Charlie's Angels is on Amazon Prime Video

Of course I was top billed. I had the turtlenecks!

I wouldn’t say “slutty” to describe Farah or her character. Sexy yes, gave off that 70s sexual revolution vibe, but not slutty.

Jaclyn was the true beauty though.

Jill (Farrah's character) was not a slut. Don't know where OP got that one from.

It was her sister, Kris, who was the whore!

When they met, it was murder!

Kate Jackson came off as a big ole Dyke! She was quite manly.

Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett. The prettiest and the best angels.

Smith, Ladd, and Hack were a stunning trio

Jackson played a part in developing the series. She successfully fought off the original title of The Alley Cats, and she requested the role of Sabrina rather than the one originally offered her (Kelly). As I understand it, she wanted a show about strong, capable women doing things on their own, and Spelling/Goldberg wanted sexy T&A, and the resulting series was a meeting in the middle.

I didn't think it was ever as good after Jackson left. It survived the departure of Fawcett, but this one was a bigger blow. I will admit Sabrina was my favorite, but even beyond that, when network shows of that era got into the fourth season, they had reached the mode of recycling and diminishing returns.

Is the Bemish episode on Prime? I’ll have to watch it.

The whole series is on Prime. I watch an episode every might. It is so nice to watch mindless tv that doesn’t reference Trump, or Covid, or any of today’s bullshit.

I had no idea this series was on Prime. Thanks, OP.

I watched an episode regarded in some quarters as a priceless camp artifact: season 1 episode 20, "I Will Be Remembered." I'd always heard about it but never seen it.

Ida Lupino plays a half-forgotten, somewhat eccentric golden-age movie star named Gloria (GET IT?) who is planning a comeback. One of her movies is being remade, and she is up for the role of the mother, having originally played the daughter. She really needs the work, because she's close to losing her Hollywood mansion. Her husband, a gambler named Nicky (smaller "Get it?"), died a year ago and left her in debt. Now Gloria is seeing terrifying visions that correspond to scenes in her movies, such as a dead body hanging from a tree in the garden, another corpse in the bathtub, a child's severed hand. (If that last one was a scene from a movie in this universe's Hollywood golden age, someone at the Breen office must have been napping.)

Gloria calls on her friend Charlie, who sends Sabrina, Kelly, and Jill to investigate. Is Gloria going insane, or is she being terrorized by someone who wants her to think she's insane?

Seemingly everyone in the episode is familiar with Gloria's entire filmography. We keep hearing titles and plot summaries. (Kelly, her face lighting up at a mention of "The Sodbusters": "I remember seeing that, too! She played a rancher's wife. She survived cholera, a gunshot wound, a cattle stampede -- she's a very heavy lady!").

There are all the expected scenes. Gloria returns to the studio in a Rolls, and the old guy at the gate is delighted to see her. Disreputable-looking guys on the movie set get all twitchy when they see these beautiful broads asking questions, and start whispering to each other right out in the open like amateurs. There's an attempt to kill someone with a falling stage-light. Kelly works as an extra on the movie, which is a good way of getting the T&A into an episode with no bikini scenes.

Even though she lived for almost 20 years more, this was Lupino's penultimate acting appearance. Angels producer Barney Rosenzweig later claimed she was having memory problems and that it was a struggle even getting enough from her to patch together a satisfactory performance. I can believe Rosenzweig's account, as there is an uneven, effortful quality to Lupino's performance, but she is endearing. Kate Jackson has a nice rapport with her.

Lupino was 58-59 when she shot this episode, and the character seems in that ballpark too, judging from the biographical data we hear. But pushing-60 comes across as much older here, in television from 1977, than is usually the case today. Ida/Gloria is younger than present-day actresses such as Michelle Yeoh, Julianne Moore, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton, but the Angels interact with her more as if she's 85-90.

I hadn't seen any Charlie's Angels in years, and while I remembered that Sabrina was the smart one, I'm trying to recall if Jill was always "the dumb one." There's a scene here in which she snoops around the studio lot and asks questions of an employee, and she's way behind the viewer in her reactions to his answers. Did Fawcett/Jill always get the stereotypical writing for gorgeous blondes, and did this carry over to Cheryl Ladd's Kris when she filled that spot?

