Lee Horsley in Matt Houston (1982)

Obscurity factor: 6

Detective shows was a big television staple in the 80's. Hart to Hart, Spencer for Hire, Cagney & Lacy... And before Texas so strongly represented one side of the political divide (or at least before I was aware of it) Matt Houston combined elements of all of them. Matt was a fabulously wealthy Texas oil man who spent most of his time in Los Angeles playing at being a private detective - and he played hard at it! His glamorous sidekick (Pamela Hensley) was always there to fill in the necessary information about a case. The action was dramatic - breaking windows, falling cars, running across roofs - and the stories were easy to digest with plot lines you could follow while you made yourself a snack in the radar range. Lee Horsley was quite the show piece, in that mustachioed way that was so popular in the 70's and 80's, and Pamela Hensley was something of a siren herself, and eerily similar to Barbara Stock who played her counterpart on Spencer for Hire. When she show first premiered the opening credits gave a hint to the slightly quirky humor to be found in the series, as you can see in the video below.

The series ran for 3 seasons (I was a devoted viewer as a kid). I was pleased to see that the first of those seasons has been released on DVD. The opening credits above were uploaded to YouTube by bretmaverick2004.

Obscurity factor: 6 (Available on DVD, remembered by some, largely lost to the sands of time)