More Finely Aged 80s Cheese

Try this for a deep, dark secret. The great detective Remington Steele? He doesn't exist. I invented him. Follow...

I always loved excitement, so I studied and apprenticed, and put my name on an office. But absolutely nobody knocked down my door. A female private investigator seemed so . . . feminine. So I invented a superior. A decidedly masculine superior.

Suddenly, there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm. Until the day he walked in.

With his blue eyes and mysterious past, and before I knew it, he assumed Remington Steele's identity.

Now I do the work and he takes the bows.

It's a dangerous way to live, but as long as people buy it, I can get the job done.

We never mix business with pleasure. Well, almost never. I don't even know his real name!

And with those words Gentle Readers, television audiences were introduced to Remington Steele, on 1 October 1982. Starring a relatively unknown Pierce Brosnan (Die Another Day) and Stephanie Zimbalist (Lucy's Piano), Remington Steele followed the adventures of private detective Laura Holt and a man with a "roguish" past who assumes the identity of her fictitious superior, Remington Steele. Of course, sexual tension ensues with Laura attempting to keep their relationship businesslike and Remington wanting to "advance" their feelings for each other. Remington Steele ran on the NBC television network from 1982 to 1987 for a total of 91 episodes.

It was revealed through the course of the show that Remington never knew his actual birth name and he possessed a series of passports each with a different name of a character played by Humphrey Bogart (The African Queen). A running theme throughout the series was Remington's attempts to discover what his name was and from where he came. The name Remington Steele was created by Laura Holt by taking the name from a brand of typewriter (Remington) and a football team (Pittsburgh Steelers) in order to make her "superior" decidedly masculine. Laura was the capable detective while Remington did as best he could but was essentially the public face of the detective agency. One of the running jokes in the series was how Remington would quote a line or an instance from an old movie that would help (although in a roundabout way usually) crack the case.

Remington Steele is just one of those neat (yes I said neat) little shows from my youth of which I still can not get enough. It is a bit of a guilty pleasure show but I still enjoy it as much today as when it first aired. Remington Steele was very much in the vein of To Catch A Thief (1955) and other cape and romantic comedy movies of the 40s, 50s and 60s and was an offbeat take on the detective show genre, belonging in the same class as Hart to Hart (1979-1984) or McMillan and Wife (1971-1977). The writing was usually sharp and witty, both leads had that certain twinkle in their eye and it was generally just an enjoyable tongue in cheek show without pretensions. It also helped to make Pierce Brosnan and huge star and it's fun to go back and see him just as his career was starting to burgeon.

Many would probably find the show a bit hokey today, but if you like fun television where it looks like the actors had a good time making it and you have nothing better to do than curl up on the couch for an afternoon with a bottle of wine (or whatever else you drink), then check out the delightful Remington Steele. All five seasons of Remington Steele are available on DVD.