Television in the Seventies


It's a Fair Cop, Guv...

Oh, and the cops. Not a night went by without some variety of cop show. Classy acts like Columbo, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, McMillan and Wife, McCloud and The Rockford Files, were matched by the arguably vacuous Charlie's Angels, ChiPs, The Bionic Man and Wonder Woman. The whole of Britain tuned into Wonder Woman as a result of a BBC radio DJ asking us to watch what Wonder Woman did with her handbag. Sure enough, there was her sensible, no-nonsense handbag when WW was in civvies, looking like a rather glam businesswoman. Then she did the twirly thing, lots of flashing lights and woosh - spangly tights and NO HANDBAG. Where did it go? Did she stuff it down the front of her frock (there didn't seem much room there)? Did she pop it behind a palm tree to pick up later? Listen, it wasn't art, but it was good clean fun.

Columbo featured veteran actor Peter Falk as the rumpled star detective. You could drive a bus through the holes in the plots more often than not, but the whole thing was carried out with such vim and vigour, you couldn't help but love it. (The series was screened on British TV a couple of years back - and remains eminently watchable. That's more than can be said for some series made today.

It was rubbish - but CLASSY rubbish

And, the seventies brought us balderdash with a capital "B". How else would you categorize the glory that was Dallas? As Clive James puts it, "I came to mock Dallas, but stayed to pray. In how many directions could Sue Ellen (a.k.a. Swellen) move her mouth? Which of the four leading ladies would be wearing the bra this week?" As J.R. Ewing gaily brought down the governments of foreign lands (never named) to further his career, we thought we'd seen it all. Until, Aaron Spelling brought on Dynasty, featuring the dastardly Alexis Carrington, her long-suffering, blue-rinsed, ex-husband Blake, his saintly and beautiful new wife Krystal, his half-caste sister, oh crumbs, it's all fading away. Suffice to say, when one of the main characters announced she'd been abducted by aliens and half the cast were shot dead during a royal wedding in (another unnamed) foreign country, none of us were overly surprised. The series spun off The Colbys, starring Charlton Heston as Jason Colby, but the series

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