2023-07-24 16:56:01
Ah! Farrah Fawcett’s blow-dry and devastating smile, Jaclyn Smith’s madonna face, Kate Jackson’s deliciously boyish look… Three queens of hearts that made those of an entire generation beat in the series Charlie’s Angels – Charlie’s Angels in French – broadcast in the United States between 1976 and 1981 and adopted by our small French screen from 1978, on Antenne 2.
Its success was based on a simple premise: three “beautiful girls” (terminology that smacks of its period machismo…) languishing in menial tasks within the Californian police. Spotted and then recruited by Charlie Townsend, a mysterious and wealthy detective, they can finally deploy their multiple talents in dangerous but never depressing investigations. There surely lies part of the magic of fiction.
The plastic of the James Bond girls, the independence of 007
Vitaminized, colorful, joyful, the series is based on the very sexy energy of the three “angels”, their dressing room well stocked in large and small outfits, their optimistic and fairly schematic plan to make good triumph over evil. Recurring gags have helped to familiarize the public with the characters. In particular the absence on the screen of Charlie, whose voice we only hear when he gives his orders by telephone, and the debonair character of his second, John Bosley, whom our three heroines love to put in a box.
Endowed with the advantageous plasticity of the James Bond girls, they add the independence and efficiency of 007 himself and many teenage girls have dreamed, without really believing it, of such a flamboyant destiny under the sun of the New World… If the series ran out of steam from its 4th season and the trio was periodically renewed (only Jaclyn Smith shot in the 115 episodes!), it left its mark enough to give led to adaptations on the big screen, in 2000 and 2003 with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, then in 2019 with Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska.
#Charlies #Angels #trump #angels