As I said already, we’ve got very little pulp on the telly, these days.
So I went back to the old DVD collection, and dusted off my copy of Tales of the Gold Monkey.

For those who missed it, Tales of the Gold Monkey was a short-lived series, produced in 1982 (yes, thirty years ago) by Donald P. Bellisario, of Magnum P.I., Quantum Leap and JAG (among others) fame.

The show features a lot of stuff – this is somewhat a standard in pulp-themed material, and as I mentioned before, it is not really a bad thing.
But more on that later.

The set-up: we’re somewhere in the late 1930s on the island of Bora Gora, out in the Pacific. Here, former Flying Tiger Jack Cutter (Stephen Collins) is a bush pilot and all-around adventurer, trying to make ends meet.
In the pilot episode, he gets to save a plucky USA OSS agent (Caitlin O’Heaney), and recover a golden idol from an island inhabited by aggressive big apes and neolithic natives.
Nice and smooth.
The mix also includes Jack’s alcoholic mechanic, his one-eyed dog, a French guy managing a bar in the jungle, a false priest that’s actually a Nazi and a bad & sexy (well, bad & sexy for 1980s TV standards) Dragon Lady with a samurai for a bodyguard.

Quite a nice set-up, all things considered.
And one that was refreshingly different, in 1982 – and yet also familiar… as in Indiana Jones-style familiar.

What’s probably missing is something really original for all these people to actually do in the 21 one-hour episodes (plus a two hours pilot).
The self-contained episodes are quite fun but sometimes weak, plot-wise; the eyepatch-wearing-dog gimmick gets old fast, and while gorgeous to look at (money was evidently not spared on the production), there is a certain sense of void, lurking beneath it all.
It never becomes overwhelming, but it’s there all right.

This probably is caused by the producing studio handling with very little flair the pulp premise and the whole genre feel.
To do pulp, you have to embrace the genre and its rules completely, and you have to take the genre seriously – which does not mean humorlessly, but with a certain aplomb.
It’s ok to throw in everything and the kitchen sink, but then you have to throw yourself after them.
The cast was clearly ready to embrace the genre, but the studio was not.

There’s an excellent article out there, by John Kenneth Muir, which sheds some lights on the production of the series, and on the problems which the creators faced (and their solutions thereof).
With a little luck, the show could have developed into something absolutely smashing over the course of two or three seasons – but that was not to be.

But the good bits still outweigh the weaknesses, and the show is still quite enjoyable today, thirty years after its release.
The cast is extremely solid, the effects are very good, the production values are huge.
It was really a pity the show was canceled after just one season, and just as it was finding its legs.

And yes, in case anybody thought I missed it – the plane, a Grumman Goose, was just fantastic.

This is pulp TV done the (almost) right way – it has aged with grace, and it’s a pleasure to return to.

And yes, there was another show, being produced and broadcast by another TV major.
We’ll talk about that next week, maybe.

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