Hart to Hart was bad

JONATHAAAAAAAAAN!!

You reply to yourself a lot, OP.

I wonder what makes you so desperate to post stupid threads, also.

It looked like they used home video recording equipment.

That show paid for all the boob jobs my daughter had and the wrapping room.

Agreed, OP.

My eldest sister loved that show, along with The Incredible Hulk, Greatest American Hero, Dukes of Hazzard, and Quincy.

What shit taste she had; only Quincy is even watchable today (and that barely so).

So, so bad, but I guess it just got caught up in that Robin Leach celebration of all the excesses at that time.

Anderson only watched it to fap to Robert Wagner.

I watched all those 80s shows when I was a kid - Hart To Hart, The Love Boat, all the other Aaron Spelling shit, and the dopey sitcoms like Different Strokes, Growing Pains, Family Ties etc..

Today they are unwatchable to me. I can't even tune in for nostalgia purposes, they were such dreck.

Of course it was bad. It was two has-been stars in a rom-com detective show.

It just wasn't bad enough to be good.

It sucked ass.

I bet r2 isn’t much fun at parties.

The episodes where stefanie powers played two roles were camp fun.

It was my favorite show as a gayling.

Cheesy 80s entertainment. One of those comfort entertainment shows you could watch while eating your TV dinner.

However, I believe, it seemed rather edgy for the Harts to have an active sex life (hello, Sailor!). The whole premise seemed rather kinky, with the Harts being sex-crazed, adrenaline junkies jet-setting all over the world and finding themselves right in the middle of murder mysteries and other dangerous crimes.

R13 that edge didn’t translate to the tube r13. It was lame even by late 70s-early 80s standards.

R9, this was the late 70s and early 80s, over 40 years ago. Neither was a has been when the show ran. That said, the plots were pretty bad, which Robert Wagner has more or less admitted. I enjoyed watching it at the time as well.

My mom loved that show, probably just because of Robert Wagner. I was too little to know what the hell was going on but I loved Freeway and the butler/ cook/chauffeur. Whatever the hell he was.

He was the enabler e16

He was the boy toy (for both Harts)

I jerked off to Season One Jonathan Hart!

I liked Max.

All those 80s shows were cheesy. I recall liking Hunter quite a bit and Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

I was really depressed this last holiday season and laid in bed watching Love Boat 24/7 for about a week or so. Absolutely LOVED all the women's fashions worn on the Lido Deck at night. Disco-tastic!

Loved this show growing up!

I loved the show. There was some serious chemistry between the actors. Perfect show to do school assignments to.

R8 people are going to be saying the same things about todays shows forty years from now.

[quote] The episodes where stefanie powers played two roles were camp fun.

Wasn’t that a miniseries starring Powers as twins, with Barry Bostwick as the sexy husband?

r24 I doubt they'll be saying the same things about the Sopranos or Game of Thrones. The tv landscape has changed so dramatically in the past two decades, surpassing many films.

[quote]All those 80s shows were cheesy.

Excuse us, but we were great!

Cagneyb& Lacey was a good show of the era. Even Charlie’s Angels, Remington Steele, Hunter…. This show was Schmalz.

I liked the intro, but never watched the show.

R29 do yourself a favor and never watch it like I did.

hunter was a good show and dude crotch and ass in his jeans was mouthwatering and deedee mccall was a sexpot!

Murdah

[quote] I liked the intro, but never watched the show.

I prefer Adam Scott and Amy Poehler's re-creation of the intro.

These shit shows were for old people. Or maybe kids who didn’t know better.

They were no Jessica Fletcher in "Murder, She Wrote."

Agree R35. Stefanie Powers is a puzzling example of someone who went from thing to thing and managed to sustain but isn't so much a bad actress as she is a non-actor. The Poehler recreation captures this perfectly. Powers says the lines and gets the shots but you never really believe she means it.

[quote] I doubt they'll be saying the same things about the Sopranos or Game of Thrones

Every current generation discards most of what the previous generations had to offer. MASH and Hill Street Blues were considered defining shows at one point and simply the best TV had to offer. Now they're antiquated relics that are largely forgotten. It happens. Something else always comes along that winds up bettering what came before it.

[quote]The tv landscape has changed so dramatically in the past two decades, surpassing many films.

Right, Whatever, And in twenty years, it will change even more dramatically.

R21, we’re you depressed before, or after watching Love Boat 24/7 for a week?

r38 I've had depression pretty much my whole life (2 severe head injuries as a teen, likely concussions as I lost consciousness). However, I lost my job right before Thanksgiving after working so hard for 2 years with OT, stress, etc. That, coupled with the fact that my mother has severe dementia and I haven't seen her in 10 years (she lives in Hawaii), my car taking a crap, some health issues and nobody to really spend the holidays with, once again spending my birthday (Jan 4th) alone. It was just a lot for me to take in and I really shut down.

