It’s been 34 years since Moonlighting went off the air at ABC, ending one of the strangest, and, at least briefly, successful runs in all of primetime TV. Making a star of Bruce Willis, and re-energizing the career of Cybill Shepherd, the series has become as known, in subsequent decades, for its on-set strife as for its blend of metafictional comedy, detective stories, and legendary romantic tension. That’s at least partially because, despite its availability on DVD (and the occasional rerun stint), the series has never been that easy to access in the modern era, thanks to an extremely heavy library of licensed music that’s meant it’s never appeared on streaming. That’s about to change now, though, as Hulu has confirmed that the entire series will be coming to its library on October 10.
All 67 episodes of the show—which starred Shepherd as former model Maddie, running a detective agency with Willis’ low-class lout David—will be added to the streamer’s library, apparently with most of that pesky music intact. For lots of folks, that’ll mean their first direct exposure to the pair’s will-they-won’t-they romance, which was famously paired with a will-they-won’t-they (appear in the same scene together without committing murder) relationship between Shepherd and Willis. (Allyce Beasley and Curtis Armstrong also co-starred.) It’ll also mean exposure to one of the more chaotic TV hits ever put on the air, as creator Glenn Gordon Caron and his writers delighted in playing with the conventions of TV, including a much-beloved season 3 episode (“Atomic Shakespeare”) written entirely in iambic pentameter, in which a teen fan of the series imagines its characters re-enacting Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew. Prepping for a watch? You can read through our rundown of ten of the series’ best episodes right here.
[via NPR]