[quote]Charlie's Angels is on Amazon Prime Video

One of Amazon Prime Video's embarrassing little secrets.

Kris, when she came on the show, wasn't ditzy but she was supposed to be inexperienced and could make mistakes and be a bit clumsy, but she wasn't a ditz unless she pretended to be while "undercover". Jill was certainly written as more ditzy in certain episodes, particularly the one where at end of one episode as Bosley and Angels drive away you hear Jill say "let's stop at the store so I can buy some whip cream".

For the I will be Remembered episode there's a line Ida Lupino delivers when she answers her phone and says her character's name that comes off as really odd and suppose to suggest Gloria has lost her sanity or at least in the throes of dementia. As for Old Hollywood/old pop culture Charlie's Angles had several episodes which engaged in nostalgia for that earlier era and lamented how things had changed such as the Season 4 episode set at a dance marathon where Cesar Romero laments change in mores from the Swing era and kills people who don't appreciate Big Band music. Or the season 5 episode where Kelly, Kris and Julie become stunt women to track down a killer who's enraged that the moral values of Errol Flynn swashbucklers are no longer practiced in Hollywood productions!

Available on Blu-ray!

It's streaming on Tubi. Lots of old TV shows are available for viewing

Kate was the better actress of all of them. It’s too bad she’s not working anymore.

My favorite quote of the entire series is from the 1st season episode "Angels on a String. "

Sabrinia comes out to the pool where Jill and Kelly are talking and informs them a Russian politician leapt over a patio railing and the couple shared a drink of plum brandy.

Kelley commented "Just last week, Rosalyn Carter leaped through my kitchen window with a quart of chili."

[quote]Kate was the better actress of all of them.

Yeah, Kate was the clear standout in that respect. Farrah Fawcett improved as an actress later, in dramatic films such as Extremities and The Apostle.

Kate was the only Angel to get Emmy nominations. She competed for Lead Actress for both season 1 and season 2. David Doyle did get a Supporting Actor nomination for the first season.

[quote]Kris, when she came on the show, wasn't ditzy but she was supposed to be inexperienced and could make mistakes and be a bit clumsy, but she wasn't a ditz unless she pretended to be while "undercover".

R14, I agree with that description, though I've noted in past CA threads that Kris also took on sort of a harder edge in the latter seasons (notably after Kate left the series). She was nothing like she was when she first appeared on the show, her personality becoming much more grittier and no-nonsense. At least that was my take anyway.

My favorite quote of the entire series is from the 2nd season episode "Dog Grooming Angels."

Sabrina is by the pool in her customary black turtleneck when Kris and Kelly enter with a dog, Snapper, who’s their new client. (Long story.)

The dog spots some birds bathing in the pool and leaps in. Sabrina says, “Oh, no, my chickadees!” and jumps in after. Kelly turns to Kris and says, “You’ll get used to this. Sabrina’s alway going muff… I mean [italic]mutt[/italic] diving!”

Classic.

I loved Angel Baby; Kelly goes undercover as a pregnant woman to a home for unwed moms to expose baby selling ring

Sabrina played a chain smoking bitch perspective mom - “I want that baby, John. See that I get it.”

Bitch! The bad guys were afraid of her.

Nice scene at the end where Sabrina comforts Kris after she shoots the bad guy

I watched the one with a just-pre-Halloween Jamie Lee Curtis as an old friend of Kris's. Jamie Lee is a rising star on the professional golf circuit. She's receiving threats that if she doesn't withdrawn from an upcoming tournament, she'll be killed. Suspects include another pro golfer who's been at the top for a long time and now is teetering. Bosley gets a lot to do in this one, as he gets to approach this older golfer and claim to be a big fan so he can question her and see if she might be behind the threats. Casey Kasem plays a sports announcer romantically involved with the older golfer.

