Ain't Nothin' Like a Dame

The We Television Network this week broadcast a pilot reality show based on actual female PIs from a group which calls themselves Female Legal & Investigative Professionals, or FLIP. FLIP members band together online to track clues and solve cases across the country, and in the pilot episode, the team assists a murder investigation in Baltimore and a kidnapping case near Boston. The producers are hoping it gets picked up as a series, but you can always catch the one episode again on Friday, August 15th at 10pm (hat tip to Donna Andrews for that).

This made me think back to American TV series from the past that centered on women private detectives, professional or amateur (centered as in the main character, and not just as a wife/ornament or second banana), but it's not a very long list, and the few series that did make it to the screen didn't last long, in general: The Snoop Sisters (NBC, 1973-74); Get Christie Love (1974); Charlie's Angels from 1976-81 (can we really count that one?); Cassie & Co. (1982); Murder, She Wrote (CBS, 1984-96); Christine Cromwell (ABC Mystery Movie, 1989-90); Chandler & Co on PBS (originally BBC, 1994-96). If you factor in British television, you can add the various BBC productions of Miss Marple, ITV's Anna Lee (1993-94), and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (BBC, 1996-98), although they're mostly in the amateur-sleuth vein.

Given the popularity of recent female PI series in crime fiction like Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshowsky, Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone, or Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, it's not too surprising to see a "mini renaissance" of sorts of female PIs on TV. In addition to the We-TV show above and James Patterson's Women's Murder Club, which aired on ABC 2007-2008 (also canceled after only one season), there are a few new shows in the pipeline:

• The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is in production for HBO
• ABC has greenlighted the pilot for Finnegan, about a female detective with the LAPD, starring Teri Polo (although not a PI, I add it as a footnote of sorts, to more females in TV crime shows in general)
• The Hallmark Channel is producing Dear Prudence, TV movie-possible pilot with star Jane Seymour as a "Martha-Stewart-like" character who ends up solving a murder while on vacation. It debuts August 23rd.

It remains to be seen whether any of the new shows will last more than a season, if they make it that far. Perhaps the hard truth is that TV viewers in general prefer to experience their female sleuths on the written page rather than on the screen.

Any favorites I left out? Feel free to post them!