The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon

An obscure witch from an obscure TV show is featured in today's Witch-A-Day post. In the early 80's a short-lived TV series called Tucker's Witch starred Catherine Hicks. In the show, Catherine played Amanda Tucker who worked as a private investigator with her husband played by Tim Matheson.

This husband and wife team worked to solve crimes each in their own way. Tim's character Rick Tucker used old-fashioned detective skills while his wife used witchcraft. She had a Siamese cat named Dickens and her mother, also a witch, was played by Barbara Barrie. Though Amanda's telekinesis worked fine for the most part, some of her spells didn't work properly and caused some problems, but everything worked out in the end. Well, except for the show. Moved around on the schedule a few times, Tucker's Witch never developed an audience.


A sidenote on the show: The first pilot of the show was called The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon and starred two actors from the film Porky's. Art Hindle played the husband while the witchy wife was played by Kim Cattrall. After filming on the pilot was completed, Porky's came out and the network executives were appalled at the raunchiness of the film, specifically Kim's scene in the locker room, so they immediately called for recasting and changed the name of the show to Tucker's Witch. It's funny to think they passed up on the gold mine of using Kim to market the show because she might have found the audience that the show never found.