Hartland Express

Just love this episode, one of my favourites. I'm a sucker for crime/thriller set on a train, and here you have a lot of characters who aren't what they seem. The suspense is kept right up to the end, and tailed off with an energetic fight scene between Mr Hart and the high kicking bad guy.

This had more big name guest stars at the time than you can shake a stick at. So much interesting stuff happened in this one. For one thing, it began in Chicago with beautiful location shots and great examples of the Windy City! Also new and different is that the beginning credits that play over the first act included the guest stars in alphabetical order. That was a first. This is also an episode that paid such minute attention to detail that you just plain old do not get today. We get a closeup of Jennifer's California driver's license where we learn that she lives at 3100 Willow Pond; Hair, Auburn; Eyes, Brown; Height, 5'6"; Weight, 115; Birthdate is 11-2-46 (which is, incidentally, Stefanie's birthday), making her 34 years old at the time it was issued in 1980. FASCINATING. Filmed today, a thumb would simply be placed over all that important information. The stunt and location shots for this must have cost a ridiculous amount of money. These were real Amtrak trains, they were really moving for some of these spectacular stunts, and given the star power in this episode commanding some kind of big salary at the time, the $$ spent on this one ep alone must have been exorbitant. Money well-spent! The guest stars just never seemed to end. Florence Henderson, Ron Glass, David Doyle, Bernie Koppel, the consistently unfunny (sorry) Skip Stevenson (but with lots of funny in-joke lines written about his character being so unfunny), a very young and pretty Carol Linley ... it just didn't end. Most impressive? RJ's ability to get out the line, "For the last couple of days, while you've been gambling, a dead man in a wheelchair turned out to be protecting a government witness from a hired killer who tried to kill me!" And he looked genuinely relieved to have gotten the line out. I'm dying to know how many takes it was! It didn't take a genius to figure out who the bad guys were, but it did take me a while to get there. Well-written, well-directed, well-acted, the kicker was awesome; great episode! Seriously, there's no way this wasn't a sweeps episode.

David Doyle from "Charlie's Angels." Ron Glass from "Barney Miller." Carol Lynley from " The Poseidon Adventure." Bernie Koppell from "The Love Boat." Skip Stephenson from "Real People." Florence Henderson from "The Brady Bunch." Far too many ABC guest stars make appearances in this murder mystery. None of them are quite as they seem but there's hardly enough time to do more than skim across the characters like a stone as H2H as they do their combination of "The Lady Vanishes" and "Murder on the Orient Express."

It's too bad they didn't make this into a two-hour episode. They barely have enough elbow room to spin out the story as it deserves to be told.

Still, for someone who grew up in the 1970s and watched too much television, it's nice seeing so many of the old faces, all of them lurking suspiciously.

Lynley is the queen of hysteria and one expects at any moment she'll fly into one of the panic attacks she does so well. But will she? That's the biggest source of tension.

Which of the guest stars is the killer? It's actually fairly obvious, but that's not the end of the story! It runs deeper than a straightforward murder yarn. Finding the killer is just the first door they have to open.

Jonathan runs along the top of the train. A rich businessman with diversified industries! Imagine Donald J. Trump doing all that. Well, it gives us lots of action as well as detection.