Simon & Simon

Simon & Simon
Title screen from Season 1
Genre	Mystery Comedy-Drama
Created by	Philip DeGuere
Starring	Gerald McRaney Jameson Parker Mary Carver Eddie Barth Jeannie Wilson Tim Reid Joan McMurtrey
Music by	Joseph Conlan
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	8
No. of episodes	156 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	45–48 minutes
Production company(s)	Universal Television
Distributor	NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	CBS
Original release	November 24, 1981 (1981-11-24) – January 21, 1989 (1989-01-21)
Chronology
Related shows	Magnum, P.I. Whiz Kids

Simon & Simon is an American detective television series that originally ran from 1981 to 1989. The series was broadcast on CBS and starred Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker as two disparate brothers who run a private detective agency in San Diego, CA.

The show revolves around the decisively, polar opposite Simon brothers, Rick (McRaney) and Andrew Jackson/"A.J." (Parker). Rick is the less-refined, but still pleasant, United States Marine Corps Vietnam veteran with a penchant for cowboy boots, denim and four-wheel drive pickups, visually much akin to the Marlboro Man, popular of that day. However, A.J. Simon, a college graduate, with a Wall Street look, is a polished fellow with a taste for classic cars and tailored suits. A.J. was a practicing Catholic; Rick was not. Rick lived on a boat in A.J.'s water-front property. A.J. preferred to follow the rules, while Rick was much more of a free spirit, using a classic P.I. type of approach. Rick's Dodge Power Wagon is notable for its dull paint and conspicuously-large metal bumper/ramming device, used in one episode to crush the engine of a car). A.J. could afford to be more fashionable in his 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, and later, a customized Chevrolet Camaro Z28 or 1968 Chevrolet Camaro RS convertible in the two-part episode, "Pirate's Key".

Together, they run a private detective service in San Diego, CA during the 1980s; the contrasting ways in which the brothers went about their investigations and the subsequent personality conflicts between them, provided much of the dramatic dialectic each week.

Although Rick is a few years older, in fact McRaney and Parker were both born in 1947 with only a three-month age difference.

* The last two episodes of the series only aired in syndication.

The original 1978 pilot, called Pirate's Key, was set in Florida. When CBS picked up the show, the characters' home was changed from Florida to San Diego, California, where the show was filmed for the first season. Due to the production costs and low ratings, the filming/production of the show moved to Los Angeles, though the show continued to be set in San Diego for the course of its eight-year run on CBS. The series was created by executive producer Philip DeGuere, who credited his inspirations as a request from a CBS executive to create something like a modern "Butch and Sundance", and a spec pilot DeGuere had recently read about a divorced husband and wife detective team written by Bob Shayne, whom DeGuere hired to write during the first two seasons. Shayne continued to write episodes for the series during its run, and together, they went on to create the CBS series Whiz Kids.