User Reviews

"Nine to Five" sounds suspiciously like the name of a proposed series, and everything about this show would make you believe that it was a pilot squeezed out of 77 Sunset Strip.

Stu Bailey is in NY delivering an investigative report to an old friend. The old friend, Richard Long, was of course part of Bailey and Spencer for a season a couple of years before this episode. His character is dealing with a shady partner that he wants to buy out, a wife who can't decide between moving out and moving in, and a secretary with a big crush on him, and a bit of larceny in delivering a message that might help his marriage. Stu delivers sage advice to help on the marriage front.

With the title, the way this story wrapped up neatly, and the way the camera pans up the outside of a huge office building at the end, my guess is that this was to be an anthology series, where each episode would have centered on different characters in the building. I can't see the characters and situations in this story as a continuing series, which led me to that conclusion.

So while this was an odd 77 Sunset Strip story, I like anything with Richard Long and Diane McBain -- two charming actors who always delivered pleasing performances.

This 77 Sunset Strip episode looked like a pilot for a television series that obviously Warner Brothers decided not to pick up. It revolves around married, but splitting up couple Richard Long and Diane McBain. Long is in partnership with Alan Hewitt although it was really never clear what kind of business they were in. But information that Stu Bailey brings them in from Los Angeles causes a split.

Some job they were about to undertake involved them getting involved with some crooked folks from Springfield. Illinois, Massahusetts, Missouri, take your pick. The partnership is about to split, it's a question of who buys who out.

As for the marital split McBain's moving out, she's moving back etc. Efrem Zimbalist who is friends with both has to referee.

Not to mention that Richard Long was Rex Randolph who did a turn at Bailey&Spencer for a while after leaving Bourbon Street Beat.

I can see why this series whatever it was to be went nowhere.

Even the music was not 77SS music. The setting was New York and a high rise office building that got a lot of play, the story looked like a one-off that would not continue with the characters of this story and maybe would work out with other characters from the same building. Man with a wife who keeps leaving, partner who wants to get the company involved in something shady. Richard Long and Diane McBain as husband and wife, two actors who in the early 60s were in demand and carried the story, such as it was, even if the wife's actions in the story made no sense at all. Stu Bailey, an old friend visiting from 77SS, was just an in and out referee with very little to do.

Maybe as an anthology with different characters in each story it might have worked, but the stories would have to have been more interesting than this one.