Introduction
The series revolved around cases investigated by the Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madeleine "Maddie" Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (Willis). The show, with a mix of mystery, sharp dialogue, and sexual tension between its two leads, introduced Bruce Willis to the world and brought Cybill Shepherd back into the spotlight after a nearly decade-long absence. The characters were introduced in a two-hour pilot episode that preceded the series proper.
The show's storyline begins with the reversal of fortune of Maddie Hayes, a former model who finds herself bankrupt after her accountant embezzles all of her liquid assets. She is left saddled with several failing businesses formerly maintained as tax write-offs, one of which is the City of Angels Detective Agency, helmed by the carefree David Addison. Between the pilot and the first one-hour episode, David persuades Maddie to keep the business and run it as a partnership. The agency is renamed Blue Moon Investigations because Maddie was most famous for being the spokesmodel for the (fictitious) Blue Moon Shampoo Company. In many episodes she was recognized as "the Blue Moon shampoo girl," if not by name.
In his audio commentary for the season-three DVD, creator Glenn Gordon Caron says that the inspiration for the series was a production of The Taming of the Shrew he saw in Central Park starring Meryl Streep and Raúl Juliá. The show would parody this Shakespeare play in the season-three episode Atomic Shakespeare.
Read more about this topic: Moonlighting (TV series)
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