Cult TV: Scarecrow and Mrs King.

scarecrow2Building on a common theme of both “The Man from UNCLE” and Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest”, “Scarecrow and Mrs King” (1983-87) was based on the partnership of an American intelligence agent Lee Stetson (Codename Scarecrow), played by Bruce Boxleitner, and Amanda King, a divorcee he recruits to help him on a secret mission. King proves so useful to the agency that they decide to keep her on as an asset, under Scarecrow’s guidance and protection. King can’t, of course, tell her two young sons, or her live-in mother.

The show was ex-Charlie’s Angels star Kate Jackon’s (Sabrina, “the smart one”, whom people forget was actually the name recognised star of Charlie’s Angels when it first aired) return to network television.

Like most shows of its time, it was pretty formulaic although it did have the running Will They/Won’t They theme (they did, in the end) and also an entertaining sub-plot where the KGB came to believe that Mrs King was actually the brilliantly undercover Scarecrow, and that Stetson was just some flunky.

The show ended when Jackson was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to effectively leave it, and is yet another of those hit shows from the 1980s that is vanishing even from the repeat schedules. Only Jessica Fletcher seems immune.

Boxleitner would later go on to Sci-Fi fame as Captain John Sheridan in “Babylon 5”.