Ben, Holly and Nick Landon (Landon, Landon and Landon)

Created by Bruce Kalish & Philip John Taylor

As the private eye boom of the seventies on American television sputtered out (we’d already had fat eyes, blind eyes, old eyes and beach bum eyes), the gimmicks started to get wilder and wilder (and the shows lamer and lamer, generally), to the point where we finally had a dead eye, in the 1980 made-for-television comedy Landon, Landon and Landon.

When hotshot Hollywood dick BEN LANDON (played by William Windom) is murdered while working a case, his two grown (and very clean-cut) children HOLLY LANDON and NICK LANDON decide to keep his agency going. But Ben’s ghost decides to stick around, to help them out–and make up for the fact he’d been a lousy dad.

The first episode, intended as a pilot, had Holly and Nick teaming up with dear ol’ dad to–what else?–solve his murder. His dad’s old secretary, Judith Saperstein, was on hand, as well.

The pilot episode aired, but nobody cared. Except CBS must have really liked the idea of William Windom as a ghost eye, because they retooled the show, moved the pieces around, and tried it all over again the next year, as Quick and Quiet, roughing up the characters a little.

TELEVISION

• LANDON, LANDON AND LANDON
  (re-edited as “Quick and Quiet”)
  (1980, CBS)
  Premiere: June 14, 1980
  Written by Bruce Kalish & Philip John Taylor
  Directed by Don Reo
  A Quinn Martin Production
  Starring William Windom as BEN LANDON
  Nancy Dolman as HOLLY LANDON
  and Daren Kelly as NICK LANDON
  With Millie Slavin as Judith Saperstein
  Also starring Norman Bartold, Richard O’Brien, Arthur Adams, Sudie Bond, Jason Wingreen

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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.