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Switch is an American action-adventure, tongue-in-cheek detective series starring Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner, who work as private eyes, for a deceptive sting operation. It was broadcast on the CBS network for three seasons between September 9, 1975 and August 20, 1978, bumping the Hawaii Five-O detective series to Friday nights.
1977
Pete and Mac do a literal song and dance as they help an old vaudeville hoofer try to figure out who took several shots at him onstage, killing his dance partner.
Pete becomes a rather overage soccer goalie (Robert Wagner, though he looked younger, was 47 at the time of filming) in order to figure out who killed the team's previous goalie and how (the killer uses a camera with a special attachment which shoots a poisoned dart).
Mac reacquaints himself with a number of people he hasn't seen in years after he and Pete reopen the case of a glamorous actress who was murdered 30 years earlier.
Soem interesting underwater (swimming pool) footage highlights this episode as Pete and Mac -- in full business suits and at their ages (over 70 for Eddie Albert) dive in to defuse a nuclear bomb threatening to take out a society party and much of Los Angeles to boot. This episode was broadcast on August 6, 1978 (possinly its first run) just before the TV news announced the death of Pope Paul VI.
Pete tags along when Mac attends a reunion of his old police buddies, but the event takes a dark turn as someone is killing off the attendees one by one.
Ryan is forced to protect a kingpin's son at a golf tournament, otherwise Malcolm's life is forfeit.
The series began a summer run (ironically, enjoying its best ratings since the first season and tremendously better than it had done in the fall) with an episode about kidnappers grabbing the brother of a photographic model -- the brother is a veterinary student specializing in large-animal surgery, which he is to be forced to use to remove diamonds from the hide of an African rhinoceros recently imported to Los Angeles. Watch very fast for Natalie Wood bidding her then-husband Robert Wagner (Pete) goodbye from a bathtub at about the 10th minute.
The near-ultimate in budget-conscious "bottle shows" (all but two scenes are filmed inside Malcolm's Bouziki Bar; Pamela Bellwood and two firemen are the only guest actors; and much of the show is in flashbacks) finds Pete, Mac, Malcolm and Maggie trapped inside the bar with a very pregnant murder witness while mob hit men search unseen for a way in. Some sources give this episode's air date as August 13, 1978, when the show was run off as a summer series (and did very well in the ratings).
Streaming availability information not available
1975
An wannabe actor who blackmails women targets an actress who ask for help from Pete and Frank.
A ex-cop now private investigator murders a man who stole jewels and takes the jewels himself. Pete and Frank help the cops by linking the murder and the jewels to the private investigator.
1976
Darcy Taggart is a perpetually-smiling record producer who is secretly stealing songs from his own musicians and handing over bootleg copies to a mobster. When two of his musicians learn of the deal and try to cut in, he has them killed off in "acccidents" set up by his burly but child-like henchman Ronnie. Pete devises a scheme to erase the master tapes of various artists whom Taggart has promised to the mobster, forcing him to take incautious actions.
The treasurer of a retirement home takes the money and runs away to Brazil. The owner asks Pete and Mac to get the money back or the home will be shut down and the residents will have no place to go. Since the man can't be extradited . Mac and Pete decide to get him to give up the money by pretending to have a diamond mine they want to sell.
A small group of con artists, including two women( one played by Joan Collins), use seances to dupe their gullible clients out of their Stockmarket investments.
A woman persuades Pete and Mac to investigate and prove her wealthy Father was murdered by her unscrupulous Uncle.
Pete and Mac try to uncover the location of a high jacked armored truck's loot.
Pete and Mac have only 11 days to solve an old emerald robbery.
An ex-con turns to Pete and Mac for help when he's accused of torching a warehouse on the waterfront. Certain that the warehouse owner is the real culprit, the two detectives plan a con to nail him, trying to convince him that he's a murderer who disposed of his victim under the burnt warehouse.
A client asks Pete to do a background check on a man with possible mob connections, who wants to marry his daughter .