I seem to recall on occasion that the Harts alluded to doing anal...

That's because the decade framing the context in which it aired originally, the 1980s, was stupid and wholly preposterous in premise, OP.

People watched because Stephanie Powers and Robert Wagner were very attractive.

R25 Prime Hart to Hart

“Jennifer is kidnapped by a man who wants to get some of the money from an old crime by holding his ex-partner's wife—who happens to be a dead ringer for Jennifer.”

R40 Sidney Sheldon co-created Hart to Hart and wrote many episodes, so anal likely was in a first draft.

I only see white people so the writers should apologize for the lack of racial diversity today like they did with Friends. 🙄

I used to like the show, but I haven't seen it since back in the day. Fun, mindless entertainment.

R7 Try to keep your slang within your demographic.

It was awful but Stephanie Powers and Robert Wagner looked good in it. It was the 80s.

r37 it's not the same. Really comparing Hill Street Blues to the Sopranos? Cable and streaming removed archaic censorship which really improved television.

Hart to Hart actually replaced Starsky & Hutch.

Hill St. Blues was very good! It's just that people will not watch old shows if episodes are not self-contained. So the occasional sitcom or "resolved in one episode" show can be seen in reruns, but no one is going to take the time to figure out who Mick Belker is and why we should care about his arc now or whatever.

Wasn't Hart to Hart based on The Thin Man?

I liked that they were childfree.

Nor r51 they're not going to watch old shows from the 80s because the dialogue is ridiculous to modern ears. When you're used to a realistic cop show you can't watch 40 year-old episodes of Hill Street Blues without thinking how nobody swears and the plots are so sanitized.

This episode was good . The late, great Dominique Dunne guest stars . Dunne was a close family friend to Natalie and RJ

So Casablanca and Twelve Angry Men are bad because no one says "fuck" in them? That's really what you're looking for? None of it is THAT realistic. James Gandolfini was an actor. It wasn't a real mobster's life being captured on hidden video..

r56 classic films are not being watched either.

r56 The Sopranos continues to attract new audiences. People who were in diapers when the show was originally on. They did something right.

Look, most people never read anything and never watch anything that didn't just come out. That's always been true to an extent. To the degree that it's more true than it was it's because there are 200 channels+ now. I used to be shocked by how many college-educated middle-aged people I'd meet who had never seen The Godfather, which is still referenced in popular culture in so many ways, and is, you know kind of a good movie! They never felt the need. Many people have always been like that and it's not about realism or swearing, particularly.

[quote]Cable and streaming removed archaic censorship which really improved television.

Not true. Network shows started breaking down those doors in the 1990's. Ever hear of NYPD Blue?

Pop culture is an everchanging paradigm. Doesn't mean there won't be pockets of newer generations who will discover something. But en masse? Hardly likely.

Things change. Times change. That's just the way it is.

I wanted to make a youtube channel of my kid reacting to all of my favorite shows I liked when I was a kid and I did a test run on the couch with Silver Spoons. He wandered off after 5 minutes and I turned it off. He also hates Gilligan's Island. He watched a few Addam's Family, but most TV of that era is just dreck.

I have on occassion watched some of the shows from the 70s that I enjoyed when I was a kid and none of them really hold up. They are slow moving in this age of quick cuts.

The Love Boat is still entertaining, imho.

Someone gave me the Love Boat DVDs as a gag gift, and I made it through a few if them. It's a riot to see some of the has beens, or up and comers pre surgery. Lisa Hartman is unrecognizable.

The Love Boat was a shit show, but it's kind of fun to watch now for all the disco-era fashions. One thing about the Aaron Spelling shows is that they spared no expense on wardrobe, hair and makeup.

This show is just bad. I mean I have a high tolerance for bad. I will occasionally watch or binge on Charlie’s Angels but Hart to Hart is far worse in my opinion. Robert and Stafanie were just there like mannequins, not acting, just there going from ridiculous scene to ridiculous scene.

Ya don’t say

So what if it’s bad? There is always a place for mindless entertainment. It had a good run. 5 seasons 6 TV movies after. Good ratings. . Who cares? Because all you fucks are watching PBS? Yeah right.

Free Fall’n Bill & Natalie Peterson

At the time it was my mom’s favorite show - she said “It’s great - I turn it in and always fall asleep in five minutes.”

Lol r70.

R39 I'm very sorry you've been going through so much, and hope brighter days are ahead.

