Ah the 80s! Back when television shows did what it said on the tin. Or as that excellent meme doing the rounds on Twitter says:
back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you’d see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale
@topherflorence Twitter Retrieved 15 October 2022
Couldn’t have put it better myself. The 1980s was a period that jettisoned those 1970s sensibilities best described at the deepest as “psychology” or most glibly as “character-driven plot”. The very trajectory of V itself follows this principle as it descends from thoughtful to camp in its numerous iterations.
Again we have a range of genres this decade that Frank Ashmore starred in. And some shows that left me wondering “what even is this”?
Are you ready? Ok.
Airplane II
Proof that you can’t reheat a soufflé. But hey that’s this decade all over. Not to mention the 21st century. Not that Airplane II is all that bad. It’s simply fine. Of course it is going to compare unfavourably to Airplane! The original film was lightning in a bottle.
Instead of playing a flight engineer in the sequel Ashmore plays Flight Controller #3. The most notable gag for this role is the “Strike her!” joke which is very well known and actually not so funny if you’re in the demographic being punched in the face.
So here is a deleted scene where Frank has been painted green for a different gag – a sign of promising roles to come playing green men in this decade.
CHiPs (1981) S05 E12 Mitchell and Woods
Again! (Ashmore was in CHiPs in 1978 with V co-star Ron Hajak) This time he plays a sleazy guy who gets a bit handsy with Paula Woods in a singles club and suffers the consequences. And he does a bloody good job of meeting the brief of playing a slimy dude. He manages to be pretty repellent even though he has some major disadvantages to overcome in that department (i.e. being handsome, lovely and just … well our Frank) Plus I’ve never taken so violently against the jumper-jauntily-draped-over-the-shoulder look before in my life.
This episode dates from late period CHiPs which was beset with all sorts of problems. Erik Estrada had gone AWOL and then there was some fall out with Larry Wilcox. And oh dear all sorts of things were happening. Mitchell and Woods was supposed to be a spin off but underwhelmed audiences and went nowhere.
V The Original Miniseries (1983)
How can I choose a single scene from this miniseries? Ashmore is so good in every scene he’s in, and he has some bangers. Then again, I think the entire cast is really good in this. You hear actors talk about having something to play off when working together and this really shows what they mean when they say that.
But my favourite aspect of Ashmore’s performance in V is that even when he doesn’t have any lines he’s always working. This is extremely effective in the early stages of V when we still don’t know who this guy is and frankly: what’s his damage?
The first time you watch V you could be forgiven for confusing the actors who play the killers of lab assistant Ruth and anthropologist Quinton as this glowering guy in the scene below. It is clearly a conscious choice to have square-jawed actors with similar profiles to Ashmore in those roles to bury the lede.
V The Final Battle (1984)
Again too many scenes to choose from so I will go with a scene with no dialogue again.
In the second installation of this miniseries the characterisation becomes extremely one note. It’s like the writers took the best scenes from the orginal miniseries and wrote their own milquetoast versions of that dialogue. So based on one conversation Julie is always plagued with self doubt, Diana is just flatly evil, Mike is a selfish and reckless idiot and Martin is always too scared to do anything. This does none of the characters any favours. But Ashmore does sneak some dimension into his character (as do Grant, Badler and Singer).
That’s why one of my favourite scenes in The Final Battle is when we discover Martin has some marksmanship when he shoots three troopers in a row “bang bang bang” on what Rob Matsushita described as the best last day at work ever. Much is made of the way Singer moves in V but in this scene Ashmore moves with grace and conviction. Clearly this is a man who is relieved to have a situation of live combat rather than years of skulking in dark corridors and constantly checking over his shoulder. Just like in the parachuting scene he seems to perk up a bit once he’s got some actual fighting to do.
V The TV Series (1984-85)
This is Frank Ashmore’s famous return to V after fan outcry over the killing off of Martin in the first episode of the series in Liberation Day. By the time we are introduced to Philip the Series has already gone through its attempted Casablanca phase and segued into Dallas in Space with the introduction of Charles. Frank appears in an additional five episodes of Dallas in Space as about the only serious adult person on the mothership: Inspector-General Philip.
