It starred Bruce Willis and Cybil Shephered as will-they-wont-they private detectives David Addison and Maddie Hayes.
And I loved it.
(And truthfully, Im not sure I ever quite forgave Mark Harmon.
Credit: Robert Viglasky/Hulu; Inset: Hulu
But in the end, Maddie and David did get together.
I quickly realized that, actually, I hadnt wanted this atall.
It threw a piston through the hood and into the windshield of the show.
Thus ended one of my early lessons in the perverse nature of TV.
Theyre never going to bond or flirt or yearn or enjoy a sharing moment.
Instead, each would have good reason to coldly distrust and fear the other.
But theyd be forced to cooperate anyway.
Because if they didnt, theyd die… and so would everyone they loved.
Naturally, wedwantthem to trust one another; or rather, wedthinkwe wanted that.
I didnt know exactly who these characters were.
I knew they were night and day, sun and moon.
I didnt even know what kind of story I could tell with them.
Im not a writer who has much of what youd call a process.
I didnt know what do to with these desperate, amoral, trapped characters.
So I left them on a low simmer and got on with writing and reading and watching other things.
At this stage I should confess to an unhealthy relationship with books.
I like their company.
Books are compost for the imagination.
Books are their own reward.
So there I am, in my study, grudgingly playing triage with thrillers and histories and biographies.
In the background, Im playing music.
And up pops David Bowie singing Five Years.
Its a song about the end of the world… except its not.
In lesser hands it wouldve been a dirge.
But these werent lesser hands.
Five Years is exultant; a life-affirming song about the end of days.
And suddenly I had a world onto which my two characters could step.
It was the world of the song: a world that has five years left.
Because what better way to test these two characters?
What better way to see what really matters to them?
Whats the point of law and order in the face of Armageddon?
Whats the point of justice?
We called the showHard Sun.
It was a labour of love, and were very proud of it.
We hope you like it, too.
