User reviews

The NBC Mystery Movie was a perfect fit for a film star like Rock Hudson who wanted to get into the grind of a regular television series and its 30 or so episodes that were expected back in 1971. Alternating with McCloud, Columbo, and others Hudson did about 8 McMillan&Wife shows a year and still did a film or two.

Reportedly the co-stars Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James did not get along all that well, but you'd never know it from this 70s version of Nick and Nora Charles. In real life even in San Francisco the police commissioner is an administrator of a large agency. But in San Francisco Stuart McMillan took a hand in an occasional murder that came in some roundabout way to his attention.

Like Myrna Loy, Sally McMillan tried to help as did their maid Mildred played by Nancy Walker. Many times they helped the way Lucy and Ethel helped Ricky. But Mac was always around to save Sally from whatever harm she got in the way of.

The stories were always witty and literate. The one weakness of the show was that whoever the big name guest star was you could pretty much guess that that individual would be the murderer. Maybe one or two times it didn't work out that way, but that was a tease.

It was an enjoyable show and Sundays were always something to look forward to on NBC with McMillan&Wife, McCloud, and Columbo. You could never go wrong.

The plots are a little slow, but they are funny in about five different ways and so cleverly written that it really is a shocker what happened. I like that sally wears a football jersey to bed. Everybody in the show plays off each other really well and adds their best to make you not want to change the channel even though it is on really late at night.It's at it's best when Mildred dances the tango or mac and sally have double entendre' conversations while laying in bed. But don't watch the last season,everyone pretty much left and it's just a run down looking Rock Hudson and Mildred's VERY ANNOYING sister solving mysteries together.

Though its co-rotators, Columbo and McCloud (while others came and went), seem like better shows, I have a soft spot in my heart for McMillan and Wife. Susan St. James and Rock Hudson made a wonderful couple, and the show did sport one of my all-time favorite episodes, "The Easy Sunday Murder Case," in which June Havoc's dog is kidnapped. Havoc describes her precious purebred Pekinese - Mac doesn't think there's anything distinguishing about the dog, so Havoc offers a photo of her husband. "Why would I want that?" he asks her. "Oh," Havoc says, "they took him too." A great episode with a stellar cameo by Wally Cox.

Hudson himself was surprised when the show was expanded to two hours, commenting at the time, "It doesn't hold up for 90 minutes." But for its many fans, it really did, in part because of the great cast. Nancy Walker as Mildred nearly stole the show every time she was on, and John Shuck was the lovable Charlie. Mildred Natwick made several appearances as Mac's mother, and Martha Scott played Susan St. James' mom.

I agree that the disappearing baby was very confusing - Mac and Sally were very involved with one another and the producers didn't want to spoil that, but on the other hand, when were they going to have kids, and if not, why not? They should have been left childless, since the baby was only mentioned in passing.

When Susan St. James and Nancy Walker left, the show was never the same and it was a downer to have Sally and that mysterious baby killed in a plane crash.

I was surprised that posters mentioned Hudson's homosexuality as somehow influencing perception of this show in hindsight. Hudson was gay; Mac wasn't. If straight men can play gay characters, why can't the reverse be true? Why must someone's private life interfere with a role?

Ahh, memories of watching this series aged about 11 and having a crush on Susan St James, her pushing Judy Carne to one side in the process. Of course the early 70's was a great time for classic US 'tec series, Kojak, Columbo (to quote Harry Nilsson) and many others, but this show doesn't appear to have gone into the permanent re-run rotation like so many of its contemporaries. There could be any number of reasons for this, some clear (it has dated quite a lot) and some perhaps not so clear, although its template has been reused since, most notably in "Hart To Hart".

Naturally it's not as good as the child in me remembers, the story, at least of this early episode being somewhat formulaic and the direction very flat and reactionary.

That said, I liked Hudson in the part and he doesn't appear to be coasting as much as his history might have entitled him to, while St James still has that quirky charm going for her, even if she does scream a lot. There's a nice frisson between them, loved-up as we say here in the UK, whch added some spice to proceedings. Nancy Walker, later Rhoda's mum, is watchable as ever as their feisty house-maid and moon-faced John Schuck is Hudson's runabout foot-soldier.