There's some unintentional hilarity early in the episode. Kris and Jamie Lee Curtis are riding in a golf cart when someone starts shooting at them with a high-powered rifle. Jamie Lee then decides to go to Charlie's agency for help, and she says she would have been inclined to just ignore it if this were the only incident, but she's also received some threatening letters leading up. I'm thinking, "She would have been inclined to just ignore getting shot at if there hadn't also been threatening letters? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

The "Angels in Chains" episode, where the lovely Trio get locked up in a corrupt jail in deep south Louisiana, and a prostitution ring is being run, female inmates gone missing. Filmed in California, Exteriors show "mountainous" bayou country, lol. I was a 13yo gayling when it first aired on tv, lots of jiggle, no bras! Everyone was talking about it at school the next day.. And to reiterate, Farrah was Not a slut, she was an independent, free spirited, career woman, and she looked great in a chic Jumpsuit and platform heels, no bra and no panties. Farrah was the bomb during that era, HUGE impact for television which had not been seen anything like it up to that point.

A lot of the models in the fashion illustrations on the cover of McCall's sewing patterns in the 70s were drawn to have that super-toothy Farrah grin, complete with head tilted to the side.

I've seen most every episodes dozens of times over the years, and enjoy (most of them) more with each viewing. I'm watching Season 1 again on Tubi, and Farrah really does have incredible presence without even trying. And what's so endearing is that all of her scene partners, especially the other Angels and Bosley, seem so comfortably taken with her. Season 1 was lightning in a bottle.

"Lightning in the bottle" seems to be quite precise considering that they couldn't replicate the success. The formula got lost in the third season already, imo. And they never regained it. The movies couldn't capture the lightweight spirit. The 2011 show had such bad writing and acting that I always thought it was planned as a write-off project right from the start. And with so many streamers needing content another revival is probably announced any minute.

So what is the magic formula? Outstanding cast chemistry. Actors' presence. Writing the angels as three sisters who never compete against each others. They were independent but not feminists, just anti perpetrators. Four easy going characters, no drama, being fierce just seemed to be a side effect. It didn't define any of them like in the movies.

R12 this link is for you. My fan.

You must must must watch season 3 Angels In Springtime. It’s full of camp, lesbianism and Zora Stafford, who has her own thread on the DL. Plus the Now Voyager Fake Dialogue troll has provided an entertaining take on this episode full of raunchy, low brow hilarity.

This is NVFDT’s take on the famous Margo the tranny episode from season 5. Angel on the Line!

A perennial fave from season 4…. Angels on the street. It’s so fucking hilarious! Then you start reading the DL thread and it makes it even funnier!!! This is the one where Kelly & Tiffany hit the streets as undercover prostitutes!!

I believe this is from season 3. It features the girls attending college at a private school for women. Audrey Landers stars as mean girl Donna. It’s so fucking hilarious! The DL thread is off the chain funny! 😆

Farrah was very charismatic and did steal the show that first season. Farrah’s publicist wrote a highly entertaining bio about this era (and the 60s and the 80s). He named names and told great stories.

They were all beautiful but Jaclyn was absolutely stunning..still, there was something about Farrah

What about Shelley Hack??? Pure sophistication.

I used to come across it on one of those cable channels a couple years ago and always marveled how good the picture quality was for a 70s show.

R36 it was a top tier, prime-time ABC, Aaron Spelling production in the late 70s.

^^It ran until 1981! Yay!

I ate out Kate Jackson’s snatch! Jealous, bitches???

Farrah was definitely the best dressed Angel. 95% of what she wore in season 1 still looks up to date. You can’t say that about the others.

R40 pfffft

Farrah was fabulous in the first season; however, all of her guest appearances in the later years played like a hostage situation (and she was the hostage). She always looked so sullen and disconnected, like she'd have rather been anywhere else in the world than back on that set. Despite her obvious displeasure, though, some of the episodes still managed to be quite entertaining (particularly the one with Timothy Dalton as an international jewel thief).

[quote]I used to come across it on one of those cable channels a couple years ago and always marveled how good the picture quality was for a 70s show.

R36, I've noticed the same with "Mannix" -- it's just gorgeous to watch onscreen as if it was filmed recently as opposed to nearly 50 years ago. Odd that some shows from that period still look so good while others (like "Ironside") look so terrible, all dark and grainy. Guess it just depends on what kind of film was used when they recorded them.

