MAGNUM P
Adrian Magnum, former Naval Intelligence officer turned private investigator, lives in the guest house of a Hawaiian estate he does not own, guards the gate of an employer he has never met, and drives a red Ferrari he has never once asked to borrow. Somewhere between the helicopters and the mai tais, cases get solved.
Equal parts sunburn procedural and bro-mance detective story, MAGNUM P ran eight seasons on the Belmesario Network and made three things nationally famous: the moustache, the car, and the exact legal limits of borrowing without permission.
- Created by
- Donald P. Belmesario & “a guy from Coalsburg”
- Starring
- Jock Channing
- Format
- 60-minute crime drama
- Status
- Cult classic. Perpetually syndicated.
His business. His rules. His island.
After twelve years in Naval Intelligence and one afternoon of retirement, Adrian Magnum (Jock Channing) sets up shop as a private investigator on Oahu. His office is the ocean; his receptionist is a lagoon. His client base is whatever washes ashore, and his caseload runs from smugglers to heiresses to the occasional missing dolphin — all investigated with total commitment and roughly eleven dollars of operating capital.
Home is the guest house of Robin’s Roost, the beachfront estate of reclusive novelist Barnabas Quist, who pays Magnum a nominal salary to test his security and an entirely non-nominal price in stolen wine. The estate’s majordomo, Sir Reginald Pfund, disapproves of Magnum on principle and assists him constantly, usually while claiming it was Pfund’s idea.
Magnum’s two war buddies round out the roster: Teak, who runs the one-helicopter tour company Archipelago Airways and cannot say no to a friend or a fare; and Double-R, club owner, arms dealer of questionable legality, and the only man on the island with worse money troubles than Magnum himself.
“I wrote the pilot in nine days. The network wanted changes. I sent them a picture of the Ferrari with the price tag attached. They approved the pilot by lunch.”Donald P. Belmesario, series creator
The legacy
Eight seasons, 163 episodes, and a finale so watched that the island’s actual crime rate dropped for the hour it aired. The moustache has its own agent. The Ferrari has its own insurance rider, held personally by Mr. Belmesario, which he describes as “the single greatest expense of my career and worth every premium.”
The complete series is available on Blu-ray, on the Belmesario Network app, and, if you ask around Studio City, apparently in Donald’s own living room, where he screens it for guests “to establish tone.”