The Frisco locations are fine, the humour is gentle and while I guess there's not a lot of dramatic tension on show, it still reminds me fondly of Sunday afternoons as a kid in from the rain, with nothing better to do.

This was one of NBC's Sunday night mysteries movie series from the 1970's. It probably doesn't carry the same weight in cult status as COLUMBO and McCLOUD but never the less it was very popular at the time. Apparently in the US all three of these series rotated every Sunday night but in the UK McMILLIAN AND WIFE was broadcast on a Thursday night where it remained throughout it's run.

The series main attraction was Rock Hudson a former leading man in movies during the 1950's and 60's who probably started to find big screen film roles hard to come by, so movies made for TV that were packaged into a series format were ideal at this stage of his career. Although back then it probably seemed a step down actually by today's standards doing cable or TV work even is no longer seen as a step down, many big names from the movies are happy doing work on the small screen, it's lucrative and keeps you in the public eye.

Hudson played San Francisco commissioner Stewart McMillian who wasn't content to sit behind a desk doing paper work but was more inclined to work on the streets doing all the nitty gritty investigative work with with his youthful and feisty wife Sally (Susan st James) at his side and his ever loyal assistant Sergeant Charles Enright (John Schuck) in support too. This was due to the fact that the story lines or mystery mostly revolved around them i.e. somebody holding a long standing grudge against them.

It wasn't a heavy drama or a thriller but a mystery series with humor in it. McMillian himself who was assertive and didn't suffer fools gladly often got impatient with some of the characters he encountered and dealt with it with humor. Sergeant Enright his side kick certainly did not upstage McMillian, although a lovable character he seemed to end up doing some of the less glamorous or thankless tasks. You got the impression that he was not the brightest bulb in the pack and a bit naive but never the less he was enthusiastic, energetic, loyal, hard working and reliable for most part.

Sally, McMillians wife almost resembled a typical flower power girl back in those days, petite with a care free spirit who never took herself too seriously. Although she was inquisitive by nature she was often helpless and clumsy when left to her own devises, you could often her her cry out "oh Mac" when nervous. I'm not sure that her shrill and some what flaky character would have impressed the feminist movement back in the 70's which was in full swing at that time. She was probably 20 years his junior, totally devoted to her husband and not very independent. Even when she took matters into her own hands or started to meddle in one of his investigations on her own she wasn't very convincing and more often than not got her self into trouble and had to rely on Mac to get her out of it.

She was better in the supporting role or at least hanging off his arm, although it has to be said she played a central role to the over all chemistry and success of the series. By today's standard of tough talking, high kicking, gun brandishing, tank-topped tattooed clad women of today Sally is defiantly a relic of the past, sweet, funny, feminine and pretty. Lastly, there was the brash and sarcastic housekeeper Mildred (Nancy Walker) whose wise cracking New York humor added a funny dimension to the whole format and kept the easy watching and laid back nature of the show honest.

There was talk at the time of tension between the cast members, Hudson upset at being upstaged by Susan st James who was very popular but I have to say I never sensed that in the re-runs I have seen. In fact the chemistry between Schuck and Hudson was very good and I felt that they genuinely got on well. Rock Hudson seemed to enjoy his part an I never sensed any resentment between himself and the rest of the cast bearing in mind his previous success on the big screen prior to this, he seemed comfortable in his own skin.

The first three seasons were probably the golden years and from season 4 onwards Sally was less visible, perhaps Hudson wanted to have a more prominent role, did not like being upstaged by his co hosts, I don't know? Maybe Sally's damsel in distress role was not believable as the 70's progressed. Eventually, the original cast members were written out or else given small roles and Hudson continued the role on his own for a final season before it was eventually axed.

The stories were OK but perhaps McMillian was too old to pull of the bachelor part and not very convincing as the grieving widow, but I think that TV was changing and it was time to end the whole format. It lasted from 1971-1977 a respectable six seasons and was a welcome addition to the early evening, easy watching TV shows of the 1970's. It no doubt provided the inspiration for the later HART TO HART TV show a few years later.

