Despite its pretensions as a prime-time detective show featuring three women as "private eyes," Charlie's Angels was primarily about glamour and bare skin. This proved to be a winning combination for the ABC network from 1976 to 1981 when the show broke into the top ten of the Nielson ratings in its first week and improved its position with each subsequent airing. While this success was due, in no small part, to the machinations of ABC's programming genius Fred Silverman, who put it up against two short-lived, male dominated adventure shows—Blue Knight and Quest— one cannot discount the appeal of three pretty women to viewers of both sexes.

Yet, the program's concessions to its female audience were slim. Beyond the symbolic breakthrough of having three women performing in roles normally reserved for men, while paying attention to fashions and hairstyles, most...