Moonlighting

Sometimes the best partnerships start with two people who can't stand each other. Glamorous former model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) has a serious problem: her accountant just ran off with her fortune, leaving her with a handful of struggling businesses. One of them is the Blue Moon Detective Agency, run by fast-talking charmer David Addison (Bruce Willis). Her plan to shut it down goes out the window when the two stumble into a crime and David talks Maddie into helping him solve it. With that, one of television's most popular partnerships was born. Created by Glenn Gordon Caron ("Remington Steele"), "Moonlighting" started as a midseason replacement on ABC and quickly became a hit. It made a star out of newcomer Willis, who won an Emmy for the role, and turned Shepherd, already famous from fashion and films like "Taxi Driver," into a bona fide TV star. Blending romantic comedy with detective drama, the series was famous for rapid-fire dialogue, playful fourth-wall-breaking moments and the sizzling will-they-or-won't-they tension between its leads. Creative episodes like the black-and-white noir homage "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" and the Shakespeare send-up "Atomic Shakespeare" showed just how far the show was willing to go. Rhyming receptionist Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) was there from the start, with eager clerk Herbert Viola (Curtis Armstrong) joining later. Guest stars included Tim Robbins, Dana Delany, Richard Belzer and Whoopi Goldberg, who earned an Emmy nomination. Some partnerships are just business. The best ones feel like fate.