R40 Please someone find this anal related clip.

R39 is bad luck.

Thank you, r72. r73 - it has been said before.

all the problems of the world were wrapped up in 60 minutes with shows like this.

Speaking of Lisa Hartman, damn she was one of the hardest-looking women I've ever seen.

Sweet as pie on the inside, though, and I think that radiated outward.

Yeah but even as a kid I could tell Hart to Hart sucked. It made other mediocre shows look good.

[quote]I liked that they were childfree.

Children would have only gotten in the way of their erotic lifestyle.

Lionel Stander’s hilarious cameo on Moonlighting at around the 15:20 mark.

“Mr. and Mrs. H are the greatest! And, boy, can they wear clothes.”

Another H2H/Cybill crossover.

The Hallmark Mystery Channel used to air episodes of Hart to Hart late at night after Murder, She Wrote. I would sometimes fall to sleep watching MSW and wake up to HTH. However, they stopped airing the show and replaced it with Magnum PI. I hate Magnum and wish they'd go back to HTH.

Mart Crowley (Boys in the Band) was an executive script editor and then producer of HtH. A gay sensibility is often present in the episodes.

[quote] Children would have only gotten in the way of their erotic lifestyle.

There was the time Jonathan thought he may have fathered a child. I was very supportive on the outside, but secretly I consulted with a divorce attorney.

Pretty much all of television of the period was bad.

The sex, however, was great.

r85 - the costumes on Love Boat were pretty stylish

Pre-pandemic. She looks great!

She looks like she got a nose job. Either that or her nose thinned out really badly as a result of aging I guess?

r65 r85 People who worked on Spelling shows have told me hair, make-up and clothing were always very important to Aaron.

Wasn’t the servant named Max?

He also went by Max in the awful Cassandra Crossing.

R83 I’m sure his involvement contributed to why this show sucked so badly.

I seem to recall being told by one of the production managers that a lot of the Love Boat guest stars wore their own personal clothes. Location shoots were a huge pain in the ass, by the way. Does anybody here recall any of that about the clothing? I was onboard as a passenger back in the day, and the boat was expensive as fuck and people dressed to the nines. Took along a boytoy everyone mistook as part of the cruise staff.

Years before she was famous, Kathy Bates did The Love Boat. She was so thin!

Lauren kindly shared her diet coke tips and stash with me!

Hart to Mart

Lionel Stander (Max) was blacklisted. I always thought that very real experience was such a contrast with this very fluffy show.

R96, wats the story ? I like mart

R97, he consistently featured in the show regardless of age and toward the end he looked ancient. He didn't have a lot of lines but he was always present. He was always welcomed and considered a part of the team. I think he may have been in the first movie, but passed away. He was in a dedication at the end of the first film after he died.

Most 80s TV was poop. TV is the only thing that actually gotten better in life, in the past 30 years.

Did you hear about the dinner party where they invited the Harts and Jessica Fletcher?

Everyone died.

HTH was the part of the “Equity Wins” premise - good guys win because of access, expensive cars that talk, or six million dollars in prosthetic devices that go to eleven.

Admittedly, even as a Kinsey 6 I found Stefanie Powers hot.

R43 I think R25 meant the mini-series “Deceptions,” which has Stefanie Powers playing twins who decide to switch places. One is a jet-setter and the other is a housewife, with Barry Bostwick as the hot professor husband of the housewife.

How can you not love a mini-series that starts with an exploding yacht?

Jonathan’s hairy chest and bulging polyester slacks were just what my young gay self needed every week.

Horrible television show. Stefanie Powers was another bottom feeding starlet who lucked out with this show. Bad nose job and bad acting. Her earlier stage name was Taffy Paul. Can’t stand her.

AC was a kid when this was on. And the Harts WERE glamorous with a cute dog (Freeway!) and Lionel Stander! It was fabulous.

But it may be aging about as well as the OP! :-(

R106 she was hardly a starlet when she did Hart to Hart. She’d been in the biz nearly 20 yrs when she took the role

St Elsewhere was the exception to shitty 80s shows.

Taxi was a pretty good exception too.

[Quote] people are going to be saying the same things about todays shows forty years from now.

why wait R24 I'm saying it now. 5 minutes is all I can take of any number of shows I tried to watch: Grey's Anatomy, Young Sheldon, The Good Doctor, Modern Family, Blackish . . .time killers on the way to the grave!

Modern Family (the adult part) and Blackish (the earlier seasons) will hold up. I saw a promo last night for Grownish The Final Season on some obscure channel. Now that looked completely vapid.

R112 Formulaic and trite: Modern Family and Blackish are mediocre