By the way, say what you want about the quality of the series itself but "Gilligan's Island" is another one that is just absolutely gorgeous to watch with all of the rich colors from the jungle set plus the wardrobe of the cast. Very well preserved.

Bemish

Jaclyn Smith was well aware of the criticisms about her acting early on during her time on Charlie's Angels, which is why, like Farrah she went to work on her craft. Which is why for a period of about 15 years, Jaclyn and Dierdre Hall would hold acting workshops at their respective homes wherein they would perform scenes together from Arthur Miller, Moliere, and Gorky and then give one another extensive acting notes when they were done.

the casting in Angels in Chains should have won an Emmy

From the sister of the victim (Kim Basinger) to the fat Sheriff to the matronly evil warden to the lesbian prison guard to the fat Sheriff's skinny creepy guard -- everyone was superb.

I think ABC reran it on Thanksgiving week and the ratings were really high. Spelling joked they'd run it every week till it dropped below a 40 share (or something)

The no bra & nipples unleashed era of TV…:Farrah was stunning….I was in 9th grade during season 1 and all the popular girls were trying to pull off the Farrah hair….I would love to find my 9th grade yearbook just to count the number of Farrah hair chicks in my school that year…I saw Jaclyn Smith in the Beverly Center decades later and she was just breathtakingly beautiful…she was with her young daughter….she and Vanessa Williams are the two celebrities that were even more gorgeous in person during their prime…

r9. the problem was not just when Kate Jackson left. Yes it wasn't as good but the 80s came. The Angles who used to seem young and hip, suddenly appeared matronly. Tn a year they looked like fraus dressed in shoulder pads and looked middle aged. Was it the hair cuts. It was just a year and they seemed old.

[quote]the casting in Angels in Chains should have won an Emmy...I think ABC reran it on Thanksgiving week and the ratings were really high.

Same with the pilot. It got a 54.8 share! That seems such an insane number today. ABC reran it and it still got huge ratings. And it was presented as a movie of the week. All most people would have known going in was that it was a mystery movie with Kate Jackson from The Rookies and two other babes.

Watching that pilot now (Amazon Prime has it at the bottom of its Charlie's Angels listing, beneath season 5), I get why Kate Jackson was disgruntled by the time of season 3. Among many reasons for that, she thought the scripts were getting too fluffy and dumb. The pilot does have a more intricate mystery than most of the episodes. Of course, it's also long enough to work in surprises and reversals.

You'd definitely get the impression from watching the pilot that Kelly was going to the focal Angel. There's about a 20-minute stretch when we see no one else from the team. And then when one of them shows up, it's the David Ogden Stiers character, who would get "Coco'd" in short order when the series was picked up.

Tommy Lee Jones and Kate had good chemistry. This was around the same time TLJ lost out on Days of Heaven. The woman who cast Malick's first three films (she also cast the first Star Wars, Witness, Pretty Woman, and other notable movies) was pushing hard for TLJ as the apparently dying farmer, but Terrence Malick wanted Sam Shepard. Shepard was then better known as a playwright and hadn't played a dramatic role in a film.

I agree with comments here that that original lineup was never bettered. They all had their niche. The brainy one, the elegant one, the sexy one.

OP I appreciate the heads up that the Angels are available on prime. I will be watching to see if they are uncut as you say.

[quote]The brainy one, the elegant one, the sexy one.

I seem to recall that, officially, Kate was the brainy one, Farrah was the "athletic" one, and Jaclyn was the " street smart" one.

I recall the ABC TV tag line in promos for the first season: "Beautiful (Farrah), Brilliant (Kate), and Beguiling (Jaclyn)", showing their respective closeups with each description... I was 12 and I was hooked, it was must see tv. The first season is Gold!! :-)

[quote] In a year they looked like fraus dressed in shoulder pads and looked middle aged. Was it the hair cuts. It was just a year and they seemed old.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. The seventies were gone and with them the lightweight spirit. It felt like Nancy Reagan started to dress the Angels.

Farrah expertly riding a skateboard through a park to evade a bad guy is the reason I got my first skateboard, she was very influential.

For you, r54. Very iconic scene that is still stuck in my brain, too.

[quote]Very iconic scene that is still stuck in my brain, too.