After this Hudson worked on the mini-series WHEELS followed by the highly popular MARTIAN CHRONICLES and a couple of years later WORLD WAR III. He then almost disappeared from the screen until his shocking entrance in the glam soap DYNASTY. McMILLIAN AND WIFE was probably his last prominent role in his acting career and it was not a bad swan song at all. Hudson died in 1985 and Nancy Walker a few years later. John Schuck is still active and Susan st James has just recently returned to TV after a long absence. Check it out!

As other reviews note, logic isn't a major part of many of this series' scripts, and some of them didn't age well. But keep in mind this was close to a half-century ago, and TV audiences were used to these kinds of plots and writing. (Some of the cars are very cool to see, but the clothing styles are straight out of Barnum and Bailey-guys in every pastel color under the sun, and women wearing huge stiff wigs and dressed in what looked to be upholstery.) St. James went on to a solid tv career, and Hudson was a better actor than some may remember. Despite the plot and dialogue implausibility they sometimes had to deal with, their characters played well off each other, and that's largely what kept us coming back for several seasons. For many of us teen guys, Susan had enough drawing power to do that by herself--cute, spunky, funny, and just the right amount of kooky. However, I could never figure out why the city brass didn't make Mac--who, after all, was the Police Commissioner--work out of his office instead of running around getting into gunfights. The series isn't the top of the TV-detective heap, but it represents the era....a comfortable and friendly revisit to a more innocent time.

John Shuck's Bio described his part as inept. My recollection of his part is that whenever McMillan had an idea of what to look into to solve the crime, the sergeant had already done so, and had the required information. I and my wife actually met him back in the 1980s at a cafe in small village bordering Lake Arrowhead. A really nice guy.

This show was one of the rotation of the NBC Mystery Movie which also featured Columbo, McCloud, Night Gallery, etc. It's two main stars made the show go.

Rock Hudson played Comissioner McMillan very well. Susan Saint James as his slightly goofy, sexpot wife Sally, added a spark that flew between her, Hudson, & the audience. Susan was the type of woman that teenage boys fell in love with. Good thing she didn't realize when this show was on or she'd have been in jail. All us teenage boys when this show ran wanted her (at least most of us).

Even when the scripts mystery was a little lacking, Susan & Rock would make it seem fresh. John Schuck & Nancy Walker both provided excellent cast support as well. Really enjoyed these years ago & now the DVD's are coming out. We never realized when we were young the privilege we had of watching this good a series.

I never took my eyes off Susan. This show always pleased its fans.

Used to watch this series a long long time ago.Loved it so much that I promised myself I will visit beautiful San Francisco(I did and loved it). Although the series bore no resemblance to "real" people: how many of us know of a police Cornish and his wife solving murders personally? Still it was an hour spent each week being entertained by Mrs McMillan,her funny and slightly "boozed"housemaid and the most overworked,underpaid and undernourished Sergeant.Watching the show let me escape in a world of thrills and spills,and all the beautiful people that only a TV show can present.Mrs McMillan never had to make the bed or run the vacuum or do the ironing,no no all she involved herself was crooks and more crooks some nastier than others.Pure simple escapism for my family and myself. So now comes the sixty four dollars questions: when are we going to see more releases on DVD of this TV show and others like McCloud. Millie

Bert Convy was a series regular and is omitted from the cast list

I used to watch this show as a kid, 1971-1977. There was nothing like Susan Saint James. She was very pretty, she had a nice figure, and she was endlessly cute. Saint James never stops chiming in to every discussion. She never stops jumping on Rock Hudson, kissing him, hugging him, calling him, yelling for him, etc.

Saint James does not leave Rock Hudson alone for five seconds in any episode. She has to go with him everywhere, and she never stops interrupting any conversation!! McMillan & Wife was only on once a month when it originally aired. Susan Saint James is so pretty, and she has such a dazzling charisma!

Susan Saint James was 25 years old when this show started, in 1971. Rock Hudson was 46 years old at that time. He was 21 years older than her. He could have been her father. These old TV shows and movies, where middle-aged men had wives that were barely out of high school are very dated and horribly ridiculous. The gigantic age gap between Hudson and Saint James means that a lot of the times he looks like he is baby-sitting her.

She has no clue what is going on in many situations that happen on the show, as they have a huge difference in life experiences. Hudson also acts paternally towards her most of the time. Subconsciously, he saw her as a child, which she was, compared to Hudson. Sally McMillan is very childlike compared to Rock Hudson. Susan Saint James had a very youthful look. She could pass for a teenager in 1971.

