Which Witch is Tucker’s Witch?

I’ve become a sucker for mysteries. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past five years, I moved away from science fiction, fantasy, and horror and fell head-over-heels in love with private eyes, police procedurals, and amateur sleuths. The format doesn’t matter - books, old radio shows, movies, television programs - just gimmie a dead body, a killer, and someone who wants to bring the killer to justice, and I’m a happy camper.

Like any addict, I’m always looking for the next high or the newest drug. I always have one eye open for an author or a TV series I’ve never heard of or seen before. Patricia Wentworth and George Baxt, for instance, are writers whose novels I’ve just discovered. Wentworth’s cozy tales of Miss Maud Silver and Baxt’s use of famous classic Hollywood actors and actresses as sleuths are scratching a lot of my itches these days. But, as I’ve said, as an addict, I need more, more, MORE!

 

So, I was intrigued when I happened across a TV show I’d never heard of before on Amazon Prime: Tucker’s Witch. It looked to be right in my wheelhouse. Set in Los Angeles, the show follows the exploits of a husband and wife private investigation team (played by Tim Matheson and Catherine Hicks) as they delve into the seedy side of SoCal life. They have a great house in Laurel Canyon that they share with Amada’s mother, Ellen (Barbara Barrie). They are assisted along the way by their firm’s sole employee, Marsha (Alfre Woodard), and by Lt. Fisk of the LAPD (Bill Morey).

There were plenty of male-female detective teams on TV in the 1970s and 1980s: McMillan & Wife, Hart to Hart, Moonlighting, Remington Steele. What set the Tuckers apart from the crowd was the fact that Amanda was a witch. Armed with psychic and telekinetic abilities, Amanda used her powers - as well as some help from her cat, Dickens - to gain insights into the cases she and Rick worked on. Unfortunately, her control of these powers wasn’t 100%. Sometimes the visions she had were a bit too vague or her ability to pick a lock with a snap of her fingers failed her at the crucial moment.

The novelty of the above combined with there only being 13 episodes meant that I could move Tucker’s Witch to the top of my viewing queue with few qualms. What I discovered in the first and second episodes, however, was a mystery in and of itself.

After a brief prologue showing the murder (more on that later), the credits sequence for the pilot episode appears. The title of the show is presented as The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon. No biggie, I thought, lots of shows change their names after getting picked up. Then, the cast is introduced, and I am completely confused. Instead of Catherine Hicks, top billing goes to Kim Cattrall. Her co-star isn’t Tim Matheson, but instead is Art Hindle. What is going on here, I wondered? Nonplussed, I nevertheless went with the flow and continued watching.

A man (played by Ted Danson) takes a woman into the elevator of an empty Los Angeles high-rise for a little late night foolin’ around. Before they reach their rooftop destination, however, the man hits the emergency stop button and kills the woman, leaving her body in the elevator.

Amanda’s dreams are filled with stories of the three so-far unsolved “elevator murders.” Dickens, Amanda’s feline familiar, tells her that there has been a fourth, but the newspapers have nothing to report. Marcia calls during breakfast to tell Rick and Amanda that there has indeed been a new victim found, and there is a Miss Barringer at the office who claims to know the killer’s identity. Her sister was the second victim, and she believes that her sister’s ex-husband, Frank Kopcheck, murdered her.

Following up on their new client’s leads, Rick and Amanda discover that the woman’s sister and the latest victim both had a keyring inscribed with the letters “DM.” These letters are the logo and trademark of a video dating business called Data Match. Rick and Amanda individually pose as singles and sign up for Data Match’s services. While there, they meet the owner of DM, Danny Kirkwood -- played by Ted Danson!

Rick figures out that each of the victims were married women who were using Data Match to meet new men. Their videotaped profiles are kept hidden in a backroom. Danny discovers that the tapes have been “borrowed” and trails Rick back to the Tucker & Tucker offices.

While Rick is on a “date” with Babs, a woman he believes may offer them more clues to solving the murders, Danny calls Amanda, asking her out on a date. Their destination? A newly constructed high-rise with an elevator that goes all the way...to hell!

Will Amanda escape from Danny’s clutches? Will Rick escape from Babs’s? Will Amanda’s powers help her or let her down?

All in all, it’s a pretty fun episode. Like Columbo, it isn't so much a whodunit as it is a howdunit. We know Danny is the murderer, but how are Rick and Amanda gonna figure it all out? There are loads of little humorous touches, such as Amanda using her powers to deal with a backyard peeping tom. The chemistry between Cattrall and Hindle is pleasant and believable, and both have the charisma for leading roles. The show may not have been groundbreaking television, but it had the promise to be entertaining. If I had seen this pilot back in the day, I would have looked forward to more adventures of the Tuckers.

Come fall of 1982, however, CBS replaced both actors with Matheson and Hicks in the roles of Rick and Amanda Tucker and re-shot the pilot as Tucker’s Witch.

Wha’ happened was Porky’s.

In between the pilot of The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon being filmed and CBS agreeing to pick it up in May of 1982, Bob Clark’s raunchy teen sex comedy was released to theaters in the United States and Canada. In that film, Ms. Cattrall portrays gym teacher “Lynn 'Lassie' Honeywell” whose turn-on is the smell of the equipment in the boy’s locker room. (I don’t write ‘em, folks, I just report on ‘em.) Alas, this turn-on was a turn-off to CBS executives. Cattrall was let go, and Hindle (who also had a small role in Porky’s) followed.

What’s interesting about being able to watch the original pilot and its reshot replacement back-to-back is seeing how the two episodes match up. Both the differences as well as the similarities are pretty intriguing. For example, in the remade episode, there are a few scenes that were trimmed or cut altogether. Camera set-ups were also different in some scenes. For every difference, however, there are plenty of things that remain the same. So much so, that you soon realize that they just reused shots when and where they could, which makes sense.

The biggest differences, obviously, are what Hindle & Cattrall and Matheson & Hicks brought to bear on their characters. While Kim Cattrall is very sexy and alluring (she is Samantha on Sex and the City, after all), Catherine Hicks has more of a girl-next-door quality. Both approaches work for my money. It would have been nice to see Cattrall get more of a run out in the role, but I love Hicks as Amanda Tucker. She has an earnestness about her that is perfect. Tim Matheson, too, has a charm and boy-next-door quality that Hindle doesn’t quite have. I like Art Hindle quite a lot. If you’ve never seen him in David Cronenberg’s The Brood, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Matheson just has more of a playful feel that makes him seem a bit more likeable. Watch the scene at Data Match when Rick is being shown around. Hindle doesn’t play it with the same devil-may-care attitude as Matheson, which I think is what you want in a private eye.

I want to continue talking Tucker’s Witch - I haven’t mentioned my love of Barbara Barrie as Amanda’s mother, Ellen, or the kickass convertible that the Tuckers tool around in - so I plan on throwing it into the rotation as a replacement for Wings every so often (which I promise we will return to soon). I’m also looking forward to writing about Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, the 1980 private detective series written by Stephen J. Cannell and starring Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen, as well as the Italian TV series Inspector Montalbano, based on the novels by Andrea Camillari. So, for the foreseeable future, it looks like we’ll be turning the tables on these private eyes and watching them watching them watching them...