Ashmore does a really great job delivering a very different personality with Philip. You can tell Martin and Philip apart even from stills and that’s not just because of the different uniforms. Posture, bearing, and facial expression are all very different.
I love that at the outset of the below scene from The Secret Underground Lydia is really struggling to draw Philip’s attention away from what looks like a geode. Poor Lydia is less fascinating than what is essentially a rock. To be fair June Chadwick (who is undeniably gorgeous) is really good in this episode as Lydia. Fun as it is to watch her scrapping with Badler’s Diana there’s a lot more depth to her character in this scene when Chadwick is actually given something to play.
Shadow Chasers S01 E12 Blood and Magnolias
Rarity. Oddity. Precursor to X-files. This was another Kenneth Johnson production which only lasted one season. This is a short lived show where two investigators, one a sceptic and the other a believer, investigate different paranormal phenomena. It’s very difficult to find on streaming services (at least in the UK) and the only way I could watch it was on dodgy copies of what looks like VHS originals.
Quite fun.
Who is the vampire causing the disappearance of a series of beautiful young women? I wonder. In this episode our main characters have broken down by a creepy mansion with some weird old guy wearing an ascot tie (uh oh). Ashmore plays the butler (hmmm) and has dyed his hair black (I know). This is before works like Interview with a Vampire and Twilight made it ok for vampires to be blond so you do the math.
Why do Americans even have butlers anyway?
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Crazy Like a Fox (1985) S02 E08 If the Shoe Fits
Crazy Like a Fox is another of many odd couple comedy action shows of the 1980s. This one features Harrison Fox who is a staid lawyer whose father is an unorthodox hard-boiled private detective, also named Harrison (Harry) Fox. As one might expect hi-jinx ensue.
In this episode Ashmore plays the auditor boyfriend of a friend of Harrison’s who goes missing right after proposing marriage. It looks like Ashmore is playing another rotter again as it appears he may have been scared off by the woman’s pre-nup agreement.
But things get even weirder when it is revealed a bunch of men have kidnapped the boyfriend and are drugging him to keep him immobile for impenetrable reasons. We are then delighted with a wacky escape scene with Frank’s best wonky walking acting.
(The following scene contains major episode spoiler but it’s too funny to miss. And lighten up, it’s an old tv show from the 80s)
Monster in the Closet (1986)
Troma classic which I don’t even know how to explain. I’m a newcomer to horror (think Midsommer, The Babadook, and Saint Maud as the films that brought me round to the genre.) As a result I’m not so well versed in the history of 50s B-grades, video nasties and stuff like this. Low budget, hammy camp. The premise of the movie is quite cute and it is knowingly absurd.
Ashmore plays a bully ace reporter called Scoop Johnson. He must have dug deep to his inner 12-year-old for this one. If this performance is anything to go by the Ashmore household in the late 1950s must have been insufferable. Frank (and everyone really) is really ripping into that scenery like it’s the last packet of Tim Tams in Hitler’s bunker in late April 1945.
This performance is 95% Parma and 5% wistful. When Scoop gets a far away look in his eye while contemplating the lizard-brain origins of mankind is my favourite bit of the whole film.
L.A. Law (1987) S02 E04 Brackman Vasektimised
L.A. Law was the first proper contemporary television show about the law. Not courtroom drama but the law. It followed the ups and downs of one particular law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak. It combined real legal problems with humour and of course the office politics and dramas of the firm.
In this episode a new young associate Leslie gets stiffed with a unwinnable case prosecuting a “car homicide” but not before getting sexually harassed at work and generally not getting taken seriously. Ashmore provides the comedy in this as the man accusing someone of killing his car. Pretty funny. But also this act provides insight into the inner world of what our young female associate is feeling right now.
You know that scene in Mad Men when Joan Holloway’s horse’s ass husband says to her she has no idea what it’s like “to want something your whole life and to plan for it, and not get it!” and she responds by smashing a vase over his head?
Yeah.
This was 1987 by the way.
When Martin Died 