Watching 80s and 90s mystery and adventure shows (including kid shows)

Cafe Society
1

Well, I’ve recently re-watched shows from the 1980s and 1990s. Don’t know why. Just decided to. Including kids shows I watched in the 90s. So I have no new jewels share with anyone, and am just reminiscing over shows past, and what I think of them now.

So, I did Diagnosis Murder first. I’d hadn’t seen much of the early ones, and was surprised how much dancing and singing appeared (that wasn’t present in later episodes).

MacGyver, 1985 - pilot was good, next few episodes weak, but then it picked up around episode 8, and the first two seasons were good and the third pretty good. Not as much interest in later seasons - he isn’t enjoying himself the same way anymore, so it’s less fun. It’s episodic 80s tv with implausible/impossible MacGyverisms and less-than-tight continuity. I did enjoy it.

Early Matlock held up surprisingly well. I thought it worked up until season 6 when the humor took a turn that was not to my taste. Ben Matlock became more extreme and silly in some regards. Same season Andy Griffith became an executive producer, though that may coincidence. Bailed on the first episode of season 7 when he was arguing with a supermarket worker about how he only wanted 6 hotdog buns, not 12 (or something like that).

Murder She Wrote - still going through the episodes. It’s getting a bit stale, but I’m 8 seasons in, so that’s to be expected. I will say it seemed like Angela Lansbury aged less visibly in 7 years than Richard Dean Anderson. I don’t know if that’s to be expected, given their starting ages. I will say there were some anti-feminist bits (like when we’re supposed to like a character better because she prefers “Miss” to “Ms.” that were quite off-putting. I tend to like the Cabot Cove episodes best - I like getting to see the same characters show up.

Oh, my kids shows.

Disney’s So Weird (first two seasons) still stand up wonderfully. It’s way better than even most shows today at the props being meaningful. You can freeze frame on CD covers or articles and get the actual backstory of characters from shows, sometimes teasers about upcoming episodes. It’s a shame they had to change directions in season 3.

Ocean Girl - Australian series, but the first three seasons aired on Disney Channel back in the day. Watched the fourth years later (another time I was nostalgically revisiting shows). Kids having adventures in sci-fi context. Interesting parent-child dynamics. Bravery, loyalty, and goodness. All the fun. Each season has it’s own arc and there’s a shift-out in tertiary characters (which does make sense in context). I will admit, there are some discontinuities between seasons, and I was less-than-thrilled that destiny turned upon season 4, but it wouldn’t have bothered me when I was a kid. The kids got to grow up and the older ones weren’t kids anymore by the end, and I thought that was nice….may have to revisit (Road to) Avonlea in the near future.

I did Spellbinder, too (which I think also aired on Disney, but am not sure). Another kid sci-fi adventure show. Parallel worlds, this time. Very serialized. I still enjoyed, but definitely felt a little hamster-wheel at times.

Edit: Oh, I also did Starman and The Powers of Matthew Star, too. Didn’t watch either of those when on originally. I saw Starman on Sci-Fi channel in the 90s, don’t know about Matthew Star. Can’t really say I think it’s good, but I have a fondness for the first half of the series, anyway. I actually do like Starman - though I acknowledge the formulaic, episodic show that it is.

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Mark my words, Angela Lansbury’s character is committing all those murders. And pinning them on everyone else.

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Yeah, heard that one plenty of times before…but I’m not going to be the one to try to prove it, I value my life too much.

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Besides, she can turn into a teapot and hide amongst the crockery. Very elusive.:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I’ve been going through those as well. I enjoy seeing a lot of the guest stars. There’s the younger “before they were famous” stars like Courtney Cox, John de Lancie, and Kate Mulgrew. There’s older stars that were coming out of retirement like Cesar Romero. There’s those who were at their peak and who I would have never thought would be guest stars, like William Atherton and Terry Kiser, who appeared in the same episode. It adds to the whole strolling down memory lane vibe that most of the episodes have.

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Look up some pictures of her from glamorous, leading-lady days in the 50s.

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Dick Van Dyke was a famous dancer in addition to being an actor. And he is still kicking at 100 years old.

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Yes, I know that. But I hadn’t remembered him showcasing those things in this show. It’s not the most 90s sort of thing to do, if you know what I mean. Like I said, those elements were dropped later, in the episodes I remembered more.

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MacGyver is the only one of the OP’s shows I’ve ever watched, and I always enjoyed.

Liked The Rockford Files a lot better, though. (Or was that from the '70s?)

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You never saw the 1992 original Ghostwriter kids’ series? I thought that was great and even engaging enough for an adult.