The stories themselves are very simple and usually fun mysteries. There is a substantial amount of filler time which is just Susan Saint James being cute, asking questions, meddling in everything, and acting like a puppy around Rock Hudson. For Hudson, having Susan Saint James leaping into his arms constantly had to be a lot of fun.

This show could have been a great opportunity for him to enjoy being an actor, like Peter Falk did in Colombo (also on the same mystery show rotation). Instead, it was really the Susan Saint James show, and Rock Hudson was in the supporting character role.

I had a feeling I wouldn't like it, but I wanted to give McMillan & Wife a try. The title sounds cute, and really, that's all it is. Cute, with a lot of fluff. Nothing of substance. I might be a female, but I love gritty, intense, and even somewhat frightening crime thrillers. With all of the kissing, hugging, and goo goo eyeing Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James do, it gives off the vibe of a chick flick. Any story that focuses heavily on the characters' romantic relationship gets boring for me. Perhaps it's because of the generation I'm from. People nowadays aren't placing a ton of importance on getting married. There has to be other aspects to the story besides love to hold my attention. Although Rock Hudson (Stuart "Mac" McMillan) played a police commissioner in San Francisco, there was little to no suspense. And that might've been due to his dorky wife, Sally, an amateur detective, helping him with solving the cases. I was expecting her character to be, well, I don't know, more attractive and mature. She reminded me of a nerd. While they were somewhat passable as a couple, the longer you looked at them, it didn't look realistic for them to be together. Rock Hudson was 46, and she was 25, so no wonder she looked more like his daughter than his wife. He was 21 when she was born, so he technically could've been her father. That only shows how dated this is - a man who's in a relationship with a woman who's basically a kid compared to him. Him being gay in real life had nothing to do with why they didn't look right as a couple. It's just that the substantial age difference was obvious, even before I searched for their DOBs (at first I was like hmm, maybe Rock Hudson wasn't that old but just looked old. With the type of lifestyle celebrities live - spending long hours shooting films and/or TV shows, doing interviews, going to parties, and sometimes not getting enough sleep - that's possible). They don't quite look like the sexy couple that they were trying to portray.

I didn't even make it to end of the pilot episode. The acting was unimpressive. The conversations weren't believable (when they're in a traffic jam, Stuart tells his chauffer 'I know I had to go to work, and I know you had to take me, but why did we bring the car.' No one talks like that). The dialogue was also risque for its time. But watching it from a 21st century perspective, it just sounded dumb. Sally telling Stuart on the phone that she wanted to tear off his clothes, knowing other people were around. Stuart talking to Sally while she was taking a shower and telling her he didn't have any underwear, because he tore his last pair when they got stuck in his zipper (I think it was implied he was zipping up his pants after having finished going to the bathroom. That's what it sounded like to me). Before they leave for an auction, he tells her he's going upstairs to put on swim trunks, then he says he can't walk around with no underwear and laughs. When a script is bawdy, that's enough for me to know I'm not in for anything special. The innuendos weren't clever. Just seemed more or less like they were trying to make something where there wasn't anything. And some people think Mannix is lame. This went back and forth between either being a yawnfest, or just totally awkward.

Re the comment: "I was surprised that posters mentioned Hudson's homosexuality as somehow influencing perception of this show in hindsight. Hudson was gay; Mac wasn't. If straight men can play gay characters, why can't the reverse be true? Why must someone's private life interfere with a role?" I was merely responding to the one reviewer citing Hudson being gay and then characterizing Mac & Sally's relationship as "sexless." After seeing the pilot again on the recently released DVD, I can say it was anything but! The two characters seem to be hugging, kissing, making out, etc., almost all the time (there's even a rather risqué - for 1971 TV - scene that has a clearly naked Susan St. James taking a shower behind a fogged stall window).

Of the NBC Mystery Wheel show, McMillan and Wife was, I'll have to say, my least favorite, especially after the first season. Early in the show there were far more clever dialogue exchanges between "Mac and Sally". As the season went on, that feature of the show gradually disappeared.

