements. For one thing, Glenn Gordon Caron didn’t know how to keep the spark alive between the leads after they slept on screen in season three. The platonic factor that works so well on television was gone. On the other hand, the supposed bad relationship between Shepherd and Willis sank any possibility of reviving the work due to the desire they had to avoid each other on the set, which also turned the production into an ordeal. However, this last idea has acquired nuances with time and perspective.
Shepherd became the mother of twins in 1987 and scenes had to be filmed before the birth to have material with which to edit the episodes without losing her character. This caused a drop in the quality of the episodes as scripts had to be filmed to use these scenes, preventing a more natural development of the texts. Shepherd had also had power behind the cameras from the beginning and, as the seasons progressed, she had the feeling that the creator and Willis had teamed up against her.
This soured the atmosphere on set, as did Willis’s victory at the Emmy Awards when she wasn’t even nominated. And, while Shepherd grew tired of the demanding schedules of a primetime series with her motherhood, Willis became a movie star in 1988 with Die Hard. When it was time to film the fifth season (which would be the last) none of the leading actors wanted to be there, and Gordon Caron had been fired after proposing an ultimatum to the ABC channel: “Either Cybill or me.”
Despite not being able to finish her own series, if Moonlight has returned to the forefront of the television industry it is thanks to Caron, who in October 2022 reported that she was working on the rights puzzle to be able to broadcast her work in streaming. With this return to the forefront of the industry (which remains to be seen if it will also lead to the inclusion of the title in the Disney catalog in Spain), the public will have the opportunity to remember a classic, see both the virtues and the weak points of the traditional television (that is, the exploitation of chemistry and the most inspired weekly cases against the decline of the formula) and vindicate two veteran stars.
For Shepherd, the resurrection of Moonlight makes it possible to vindicate a very good comedy actress who suffered all the plagues of patriarchy: the reputation of being an “impossible woman” for having an opinion, the cancellation of one of her works such as the sitcom Cybill for not wanting to sleep with the president of the channel (a Les Moonves whom the
If luckily Moonlight arrives in these parts, viewing it will be more than recommended. There are few things more pleasant than returning to the basic principles of the series, especially when they are in a state of grace.