She's littering!

R49, casting in the pilot was great; Diana Muldar! Tommy Lee Jones! Bo Hopkins!

Kate was originally set to play Kelly Garrett but then she opted to play Sabrina; honestly, I'm not sure what the difference would be. Jacklyn would have played Sabrina exactly the way she played Kelly.

Kate would have brought layers to orphan Kelly that Jaclyn simply did not know how to do.

I agree that there was something 'matronly' about the Angels as time went on. Smith's hair in the final season was all in her forehead at times.

The big mistake was ignoring the personal lives of the Angels; in Season 1, we saw Sabrina's dad and her ex. We learned Jill had a sister -- Kris. And Kelly nearly met her dad when Ray Milland guested. But why not explore Tiffany's dad and Charlie; they were childhood pals.

Could Charlie have been Kelly's dad? Did Kris and Jill have a brother? Could Julie and Kelly have been sisters? It would have been nice if Sabrina and her husband had made an appearance.

What they could have done in Season 3, whenever Kate wanted time off to do Kramer, is have Sabrina be kidnapped and each week, Kris and Kelly team up with a new guest Angel -- Hack, Jayne Kennedy, Kim Basinger -- whoever. And then in the finale, they find Sabrina alive.

It would have brought great publicity to the show, provided some cliffhangers...instead, they choked and refused to really write for Tiffany until later in the season. I'm a HUGE Kate fan but I actually thought Shelley was a great addition.

I would have liked to have seen Spelling write the Angels into Dynasty.

Alexis hires Tiffany to do some work for her. "This, Miss Welles, is an assignment I don't think Morgan Hess can handle....I don't want you to investigate my ex-husband. I want you to sleep with him!"

Blake hires Sabrina or Kelly to find out if Dominque is really his sister and then he learns Kelly is?

I agree with your premise of having Sabrina be kidnapped while Kate worked on "Kramer" this would also have allowed for Sada Thompson to do a few test episodes, to see if the show was a good fit for her as Angel Lorraine. I know one of the reasons that Thompson wasn't hired was in part because there was too much sexual tension with David Doyle's Bosley which distracted from the mystery element of the story, but it would have been nice for an episode or two to see Bosley flirt and possibly consumate his relationship with Lorraine. It would have brought a layer of sophistication to the show that was severely lacking with Jackons' departure. Also, apprantly Thompson complained about her costuming which was essentially autumn tone twin sets, blue jeans and pumps, which she found difficult to run around and chase villains with. Perhaps in trying things out, they could have put Angel Lorraine in a mobility scooter which would have allowed for her to move about much more quickly.

Thank you, OP! I've enjoyed DLer's recaps of various episodes. Looking forward finally to seeing "Angels in Chains."

^

"Now, look here Tizzie Lish..."

"Doug, I'm worried about Bosley."

Actually, Princess Perfect AKA Nancy Lawrence Maitland would have made a great angel. A lawyer. She could go undercover as someone who wasn't selfish.

I just watched the season one episode "Angels at Sea" guest starring Frank Gorshin as the bad guy!

[quote]I'm a HUGE Kate fan but I actually thought Shelley was a great addition.

I think she could have had a fighting chance, but the writing seemed indifferent to her. I'll admit I haven't seen season 4 in ages, but my memory is that the show didn't do much to make Tiffany stand out as a distinctive character, other than "She's from New England." She was just there as a third woman. Didn't it take until halfway through the season for her to get a focal episode?

[quote]I agree with your premise of having Sabrina be kidnapped while Kate worked on "Kramer" this would also have allowed for Sada Thompson to do a few test episodes

Ironically, Thompson was one of the winners of the Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy the years Jackson was nominated. Lindsay Wagner won for The Bionic Woman in 1977, and Thompson for Family in 1978.

[quote]r23 Jamie Lee is a rising star on the professional golf circuit. She's receiving threats

Good baby dyke role for her.

I wonder if Kate made overtures behind the scenes.

R49 "Tommy Lee Jones and Kate had good chemistry."

Indeed! I wish they had more scenes together. Both very charismatic. And Kate Jackson's screen presence was amazing. She was radiant.

