Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

I was definitely late to the show where Moonlighting was concerned. I watched the occasional episode, but I wasn't too impressed with it at first. Then, after a year of listening to "water cooler" talk where co-workers at my office would gush about the previous night's episode, a friend of mine forced me to sit down and watch the series' famous Taming of the Shrew parody "Atomic Shakespeare," which he had taped from his VCR. I totally caved after that.

Happily for Moonlighting fans, Lions Gate Home Entertainment released DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 a while back, and now they have also released Season 3, the one with the "Shakespeare" episode. The DVDs are up to the series' gold standard, with generous commentaries from creator/exec producer Glenn Gordon Caron, producer Jay Daniel, stars Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis (what ever happened to him?), and, in one startling instance, four fans who run a Moonlighting website.

For the uninitiated, Moonlighting concerned Maddie Hayes (Shepherd), a former glamour model who finds that her accountant has left the country with all of her assets, save a low-rent detective agency run by happy-go-lucky David Addison (Willis, whose star-making turn this was). Frosty Maddie was forced to both employ herself as a sleuth and put up with David's wacko shenanigans. Since neither star was difficult on the eyes, it naturally followed that some heated chemistry would evolve between them, leading to the series' famous "Will they or won't they...?" motif.

Caron long ago admitted that he never wanted to do a standard detective show, and he used the hoary setting as a take-off point for some daring flights of fancy. One episode involving a cold case on a once-swanky but burned-down nightclub evolved into a dazzling "he said/she said" black-and-white film noir tribute (introduced by Orson Welles, no less). Season 3 had similar highs, such as an episode about David's previously-unknown ex-wife which included an all-out musical number written by Billy Joel and directed by Singin' in the Rain's Stanley Donen. And of course, there's the "Shakespeare" episode, for which I'll go out on a limb by calling it one of television's finest hours ever.

The nicest element of this series is that, for all of the series' breaking of the "fourth wall," it took its characterizations, if you will, seriously. Even the above-mentioned "gimmick" episodes provided thoughtful codas that surprised viewers into realizing how much they cared about these people.

On that basis, Season 3 has it all -- high production values, superb acting and writing (Caron says the "Shakespeare" ep, written by veteran TV scribes Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno, was too good to require his usual revision), and -- for this season, at least -- a satisfactory resolution to the main characters' sexual tension.

On the debit side, it must be said that, because Moonlighting's elaborate nature caused it to fall behind schedule, it sometimes relied on what Rolling Stone once referred to as "contingency" episodes involving two lesser characters: Maddie's ever-rhyming secretary Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) and her erstwhile lover, junior detective Bert Viola (Curtis Armstrong). As support, this duo provides a nice counterpart to the glamorous leads. (In particular, Armstrong really showed his acting chops in the "Shakespeare" episode.) But when production delays forced Agnes and Bert to "star" in a particular segment (Season 3 offers them in a ghastly haunted-house pastiche), they handily proved to be no Shepherd and Willis.

But after all that, ignore the occasional missteps, and you'll probably find #3 to be the series' most fully satisfying season -- before on-set tension and Cybill Shepherd's real-life pregnancy helped to torpedo a once-classy TV series.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older