Originally published at: 'Simon and Simon' was a popular TV show | Boing Boing
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It was popular because people thought either Jameson Parker or Gerald McRaney was hot. Or possibly both. It’s not rocket science.
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eh, i watched it as a teen and i’m completely unapologetic about it. it was an easy-breezy weekly whodunnit and was a nice way to waste 45 mins (i watched it mostly on german television, so no commercials.) there were frankly far worse shows on in that era. if you asked me to watch 10 episodes of ‘simon & simon’ or just one episode of ‘murder, she wrote’, i’d settle in for the long haul every time.
i will, however, note that the theme was the best thing about the show. i think it’s actually barry de vorzon’s best TV theme (better than the original SWAT, imo) and without it, i doubt we would have had this:
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And yet, Dukes of Hazzard makes it look like Shakespeare.
Popularity should never imply quality. coughTrumpcough
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I’ve seen Paul Rudd’s dedication to perfect reproduction before
and wish he would take on Billy Squier’s “Rock Me Tonite”.
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i can testify to this. i had a bit of a crush on Gerald McRaney.
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I only watched the first three seasons, but enjoyed it a heck of a lot more than The Rockford Files or Magnum PI. Excellent banter in the sibling rivalry.
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The theme was the best part of this show.
Listens to theme music
Really? That’s pretty damning.
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Hey, don’t blame me I was programming my Apple ][
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I remember finding out McRaney was a right wing jerk, back when the GOP was still working to continually top itself in that regard. Not much by today’s standards of GOP horribleness, but it stood out back in the 90s. :-/
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You didn’t like “Murder, She Wrote”?. That was a genuine classic starring the renowned Angela Lansbury!
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For San Diego based PI shows, I’ll take Terriers any day. And it’s theme song is better.
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i like angela lansbury quite a bit, but murder, she wrote was like TV ambien to me - it bored me to sleep almost every time. to be honest, the most interesting thing about it was when years later i read a fan theory that she was secretly one of the greatest serial killers of all time and the stories where just her way of gaslighting (ooh, lansbury deep cut!) people into believing she was some super sleuth. that really cast the whole show in a different light.
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theme was alright, but the show was one of the best detective shows ever made and screw FX for canceling it. it’s just damn brilliant.
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I’m with you. I really enjoyed the show and thought the actors had really good timing with each other on the comedy bits, and hit the bickering brother notes well without it getting too old. It was a low-stakes fun piece of episodic television.
I didn’t like it either, despite her involvement. I watched one episode and “noped!” out of it because of the horrible, atrocious, “nothing like anything I’ve ever heard” Maine accents (Tom Bosley in particular was egregious; at least Lansbury didn’t try to fake one) and quaint little small town that couldn’t possibly exist. Sometimes having too much knowledge of a place can be a detriment. 
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Well, his next big role was “Major Dad” where, if memory serves, he played a jerky, conservative ex-Marine who marries a liberal newspaper reporter with teen daughters. Maybe he was just being himself?
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Simon and Simon was one of the first shows to have a kid hacker as a plot point. At 13, I was the perfect age for this show.
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Oh, yes, the 80s were terrible…
Kardashians.
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It got ridiculous after a while. Not the acting per se, but the premise. So. Many. Murders! in the small town of Cabot Cove. At least a tenth of the population died over the show’s run. And they still had tourists coming? A murder rate like that (okay, only 22 or so murders a year, but that’s a lot for a sleepy little tourist town!), and you’d think the Feds would be crawling all over the place. And of course, only the singing teakettle could solve the mystery.
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