[quote]R51 Kelly was the " street smart" one.

Which is hilarious, because Jaclyn Smith came across as just about the most placid, least hip person you’d ever meet.

[quote]r58 This would also have allowed for Sada Thompson to do a few test episodes, to see if the show was a good fit for her as Angel Lorraine… Perhaps in trying things out, they could have put Angel Lorraine in a mobility scooter which would have allowed for her to move about much more quickly.

The way Sada was treated by the producers was criminal. She could have brought so much to the show, but they just foolishly tossed her aside!

I heard she wouldn’t put out for Aaron Spelling, who’d developed the hots for her watching FAMILY, and that was part of it.

Yeah, Jaclyn gave off a real street smart vibe. Oh my sides! Of course, that role was meant for Kate, which would make more sense.

The unaired episode with Sada Thompson was up on YouTube a few years ago. Very uneven. Setting her up as kung fu master Angel was original, but I just didn’t buy when she went undercover as Kris’s roommate in a college dorm where handyman Ernest Borgnine was kidnapping the girls and caging them in the furnace room. Fun to see Glenn Close as one of the crated coeds, however.

Perhaps they covered the women up (particularly Jaclyn) toward the end because they were aging. Jaclyn was well into her 30s when the series ended.

I miss the old Townsend Agency website. It had the best recaps, it tracked the wardrobe reuses, how many days it took them to solve a case, called attention to threads in the series that you hadn't noticed before (Wicker Fight! Kelly's dispensing of random beatdowns in Season 5!). It pointed out the handful of episodes when we get the rare Sabrina-Kris, Kelly-Bosley teaming. Usually it will be Kris-Kelly, Sabrina-Bosley or Sabrina-Kelly, Kris-Bosley.

The writing really ran out of steam those last two seasons, it wasn't the fault of the actors. They had run out of milieus in which to put the Angels, even when they let go of the much held earlier stipulation that the Angels got the case because it needed women to go undercover to solve it and not men, and even when they were in Hawaii.

I think I found it on the Internet Archive, R69 I'll link it down below for you. It's an old site, so not all the features are going to work and some of the links may be dead.

Here's the Gloria Gibson episode recap. I love the Angel Stats at the end

Turtlenecks: 4 Sabrina, 1 Jill

The streetwalking episode

OMG R70, R71 and R72 you have truly done the Lord's work...I had the most awful day and now you have given me these links and I am laughing and crying at the same time. (Mary!) Thank you thank you!!!

Watching Angels in the Wings, guest starring Shani Wallis

Sabrina was the Thelma of Charlie's Angels. Always doing recon with Bosley (Shaggy) instead of being in the action with the pretty people. Hollywood is so formulaic. I cant believe Hanna-Barbera didn't sue Spelling-Goldman for copyright infringement!

Yesterday I watched Angel Flight, a time capsule of misogyny and prejudice. It was fabulous.

I've been watching the occasional episode randomly, but mostly watching the ones from the Sabrina years, because those are my favorites. I made an exception for Angel on the Line, the infamous Margo episode from season 5, which I'd never seen. Now there's a camp classic! Kelly's terror and revulsion were unlike anything we'd ever seen from her. Even after the other Angels and Bosley arrived, and the knife-wielding drag queen tried to flee and fell into a puddle, she still had to excuse herself and let the others finish things up. Then during the obligatory closing scene at the office, she said she was STILL not over it!

I also watched Counterfeit Angels, in which impersonators are framing the Angels for thefts, and Real Sabrina ends up taking the place of injured Fake Sabrina. Kate's fake New York accent was good.

When I saw these as a kid, I really liked Kris and Cheryl Ladd, and now not so much. It's nothing I can really explain. She was definitely a show-saving replacement who kept the show a hot property for a few more years, but now I don't like the way the character is written. They all get in jams sometimes, but they really overdo the "littlest Angel in distress" thing with her. And they put her in dumb undercover setups sometimes, like that girls' school with Audrey Landers and friends. She looked so much older than her fellow "students."

Gorgeous Sabrina Duncan and handsome pilot Jim made a hot couple!

Maybe this one works.

So, were Kate and Farrah the only angels that have lesbian/bi rumors attached to them.