Sadly Over-hyped

Blistering performances.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I've never seen this TV show until now and I'm in my mid-fifties. Immediately I see the formula and I'm just minutes in. It's a simple one built upon class, wealth, and crime. A lovely couple living in a Manhattan high-rise with a cute dog. It's suppose to be glamorous to the everyday viewer. The man is private eye, or was one and still solves crime. The woman is a beautiful sophisticate with a bit of a rebel spirit. The dog is not only cute but smart. Add fashionable cars and some murder mystery and you've distilled MGM's Thin Man TV show down to it's DNA.I've already read it was a too-late attempt to get anything on TV that might raise MGM's faltering movie business. Why it didn't succeed may be the thin plots because the characters are good. Still, as proved by MGM's competitor Warner Brothers it wasn't rocket science. You just had to add either a wild west backdrop or a cool local bit of color. It would seem that the local color here was as thin as the plots. Peter Lawford may be a bit too stiff for the youthful Sherlock Holmes type he's attempting to channel too. I think the combination probably was too weak to compete with the Warner Brothers offerings with far more accessible and iconic characters, even the co-stars were often huge on the WB shows. Still worth a watch as a time capsule of how TV was transitioning into a more powerful media as movies were struggling to evolve from the golden era to a modern one.Phyllis Kirk as Mrs. Charles was really great I might add. She grabs the viewer with her beauty, impeccable taste, and spunk. I think the show could have worked with a more versatile lead, better locales inserted, and just some writing that was more imaginative in the Hitchcock mode.

After Dear Phoebe left the air after one season, Joseph P. Kennedy was behind a second television show for his son-in-law Peter Lawford. The famous Thin Man series was adapted to a half hour television format and Lawford played Nick with Phyllis Kirk as Nora. Of course Asta was around as well. No children however for the Charles as were introduced in the six film series for MGM.Lawford and Kirk were really up against it. William Powell had just retired and Myrna Loy was still active. People remembered the most famous screen couple ever created. Additionally and this is my own personal opinion, mysteries are no good in a half hour format, you need at least an hour to develop plot and alternative suspects.Still The Thin Man on television was entertaining and got by on the charm of its leads.

Never saw the original Thin Man until recently when I bought the set, ALL of the William Powell and Myrna Loy films. I loved them but felt oddly disappointed, and didn't know why. Also, the series that I thought I loved seemed oddly unfamiliar.There is ONE episode of the Lawford/Kirk TV Thin Man on the final disk, the one that includes a biography of Powell, another of Loy. Seeing this single episode made me realize that my nostalgia for The Thin Man was actually for the TV series, not the original. I had never before seen the original. Seeing that single episode of the Kirk/Lawford TV version REALLY brought it all back! It was light yet engrossing, with good production values for the day and a plot that really kept my attention.Both versions have great charm, but I still like the TV series better. If Acorn or Movies Unlimited or some such company were to issue a set of the TV version, I'd buy it in a heartbeat! IF ANYONE READING THIS IS IN THE OLD MOVIE DVD INDUSTRY, PLEASE OFFER THIS!

This show was one of my favorites as a kid growing up in suburban Maryland. I was lucky enough to get home from elementary school just in time to catch the reruns every afternoon along with OH SUSANNAH with the Team of Gale Storm & Zasu Pitts...The Thin Man Came on afterward and it made a great double bill each afternoon. Mr. & Mrs. North with Richard Denning was also in the mix. Phyllis Kirk and Gale Storm were two of the prettiest women in the world to me at the time (Gale Storm singing "Tropical Heatwave" was a source of many wonderful dreams as a child...wink, wink, nudge, nudge...), even allowing for the below the knee fashions of the time. Phyllis was tall and oh so sexy in her short hair do's and long, lanky legs with those marvelous high heels. Peter Lawford was so suave, that I always wanted to be Nick Charles whenever I had the opportunity, like at "Teen Club" with the ladies, between classes with the ladies, etc. I was too young to know about the the Rat Pack, but of all of those guys, Lawford was the coolest, to me. His understated manner, and matter of fact conversational delivery of his lines were far ahead of his time, and made him one of my favorite actors of the time, and this show, the one I'd most like to see brought back on a DVD. of course, that one episode of OH SUSANNAH with Gale singing " 'Heatwave" would be nice, too!