Tucker's Witch
A married detective and his witch wife solve cases in Los Angeles.
Tucker's Witch was a detective fantasy series on CBS, initially airing from October 6 to November 10, 1982, with additional episodes broadcast sporadically from March 31 to June 2, 1983. The show followed Rick and Amanda Tucker, a married couple played by Tim Matheson and Catherine Hicks, who ran a private detective agency in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon. Amanda was a witch whose psychic abilities helped solve cases, but her powers were often unreliable, frequently causing complications for the pair. The supporting cast included Bill Morey as Lt. Fisk, the Tuckers' grumpy but good-natured police contact; Alfre Woodard as their capable assistant Marcia; and Barbara Barrie as Amanda's cheerful widowed mother Ellen, a herbalist and healer. Amanda's powers came from her deceased grandmother, as witchly abilities skipped a generation. The couple's beige-and-black cat with blue eyes, named Dickens, served as Amanda's familiar and appeared prominently in the credits and most episodes.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Detective
- Fantasy
- Comedy-drama
- Runtime
- 60 minutes
- Starring
- Tim Matheson
- Catherine Hicks
- Bill Morey
- Alfre Woodard
- Barbara Barrie
- Creator
- William Bast; Paul Huson
- Theme music
- Brad Fiedel
- Company
- Hill/Mandelker Films
- Country
- United States
- Network
- CBS
Facts from the source article.
Pilot
The show's pilot was first filmed in early 1982 as The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon and starred Art Hindle and Kim Cattrall. In May 1982, CBS announced that the series had been picked up with that title and cast. However, Cattrall's racy scene in the 1982 film Porky's reportedly caused CBS to demand her replacement. The show was retitled Tucker's Witch and the pilot was reshot with a new cast; Catherine Hicks replaced Cattrall and Tim Matheson was cast in Hindle's role (Hindle had also played a small role in Porky's). The original pilot never aired, but it is now available on the Amazon-owned IMDb TV streaming service along with the show's other episodes. In a 1986 interview with the Toronto Star, Hindle spoke of his and Cattrall's departures: 'All the networks show these pilots to members of the public they pick up on the street and they put push-button responses in their hands. They respond to whether they like the character, don't like the character; or they like the story, don't like the story; like the scene, don't like the scene. She (Cattrall) she didn't do too well with these reponses [sic] so they replaced her. And then I just walked. I had other things to do and I didn't really want to get involved with something they were going to start pulling strings all the time.'
Broadcast history
Tucker's Witch aired at 10 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays in its first run, and proved unable to compete with ABC's Dynasty and NBC's Quincy, M.E. The show was placed on hiatus after six episodes had aired; months later, it was brought back to burn off the remaining episodes. The program was switched to Thursday for the second half of its run. At least one episode of the series misspells Catherine Hicks' name, omitting the middle 'E' (Cathrine Hicks). In later rebroadcasts on the USA Network, the program was retitled The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon, the series' original title. The show was produced by Hill-Mandelker Films.
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