60MOONLIGHTING - TIE

Aired: ABC, 1985-1989

Nominally a comedic detective series, the show's originality came from the electrifying chemistry between stars Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, whose verbal jousting earned the duo, and the series, comparisons to Howard Hawkes comedies like His Girl Friday, or William Powell and Myrna Loy of The Thin Man series. In 1986, as the show was rising in popularity to a fever pitch, creator Glen Gordon Caron told Newsweek that what made Moonlighting different was that the stakes facing his partners in crime-detection involved the emotional risk of acknowledging their true feelings for each other. "It's, 'If I care for you, and I suspect that maybe you don't care as much for me, what do I do?' I think the audience sees this and says, 'OK, now something is at stake here. Your heart is on the table.' There's always a little ache running underneath everything."