“Moonlighting,” the ’80s series starring Bruce Willis, lands on Hulu
Cue Al Jarreau! Cybill Shepherd Beehive, arise! Bruce Willis-zens rejoice! Black workers, make yourselves known.
The popular ’80s ABC dramedy series “Moonlighting” finally makes its streaming debut on Hulu on October 10th.
The show, which premiered in 1985, starred veteran actor Shepherd and up-and-coming Willis. For his groundbreaking role in the series, the “Die Hard” actor secured a 1987 Primetime Emmy for Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
“Moonlighting” ran for five seasons, from 1985 to 1989, and received 41 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. won six.
The show also starred Allyce Beasley, Curtis Armstrong and Jack Blessing. Popular guest stars included Mark Harmon, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Bogdanovich, John Goodman and Demi Moore.
The series focuses on Maddie Hayes (Shepherd), a former model who loses all her money to an embezzling investment advisor. He left her several failing businesses, including a detective agency she calls Blue Moon. She initially considers selling the company to get some of her money back, but decides to keep it after quickly being captivated by the agency’s employees (Willis as David Addison, as well as Beasley and Armstrong). She also finds the agency’s cases exciting.
All episodes of the show will be available in remastered HD quality.
The show will land on Hulu after series creator Glenn Gordon Caron struggled for years to get “Moonlighting” onto a streaming service. The process of getting it to a streamer was delayed by the high cost of clearing the rights to the large amount of music used in the show. Caron felt an even greater sense of urgency since Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia last year, marking the end of his legendary career.
“I’ve been campaigning since about 2005 and I’ve been asking myself, ‘What can we do to get it back in circulation?'” Caron told The Times earlier this year. “It’s frustrating – there are pirated versions and stuff like that on YouTube, but it was almost impossible to watch the show. When I saw that Universal managed to release ‘Miami Vice’ – another show full of music – I thought, ‘Gosh, there’s got to be a way for us to do this.'”
Times staff writer Josh Rottenberg contributed to this report.