A fashion model is abducted by white slavers. Pete and Mac devise a plan to rescue her.
A bomb is planted in Ryan's car and he is injured. Mac tries to find the one who planted the bomb and starts by looking for the one who sold the explosive used. He finds the seller dead and all signs lead him to think it has something to do with a man named Speer who's the man who brought Ryan and Mac together. While waiting for the police to find the one who planted the bomb Mac recalls how they got together. It was two years ago and Mac was trying to get Speer for killing his partner and sought Ryan's help because Speer killed someone close to Ryan.
A business magnate involved in a hideous divorce is kidnapped, and the kidnappers later critically wound a police officer. Pete and Mac suspect that the man's soon-to-be-ex-wife and his girlfriend may be behind the kidnapping -- along with somebody else.
Extortionists kidnap a bank executive and strap a bomb to his chest in order to force him to pay them a fortune. When the bank executive suffers a heart attack, they let him go -- and strap the bomb to Pete Ryan instead.
A loony sculptor claims her grandfather wasn't buried in his grave at all. Turns out he was ("When we put them down there, they stay down", says a minor character), but there is also evidence that $4.3 million in embezzled money is -- or was -- down there too. When Pete and Mac take up the case and find the money hijacked from a computer account, they also come upon a shadowy killer who is intent on making the sculptor look crazy or dead and take them with her.
A stewardess stumbles on an air crew's plan to steal Federal money bags on her flight. She is murdered by them and they then frame Pete for her demise.
A car collector (Dabney. Coleman) is blackmailed by a revengeful woman out to punish Mac who she blames for putting her husband in prison.
Pete and Mac check out a gun club in the mountains which stockpiles supplies for wealthy buyers who want to hide in its bunkers in case of a nuclear war. The club's proprietors are swindlers who have already murdered an employee.
Pete and Mac become involved in the search for a missing briefcase with something of value inside, something that a disparate cast of characters is also after and quite possibly willing to kill for.
Unknown to himself, a Vegas nightclub singer turns into his alter ego, a deranged slasher-killer, when he hears one of his own classic songs. Pete and Mac get on the trail of the murderer but are sidelined by criminal activity on the parts of his managers. Filmed on location in Las Vegas and on Lake Mead.
The beautiful client's (Veronica Hamel) brother is falsely imprisoned in Casablanca, and it's up to Pete and Mac to get him out before it's too late.
A woman Pete knows shows UP with her son. She tells him her husband called and told her they're in danger and That they had to get away. She and Pete Go to meet her husband, he says he was hired to do something. When he found out its illegal he tried to get out but they're telling him, he has to do it and they threatened his family. Before he could say anything else the ones following him show up and take him. Pete and Mac Try to Find out whats going on, the men Show trying to get the boy but When they couldn't Find him, they take the mother, they also take Maggie to ...
Pete's new girlfriend happens to be the former mistress of a Syndicate leader. When the mobster beats him nearly dead for stealing his girl, Mac sets out to exact revenge.
Maggies love interest turns out to be an ex-con.
A blind witness hires Pete and Mac for protection.
Pete and Mac go after a dope smugger for manslaughter.
Maggie kidnapped by ganster son to make Pete and Mack find out who is trying to kill his farher.
Pete, Mack, Maggie and Malcome investigate a crooked health spa.
A fashion designer is murdered three times simultaneously as he presents during a fashion show -- by drinking cyanide-laced champagne, getting shot and having a spotlight tumble onto his head. The rest of the episode is shown in flashbacks, as the story unfolds of how people stole the formula for his latest show-stopping fashion and tried -- independently of each other but at the exact same moment -- to kill him for trying to find out who did it. (The three killers are all caught trying to escape in a coda at the end.)
Pete is asked by one his inmate pals to locate a dancer who can clear him of murder charges.
Robert Wagner
Pete Ryan
Eddie Albert
Frank MacBride
Charlie Callas
Malcolm Argos
Sharon Gless
Maggie Philbin
James Hong
Wang
William Bryant
Lieutenant Shilton