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I know that I saw at least a ep or two of Ghostwriter, but it wasn’t one I watched regularly, and I don’t remember any of the details. I had forgotten its existence, but remember it when you mention it. But only the premise that the kids were being written to (it comes to mind as being on a computer screen?).

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The premise is that a bunch of kids solve mysteries with the help of a ghost/alien/ball of light/something that they can only communicate with in writing (they write words down and he rearranges the letters).

The only episode(s) I’ve seen recently are the hacker multi-parter (“Who is Max Mouse?”), which was a bit more juvenile than I remember the series being. Haven’t rewatched the ones with the blue alien people, the camera in the paper bag, or the time-travel yet.

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In the Magnum PI/MSW crossover, she tried to pin the murder on Magnum! And we know he didn’t do it.

She can’t be trusted!

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After your mention, I did watch the first story. Definitely aimed a little younger demographic than the shows I mentioned.

15

Have you seen Tom Bosley murder his accent?

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Yeah, he was on the early eps. I know most people first think of him from Happy Days, but I have a stronger association with Father Dowling, since my mom watched that. Well, I used to have when I was younger, but now have seen him in enough things to just think of him as Tom Bosley. Haven’t rewatched FD Mysteries, though, so can’t comment on them. I liked Sister Steve as kid.

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Yeah, Rockford was 1970s. I read recently that there’s a reboot in the works.

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Our kids were just the right age to watch Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Clever framing with a bunch of kids, The Midnight Society, who try to outdo each other with scary stories while gathered around a campfire. Our favorite was The Tale of the Frozen Ghost with a young Melissa Joan Hart. For years, when our kids complained that they were chilly, we’d quote "I’m . . . Cold!. Now my daughter quotes it to her daughter.

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I actually watched a few episodes of MacGyver on vacation (we were in a somewhat remote part of Maine and not much else to do with kids), and I concur- it held up pretty well. My 11 and 14 year old boys enjoyed it too, even if the inner-city street gang stuff was eye-rollingly bad.

I also watched a lot of original Magnum PI a couple of years ago after we visited Hawaii because I was curious as to what I’d recognize. That show held up pretty well too. And I did recognize a surprising amount of stuff I’d visited.

Really, the big things that stood out in both were the technological limitations (cell phones would have changed many of the scripts quite a bit) and various social attitudes concerning race and gender roles. And even then, they weren’t really glaring, so much as merely different. For example, on Magnum, the female leads were never equals- they were nearly always damsels in distress to some degree. Race-wise, it was never outright, but the aforementioned gang stuff in that MacGyver episode was just so bad it was laughable. Not racist-bad, but just ridiculous. Like youth minister-trying-to-be-hip bad.

On the other hand, The A Team didn’t work as well. The whole premise seemed pretty remote- Vietnam vets, soldiers of fortune, not actually hitting anyone with the bullets, Mr T’s general oddity, none of it resonated with my kids, and in fact seemed more than faintly stupid to them. The 2010 movie was a hit with them though; the whole set in the present day (more or less) made it seem less absurd and more relevant I suppose.

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I agree on MacGyver - never did watch Magnum. Many later episodes really tried for social issues, but they totally came off as more preachy and kinda cringeworthy in execution (though some worked). Minister-trying-to-be-hip is a good description. There were environmental preservation episodes, too. Some came off well, some not.

I agree on the gender roles. Now, granted MacGyver is a savior-esque character. He’s the guy they call when they need the impossible done. So he rescues people, male and female. But I was disappointed in how the recurring character of Nikki in season 3 was treated. She started as a potential love interest (going for the bickering Moonlighting thing, which isn’t my favorite), but she was highly competent. Not MacGyver’s equal (no one is), but very good. Quickly descended into damsel-in-distress state. Sad waste of a character.

As for protect-the-environment stories - they were a big thing in the 90s, the aforementioned Ocean Girl also used that a lot (particularly as applied to the sea, of course). Didn’t try to be subtle, but made sense in context and worked better than some shows. I don’t know if younger kids find that sort of preachiness/lesson learning off putting the way older ones and adults might. I mean, I watched Captain Planet as a kid, and you couldn’t get any higher on environmental preachiness. But I don’t know if I could stand to watch it now (never tried in adulthood). Even when I agree with the messaging, I often don’t enjoy shows that seem to be more about teaching a lesson than entertaining me (indeed, too many don’t end up entertaining). The previously mentioned Ghostwriter, of course, was educational tv with lots of lessons. MacGyver was different in that it wasn’t geared to children and did lessons, and that’s something less common (though certainly not absent) in fiction geared at older ages. I guess family television - we do makes jokes about sitcoms and lessons learned in the era.