Charlie's Angels

Charlie's Angels is an American crime drama that ran on ABC from 1976 to 1981. Created by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, the series follows three women who graduate from the police academy only to be assigned to menial duties such as directing traffic and answering phones. Frustrated by those limits, they leave to work as private investigators for the Townsend Agency, taking on cases as a skilled and resourceful detective team.

Their employer is the wealthy and mysterious Charlie Townsend, who is never seen on screen and communicates with the women only by speaker phone, voiced by John Forsythe. The Angels receive their assignments and guidance through Charlie's voice and through his on-site associate John Bosley, played by David Doyle, who handles logistics and works alongside the trio in the field. Each week the team goes undercover in glamorous and dangerous settings to solve crimes, protect clients, and bring criminals to justice.

An immediate ratings smash, Charlie's Angels became a defining pop-culture phenomenon of the late 1970s, propelling its leads to international fame and inspiring a wave of merchandise, including the era's best-selling poster of Farrah Fawcett. The show is frequently discussed in the historical debate over so-called jiggle TV, a label critics applied to glamour-forward programming of the period; supporters and the cast have noted that the series also depicted capable women solving cases through intelligence and teamwork. Cast changes across its five seasons reflected the difficulty of replacing its breakout stars, and the franchise later continued through feature films and a television revival.