September 17, 1965

"Honey West" was first on television in an eponymous series starting September 17, 1965. The original was a series of novels first published in 1957 by G. G. Fickling. The setup is this beautiful blonde detective sleuthing it up. The television show only lasted one season.

The female crime fighter, "Honey West" has the advantage of high tech spy gadgets. But that's not all. She is able to leap plot gaps in high heels, fell bad guys with a single chop,  all the time dancing in gloves.  I am not familiar with an earlier scenario in which a woman plays this kind of lead. She has an aunt in the show, and a male cohort who is obviously her sidekick, but she calls the shots.

The show charmingly echoes previous detective settings. Honey lives in a palatial home, with an ocelot, as in The Thin Man series (and Bringing Up Baby). At the same time the intensely urban film noir scenery recurs with dark wet streets.

This show needs a revival, though now I step back, this particular innocent melange of old and new may be impossible to recreate.