Switch

This is another CBS series which started very strong. A lot of that was the cast. Robert Wagner, Eddie Albert & Sharon Gless are three extreme talents put together on this series. They were what held the later shows together.

The first scripts of this show were extremely intelligent. Wagner playing off Albert & Gless trying to stop the 2 of them from going at each others throats was very effective. The friction gave this show a strong start. The early shows had something special. Charlie Callas helped the early shows too but he strangely stopped appearing after the second season.

Later on in the series, a report about excessive violence on TV came out & CBS reacted by watering down the quality of the action & the parks between Wagner & Albert. Once this happened, the show abruptly lost ratings & got canceled. This was a very good series originally, but if you watch the first shows & then watch the last ones, you will see what I mean about the change.

It was an unusual partnership. Pete Ryan was a former con man and Frank McBride was a retired bunco cop for the Los Angeles Police Department. Together they had formed a private detective agency that specialized in pulling "switches" on the other con man still operating on the wrong side of the law. They would concoct elaborate schemes that would,hopefully,resulting in the swindlers swindling themselves. Based in Los Angeles,the two of them traveled far and wide on assorted cases ranging from con artists to solving crimes and murders within the status of the city. Malcolm,a small time thief and con man who had gone straight and opened a restaurant was recruited by Pete and Frank to help them on cases while Maggie was the firm's combination secretary-receptionist and all-around girl Friday.

"Switch",was one of the brilliant array of shows that was produced by television mogul Glen A. Larson that ran for three seasons on CBS-TV from the premiere episode on September 9,1975 until the series finale on September 3,1978 producing 68 episodes. The cast was perfect here: You have the great Robert Wagner and the great Eddie Albert in the role of their careers as a con man(Wagner)and a bunco cop(Albert)working together as private detectives on the good side of the law. This was a highly intelligent series with some great stories and not to mention some highly intense action and it was one of the great detective/cop shows that came out of the mid-1970's that had psychological perspective to it. "Switch" was a thinking man's detective show and it shows in some of the great writing this show had that came from not only Glen A. Larson but also from Donald P. Bellisario(who would go on to produced excellent shows like "Quantum Leap", "Mangum P.I.","J.A.G.",and "NCIS").

This show also had the great Sharon Gless(long before her stint on "Cagney and Lacey",one of the great cop shows from the 1980's)as the secretary Maggie,and also comedian Charlie Callas as Malcolm. It was Callas who kept the show's rich humor afloat for the three seasons it ran on the air. Before "Switch" came around in 1975,actor Robert Wagner was known to audiences as secret agent/con-man Al Mundy in the espionage series "It Takes A Thief"(ABC,1968-71),also produced by Glen A. Larson. While Eddie Albert was known for dramas and mostly comedies and before this was seen in the classic rural comedy setting as Oliver Douglass opposite Eva Gabor on "Green Acres"(CBS,1965-71). By the middle of the show's second season,the series went through some changes. First up,it when from being more of a con-man's venture into a straightforward and more traditional detective series,with fewer of the elaborate con games. By the end of what was to be the show's third and final season,Pete moved into a new apartment above Malcolm's bouzouki bar,while newcomer Revel(Mindi Miller)was the hostess and Wang (James Hong)was the new cook. In other words,the show was getting into the style of several other detective shows of that period,basically taking a cue from a classic 1950's P.I. show...Who remembers 77 Sunset Strip? When the show premiered in September of 1975,it was on Tuesday nights opposite ABC's The Rookies(produced by Aaron Spelling),and NBC's Police Story(produced by David Gerber). When the show ended in 1978,due to poor ratings,CBS had no decision to find a show that replaced it..."The Incredible Hulk".

I only ever saw this series the first (and only) time it was broadcast in Ireland (remember the 'Spinning Coin' at the start ?). Anyway - I agree - it was an excellent 'Sting-in-the-Tail' type show - the 'mark' usually deserved what (s)he got - so in essence we were rooting for the 'bad guys', in the mold of Newman/Redford in the extremely excellent 'The Sting' - a film which NEVER grows stale.

And yes - this is indeed a show which appears to have 'fallen out of Television History' - others being 'Cool Million' and 'It Takes a Thief' - these made Saturday evening viewing (while growing up) a delight.

More please ( but DON'T remake them as movies ! ).

Enjoy !

Hot on the heels of "The Sting" (movie) came this derivative little series that started out with great charm. It concerned a detective agency run by old pro Eddie Albert and uber-smooth Robert Wagner. Albert was an ex-policeman who was the only one ever able to bust Wagner's character, who was a professional con man. Also in the cast were Sharon Gless, relegated to the role of secretary but who was often involved; and comedian Charlie Callas (if you can sit through a Jerry Lewis movie see Callas in "The Big Mouth.") It started out with such class I wondered how it got on the air.

As I said, it started with charm. The pilot had a neat little flute-played theme song that could be turned into an early-jazz sort of piece (sort of like how "The Sting" so effectively used the music of Scott Joplin). But whatever happened, whether it just began ridiculous to try to pull off a big con in an hour every week, or someone thought it wasn't worth the effort for the ratings they were getting, in the second season it degenerated into a typical cop show. I suppose they're easier to write. If someone told me to write a story about a big con every week I wouldn't know what to do, either.

Robert Wagner oozes a smarmy charm. He's at the height of his powers. A better actor than he was in the early part of his career, and not as chunky as he was later on. He's a perfect con man, with his winning smile and manners.

Eddie Albert has played comedy and drama for decades. He exploded well in Hooterville and he's given the chance to bluster here. When Wagner sees a chance to take crooks down by a big con he knows what he's doing and Albert fights him at every stage, especially when it comes to laying out moolah.

Guest stars abound. A pre-Angel Jaclyn Smith (who would later star with Wagner in "Windmills of the Gods"); Joan Collins; John Dehner . . .

It reminds me of another charming show, "Matt Houston," which started out with lots of humor and a focus not only on Houston's PI office but also his ranch. But in the second season "Houston" became just another PI show and serious in tone, and sank like a rock.

"Switch" started out as a wonderful little show but after it became just another cop show it was hardly worth watching. Too bad. The teaming of Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert showed lots of promise. It seems a bit weird in retrospect but they were both well-known professionals and good at what they did, which was highlighted in the early episodes. And what they did to the theme song was disheartening. With "Switch" and "Matt Houston" it's surprising how quickly something clever and different, with a twist of humor, can become run-of-the-mill.

"For God's sake let us sit on the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings." Shakespeare, Richard II.

Switch was an interesting little show, not great, not bad, fairly decent in fact. The premise was retired cop Eddie Albert teams up with retired con man/former adversary Robert Wagner as private eyes with a pre-Cagney and Lacey Sharon Gless as their secretary. Albert and Wagner had an excellent laid back chemistry and some the cases showed some originality and had a pretty high entertainment value. Two interesting notes about the show is I have never seen an article about Sharon Gless or the rest of the cast that even mentions the show and it seems to be completely forgotten in reruns, articles about television or the cast, etc. despite the high visibility of the cast. Second the first two seasons had a very light hearted approach but the last two were considerably darker in tone and far more violent. All in all a decent show that seems to have disappeared down the memory hole. NB Almost a quarter of a century after it first aired and a decade after IMD arrived this it the first comment on it to appear on IMD!