I have very fond memories of the show, but fully expect some stuff to be dated. According to http://www.moonlightingdvd.com/ the first two seasons will be out in May.
I plan on getting them and hope they live up to my memories. I especially want their spoof on “Taming of the shrew” where BW rides into town on a horse which is wearing Wayfarers and a BMW logo on the saddle.
I know the show was playing silly buggers a lot of the time. But I liked how they played silly buggers. And cripes - has it been 20 years…
It’d be interesting to see it again. It’s one of those series (maybe because it didn’t generate enough episodes to make it to syndication?) that hasn’t had the overexposure on television in re-runs prior to it being released on DVD, which also means there hasn’t been the steady exposure to judge how it’s aged. Unlike, say, Home Improvement, now out on DVD but on all the time in non prime-time slots. And boy, some series that were popular in first run did not age well.
At the time, I enjoyed the first few seasons as well. Even in the later there were some good episodes. I believe it was actually in one of the later seasons that they did a take-off on North by Northwest that was titled North by North diPesto (named after office secretary Agnes diPesto). Being a Hitchcock fan, I thought it was fun.
Great news. The series headed downhill after season three or thereabouts, and got truly painful by the end, but the first couple of season were wonderful. A few years back they re-ran it on Bravo, and it was great to see that the show was as good as I recalled from its original airing. Right from the first episode, the chemistry between David and Maddie was fantastic, and the writing and dialog were sharp.
Hopefully they’ll include some decent extras, but usually DVD sets of old TV series are pretty thin in that department. I’m not holding my breath for commentaries from Cybill Shepherd or Bruce Willis :), but some from creator Glenn Gordon Caron would be really cool.
Oh, if only they produced the 3-D episode they had been working on. It was done in by a television writers strike that messed up the production schedule of many shows that season.
It was called Atomic Shakespeare. It was the seventh episode of season three.
I know, it was pretty much the archetype of the stretch-out-the-sexual-tension-between-the-two-main-characters-for-as-many-seasons-as-we-can-manage shows. They did a great job of it for quite a while, but eventually it reaches the point where there’s almost nothing they can do to prolong it any more. They can’t stretch it out any farther, but if you finally have them sleep together, you lose the whole energy that was propelling the show. Many shows since have dealt with the same problem, but few did it so well or crashed so completely afterwards…
I disagree with you on that point. I think Cheers was. However, that show was able to survive a lot longer because it had a stronger cast of supporting characters they could shift attention to if they thought the leads were dominating too much of the action (and occasional cast changes also helped).
Like everyone else in this thread, I loved Moonlighting (my favorite episode is with Whoopi Goldberg) especially in the first three seasons. What with the strike, Cybill’s problem pregnancy, and prima donna tensions, the show just fell apart. What I’d like to know is did Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis really hate each other, or was the tension non-existent and just written about for publicity? I’ve read about this topic many times before and have never gotten a satisfactory answer.
medstar. I think there was a palpable difference in Willis’ and Shepard’s on-screen chemistry midway through season 3 that got worse, if THAT’S possible, by the start of season 4. If I were the laying blame type I’d point my finger at Cybill Shepard. Maybe I’m wrong for saying this but between Moonlighting and Cybill (with the utterly fabulous Christine Baranski), she seems morbidly incapable of enduring her co-stars’ success.
Ah. In Canada, although we have Bravo, it is a Canadian version, not necessarily with the same programming as the U.S. version. And, I don’t remember Moonlighting on A&E, although A & E is the same as in the U.S.
I was looking around for a DVD set and only found some crappy disc with three episodes. I think it was someone posting on Amazon that had the link I referred to in the OP. It seems someone set out to start a campaign to get it released.
On the Amazon page someone writes that “Bruce Willis and series creator Glenn Caron are expected to participate in the DVD extras.”
They did a great job of it for quite a while, but eventually it reaches the point where there’s almost nothing they can do to prolong it any more. They can’t stretch it out any farther, but if you finally have them sleep together, you lose the whole energy that was propelling the show. Many shows since have dealt with the same problem, but few did it so well or crashed so completely afterwards…