Also, as the series went on, the mysteries got to be pretty hit and miss. Right now I'm watching "Game of Survival" from Season Four, and there's really just nothing interesting there. The previous episode, about a car rally, was a lot of fun. You just didn't know from one episode to the next whether to expect a great show or a dud. Very few duds on Columbo or McCloud.

Question #1 - Isn't it part of a big-city police commissioner's job responsibility to assign lethally dangerous, high-profile criminal cases to his most trusted officers and not handle them himself?

Question #2 - What sort of a police commissioner would allow his completely unqualified wife (who was clearly a dizzy flake and and an utter nuisance) to tag along with him on dangerous cases and actually allow her to repeatedly put herself into harm's way?

Set in San Francisco - TV's "McMillan & Wife" (from the early-1970's) was (IMO) too dumb for words.

And, not only did I find that about two-thirds of the time actor, Rock Hudson was hardly putting any life into his character portrayal at all - But the on-screen chemistry between his character and that of Susan Saint James (as his dizzy wife, Sally) pretty much amounted to a big, dull zero.

This show definitely was inspired by the Thin Man. This was a very light hearted detective show and Rock Hudson and Susan St. James were a perfect match. Forget about all the revelations that came up after Hudson's death. Just look at the show for how well it was written. Also, Nancy Walker and John Schuck gave the show its perfect comic relief as Mildred and Enright respectively.

It beggars belief that a dull show like "McMillan and Wife" lasted as long as it did. It is a poorly made series on all fronts and it is incredibly tedious. Rock Hudson was never an actor of any ability and he shows that in this series. His leading lady is as about as irritating and tiresome as it gets! Her rather quirky character traits quickly got on my nerves. I struggled with watching the first season after a feature length pilot episode that seemed interminable! I got rid of my DVDs of this series after seeing five episodes, I couldn't tolerate it any longer. "McMillan and Wife" ought to be relegated to television obscurity and allow the dust to settle!

Just wanted to comment on one reviewer's view that the 'relationship between Mac and Sally seems sexless in hindsight.' Keep in mind your hindsight is now colored by your knowledge that Rock Hudson was gay. Watching those episodes years ago (and re-watching them now), what actually came across was that Mac and Sally had a very active sex life. Unlike Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, they actually got to sleep in the same bed (where they're frequently shown making out under the covers). There are lots of scenes showing the characters kissing, hugging, giving each other sexy looks, etc., (which is all any married couple in an early 1970s TV show is going to be shown doing; this isn't NYPD Blue). Sally's even pregnant by the end of the first season.

Which leads to a question – what ever happened with that storyline? In season two, suddenly Sally's not pregnant. (But a few years later, she's pregnant AGAIN). Is it ever explained why no kids ever get added (something that, admittedly, would probably NOT have been good for the show)? Current rerun prints don't feature any scenes explaining that, say, Sally lost the baby – does anyone know if there were ever any such scenes in the first place?

This, along with "Columbo" and "McCloud" plus several lesser-known and short lived also-rans made up the NBC Mystery Movie franchise during most of the Seventies. Three or four rotating characters took turns headlining a 90-minute telefilm each week. Of the three most famous elements of the series, "McMillan" was the least unusual. "Mac" McMillan was the Police Chief of San Francisco whose wife Sally "helped" him solve various murders. Sally and the McMillan's housekeeper Mildred (Nancy Walker) were responsible for most of the unique elements of the show. The films were well-made and adequately complex to sustain interest over the longer-than-average running time of the series. Like everything Rock Hudson did during his career, this has new layers of interest since the revelations about his sexuality shortly before his death; the relationship between Mac and Sally seems sexless in hindsight, though that may be a product of the differences between the 1970s and today as much as Rock Hudson's homosexuality. One unusual episode in which Mac is called to Naval Reserve duty as defense counsel in a murder trial plays like a 20-years too early pilot for "JAG," but most of this series was solid if unexceptional police procedural with the wife thrown in for color.

The first pregnancy ended without comment. After the second one, there was one episode (when Mac's sister got married) where Mac's mother asked how the baby was doing and Mac said "fine" and then she asked whether it was a girl or boy and Mac said "a boy". Later in the episode at a restaurant, Mac said that Sally had to stay home to take care of the baby. That was it. It was never heard or shown or mentioned again.