Switch

1 9 7 5 – 1 9 7 8 (USA)
1 x 90 minute pilot
70 x 60 minute episodes

Former LAPD fraud detective Frank “Mac” MacBride (Eddie Albert) joined forces with Peterson “Pete” T Ryan (Robert Wagner) – a con artist he once sent to jail – to operate their own private detective agency (called variously MacBride-Ryan Investigations and The Ryan MacBride Private Detective Organisation throughout the series).

Mac retired from the force at about the same time Pete was being
released from serving a two-year sentence at San Quentin. They became friends over the course of time and pooled their talents to help people by opening the agency.

Most of their cases involved running cons on the bad guys in order to trick them into surrendering or revealing the whereabouts of the stolen loot.

Operating from 1019 Florida Street in Los Angeles, Maggie (Sharon Gless) was their cute but naive receptionist, and wacky restaurateur Malcolm Argos (Charlie Callas), a small-time thief and con man who had gone straight and whose mastery of disguise often came in handy to help MacBride and Ryan with their cases, provided the comic relief.

Ali McGinnis (Jaclyn Smith), who Pete says can “talk the curves off a hockey puck”, is a stunning brunette Pete uses to run interference during a con. Ali, a con artist herself, uses her beauty to accomplish her goals.

By the middle of its second season, Switch had become a somewhat more traditional detective series, with fewer of the elaborate con games, and in the fall of 1977 Pete moved into a new apartment above Malcolm’s bouzouki bar, where Revel (Mindi Miller) was the sexy hostess and Wang (James Hong) the new cook.

Peterson (“Pete”) T. Ryan
Robert Wagner
Frank (“Mac”) MacBride
Eddie Albert
Malcolm Argos
Charlie Callas
Maggie Philbin
Sharon Gless
Ali McGinnis
Jaclyn Smith
Lt. Griffin
Ken Swofford
Lt. Modeer
Richard X Slattery
Lt. Shilton
William Bryant
Revel
Mindi Miller
Wang
James Hong

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