Classic TV Series Now on Hulu After Being Unavailable for Years

At long last, Moonlighting has found its way to the world of streaming. The classic 1980s TV series starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd hasn’t been available in any sort of streaming capacity for years. It hasn’t even been available to purchase or rent on-demand. That all changed on Tuesday when the entire series made its way to Hulu.

Series creator Glenn Gordon Caron has been teasing the streaming debut of Moonlighting for quite a while now, as he and Disney worked on a way to bring the beloved ABC series online. Last month, Hulu announced that all 67 episodes of the show would be arriving on October 10th, and now each one is available to watch. You can binge the entire show from start to finish for the very first time.

Moonlighting stars Bruce Willis as a private investigator who runs a detective agency with a former model, played by Cybill Shepherd. The series ran from 1985 to 1989 on ABC. Bringing Moonlighting to streaming will now give a whole new generation a chance to discover the show for themselves.

Why Has Moonlighting Been Unavailable on Streaming?

The biggest hurdle for Moonlighting in the streaming era has been 

“When we made Moonlighting, television shows didn’t typically use pop music,” Caron told EW. “It was really just us and Miami Vice at that time. So when deals were made for the music, no one anticipated streaming. In order to exhibit the show [on streaming], the owner of the shows, which is the Walt Disney Company, has to go back and make deals for all that music – and they’ve resisted doing that for six or seven years now.”

Unlike Moonlighting, Miami Vice is available online (all five seasons are streaming on Peacock). ABC confirmed to EW that it does still own the rights to Moonlighting, but didn’t respond to a request for comment about the future of the series in regards to streaming.

“With all the attention that Bruce has been getting, hopefully one good thing that might come out of it is we can reinitiate the conversation with Disney about releasing the streaming rights,” Caron said. “It’s hard for me to understand why we can’t find a way to make it work. Peacock is now streaming Miami Vice, so clearly somebody has figured it out.”

Are you excited to see Moonlighting finally make its way to streaming? Let us know in the comments!