Gay Bar Murder Mysteries, from Starsky & Hutch to Murder She Wrote

In 1977, the popular cop show Starsky and Hutch tackled a murder mystery centered around a Los Angeles gay bar, complete with a depiction of queer life that’s surprisingly nuanced for the late 70s. Then, less than a decade later, an episode of Murder She Wrote featured a similar storyline, but this time the setting is … well, not quite so realistic. So why are they so different? Well, something big happened in American culture between these two episodes that completely transformed TV gay bars. And it involved a presidential election, a pie, and messages from space.

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