A legendary ’70s TV series: Charlie’s Angels

Today, dear Discolovers, we look back at a television series that—produced by Aaron Spelling and aired from 1976 to 1981 on the American network ABC—revolutionized the “detective” genre: “Charlie’s Angels.” But let’s start from the beginning…

“Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the Police Academy…”

This was the opening line of the legendary show, which aired 115 episodes. The three “Angels” of the first season were Sabrina Duncan (played by Kate Jackson), Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett—at the time Fawcett-Majors, as she was married to actor Lee Majors), and Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith). In subsequent seasons, following the departure of Farrah Fawcett at the end of the first season and Kate Jackson at the end of the third, their characters were replaced by Kris Munroe (Jill’s sister, played by Cheryl Ladd) and Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack), who appeared only in the fourth season, and was then replaced by Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts)
who appeared only in the final season. Fawcett returned for a few episodes in the third and fourth series, but only as a guest star. Jaclyn Smith was the only actress to star in every season of the series along with David Doyle, who played the character of John Bosley, the assistant and liaison between the “Angels” and Charlie.
The main structure of the stories (with rare exceptions) is therefore not that of a classic detective story, but rather the more typical adventure model of the bait and the trap. The latter also works by virtue of the three girls’ attractiveness, who are nevertheless kept far from any explicit sexual implications. Theirs is an entirely abstract femininity: like Angels, indeed.
The episodes focus on the activities of a private investigation agency, Charlie Townsend Investigations, for which three young women work, aided by an assistant. The boss, Charlie, never shows his face (in some episodes, the back of his head and arms are glimpsed) and contacts the “Angels” only by phone through a speaker located in the office. In the original edition, Charlie’s voice is provided by John Forsythe. In Italy, the first three seasons of the series were broadcast by local stations affiliated with the GPE-Telemond[2] television consortium starting in September 1979. In 1982, the newly formed Retequattro broadcast the fourth season for the first time, while the fifth and final season aired in the spring of 1983. Later, the series was rerun by Italia 1 and local networks linked to the Euro Tv consortium, and in 1990 in a shortened version on Canale 5.
The first season of Charlie’s Angels caused a sort of hysteria among fans and media coverage never seen before in those years. The show’s great public success was confirmed by the cover of Time, which analyzed the impact the series was having on popular culture. Furthermore, an American census at the time highlighted how the name Charlie was more widespread than in the years preceding the show’s airing.
Two feature films were based on the TV show: ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (2000) and ‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’ (2003).
And do you, Discolovers, remember anything about those legendary Angels always in action?