Ah, the ’70s. The dorky clothes, the silly shows, the inept acting. Wait! It’s the ’80s, too! Here’s progress: TNN, which brought you The Dukes of Hazzard, now brings you this, recently arrived in all its awful glory … Matt Houston (ABC, 1982-85), the best bad TV show ever!
Check it out: Sonny Bono, Zsa Zsa Gabor, ex-Hugh Hefner squeeze Barbi Benton — guest stars in one episode! Sonny plays Zsa Zsa’s spa employee who runs around in a shortie toga and karate-chops a whole roomful of plaster statues to scare off snoopy private eye Matt Houston.
You remember Lee Horsley as Matt. A Texas millionaire cruising ’round Los Angeles in his Excalibur and cowboy boots, solving rich-and-famous crimes like the murder of a restaurant critic whose dead head is brought to his partner’s restaurant table inside a giant gelatin mold! Matt works atop a glass tower (soooo ’80s architecture) with a roof helipad for his ‘copter (soooo conspicuous-consumption ’80s). His penthouse office is dominated by a giant hot tub and a bar (soooo substance-abusing ’80s), not to mention his supercomputer named Baby. Here’s what happens on TNN twice a day Monday through Thursday, 7 and 11 p.m., in every Matt Houston episode. An improbable murder case Matt doesn’t want to take but does. Dozens of glam suspects who blabber to Matt incessantly. Gunshots. Explosions. Spear-gun shots. Fistfights. Fistfights inside hot-air balloons. Car chases. Dune buggy chases. Bulldozer chases. Soggy chases down amusement park water slides. Ranch-country chases on three-wheelers, which end up “accidentally” driven into the pool.
The pool. There’s always a pool. People have to splash down into something.Stop thinking you’ve heard it all. There are killer sharks, killer robots, killer extraterrestrials, showgirl murders, centerfold murders. Keeping it all crackling are guest stars like Chuck Connors, Ernest Borgnine, David Cassidy, Sid Caesar, Robert Goulet, Lou Ferrigno and, in an intrepid effort to keep all the ex-castaways working, nearly the entire cast of Gilligan’s Island.
Speaking of keeping people working, the 1983 episode “Fear for Tomorrow” (on TNN Tuesday) features none other than 10-year-old “Victoria” Spelling, just off a Vega$ guest shot and soon to drop in on The Love Boat and T.J. Hooker, all of them coincidentally produced by daddy Aaron, who made his big TV comeback in 1990 with renamed daughter Tori on Beverly Hills 90210.
Matt Houston holds giddy surprises like that every night! Is television great or what?
