McMillan & Wife

This show was one of the rotation of the NBC Mystery Movie which also featured Columbo, McCloud, Night Gallery, etc. It's two main stars made the show go.

Rock Hudson played Comissioner McMillan very well. Susan Saint James as his slightly goofy, sexpot wife Sally, added a spark that flew between her, Hudson, & the audience. Susan was the type of woman that teenage boys fell in love with. Good thing she didn't realize when this show was on or she'd have been in jail. All us teenage boys when this show ran wanted her (at least most of us).

Even when the scripts mystery was a little lacking, Susan & Rock would make it seem fresh. John Schuck & Nancy Walker both provided excellent cast support as well. Really enjoyed these years ago & now the DVD's are coming out. We never realized when we were young the privilege we had of watching this good a series.

I never took my eyes off Susan. This show always pleased its fans.

Used to watch this series a long long time ago.Loved it so much that I promised myself I will visit beautiful San Francisco(I did and loved it). Although the series bore no resemblance to "real" people: how many of us know of a police Cornish and his wife solving murders personally? Still it was an hour spent each week being entertained by Mrs McMillan,her funny and slightly "boozed"housemaid and the most overworked,underpaid and undernourished Sergeant.Watching the show let me escape in a world of thrills and spills,and all the beautiful people that only a TV show can present.Mrs McMillan never had to make the bed or run the vacuum or do the ironing,no no all she involved herself was crooks and more crooks some nastier than others.Pure simple escapism for my family and myself. So now comes the sixty four dollars questions: when are we going to see more releases on DVD of this TV show and others like McCloud. Millie

Re the comment: "I was surprised that posters mentioned Hudson's homosexuality as somehow influencing perception of this show in hindsight. Hudson was gay; Mac wasn't. If straight men can play gay characters, why can't the reverse be true? Why must someone's private life interfere with a role?" I was merely responding to the one reviewer citing Hudson being gay and then characterizing Mac & Sally's relationship as "sexless." After seeing the pilot again on the recently released DVD, I can say it was anything but! The two characters seem to be hugging, kissing, making out, etc., almost all the time (there's even a rather risqué - for 1971 TV - scene that has a clearly naked Susan St. James taking a shower behind a fogged stall window).

The plots are a little slow, but they are funny in about five different ways and so cleverly written that it really is a shocker what happened. I like that sally wears a football jersey to bed. Everybody in the show plays off each other really well and adds their best to make you not want to change the channel even though it is on really late at night.It's at it's best when Mildred dances the tango or mac and sally have double entendre' conversations while laying in bed. But don't watch the last season,everyone pretty much left and it's just a run down looking Rock Hudson and Mildred's VERY ANNOYING sister solving mysteries together.

Ahh, memories of watching this series aged about 11 and having a crush on Susan St James, her pushing Judy Carne to one side in the process. Of course the early 70's was a great time for classic US 'tec series, Kojak, Columbo (to quote Harry Nilsson) and many others, but this show doesn't appear to have gone into the permanent re-run rotation like so many of its contemporaries. There could be any number of reasons for this, some clear (it has dated quite a lot) and some perhaps not so clear, although its template has been reused since, most notably in "Hart To Hart".

Naturally it's not as good as the child in me remembers, the story, at least of this early episode being somewhat formulaic and the direction very flat and reactionary.

That said, I liked Hudson in the part and he doesn't appear to be coasting as much as his history might have entitled him to, while St James still has that quirky charm going for her, even if she does scream a lot. There's a nice frisson between them, loved-up as we say here in the UK, whch added some spice to proceedings. Nancy Walker, later Rhoda's mum, is watchable as ever as their feisty house-maid and moon-faced John Schuck is Hudson's runabout foot-soldier.

The Frisco locations are fine, the humour is gentle and while I guess there's not a lot of dramatic tension on show, it still reminds me fondly of Sunday afternoons as a kid in from the rain, with nothing better to do.