“Before Wonder Woman & Buffy: The TV Show That Redefined What It Meant to Be a Female Hero”

It was in the year 1967 that the ground­break­ing show that rede­fined female heroes aired, the always-pop­u­lar Char­lies’ Angels

The orig­i­nal cast, Far­rah Faw­cett, Kate Jack­son, and Jaclyn Smith in the roles of the icon­ic Angels, shat­tered stereo­types and intro­duced a rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept of women solv­ing crime mys­ter­ies and fea­tur­ing trendy out­fits at the same time

The show’s fashion influence was larger than anticipated.

Need­less to say, the con­cept attract­ed the atten­tion of mil­lions of view­ers. The com­bi­na­tion of action, intrigue, and a touch of glam­our turned out a win­ning for­mu­la, and it seemed that the series’ cre­ators, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, knew exact­ly what they were doing when they dared to place female heroes in the cen­ter of their work.

Over the course of the series, the ini­tial cast under­went changes. The first change took place when gor­geous Faw­cett left after sea­son one and her char­ac­ter was replaced with Cheryl Ladd.

In sea­son three, Kate Jack­son made her exit from the series, with Shel­ley Hack join­ing the cast as Tiffany Welles. Hack, how­ev­er, didn’t stay long. Her place was tak­en by Tanya Roberts in sea­son five

Jaclyn Smith remained part of the cast until the very end

These changes added to the touch of diversity and helped keep the show fresh.

Dur­ing the first two sea­sons, Char­lies’ Angels was in the top 10 series in terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty. But by the 1980s, he show slow­ly start­ed to lose its hold on the audi­ence rat­ings.

One of the rea­sons was that it start­ed to rely more on style and s*x appeal as it pro­gressed than on con­tent

The finale, titled Let Our Angel Live, marked the end of an era.

To the delight of many of its fans, Charlie’s Angels returned on the big screen, this time star­ring Cameron Diaz, Drew Bar­ry­more, and Lucy Liu. Although a mod­ern touch was added, the film stayed true to its orig­i­nal ‘spir­it,’ but with more intense action, and a cast rep­re­sent­ing a shift­ing cul­tur­al per­spec­tive.

Since the film adap­ta­tion was a huge suc­cess, the show’s pro­duc­ers made a reboot of the series in 2011. How­ev­er, it was can­celed after sev­en episodes, fail­ing to cap­ture the mag­ic of the orig­i­nal series

In 2019, Charlie’s Angels returned again. This time, the Angels who fought crime under the guid­ance of their unseen boss, Char­lie Townsend, were played by Kris­ten Stew­art, Ella Balin­s­ka, and Nao­mi Scott. This sequel didn’t reach the suc­cess of its pre­de­ces­sors

Charlie’s Angels broke new ground for female-led action and detec­tive series. It impact­ed many young women to pur­sue careers that were until then con­sid­ered male only.