The charges against them are all trumped up, of course, but the three lovely women could not care less. They are detectives working undercover to investigate the strange goings-on at a prison farm, and becoming prisoners of that institution is the only way they can do their jobs. They are also, however, nice girls, and their cool quickly disappears as a matron, dressed SS style, clearly lesbian in sexual orientation, growls: "O.K., girls, strip down to your birthday suits." After a mandatory shower, each in turn must open her towel and submit to the warder's inspection as she sprays them with disinfectant. That's only the beginning. Beatings, threats of rape and enforced prostitution follow, not to mention an imminent triple murder when they find out too much.

What is this? A report on the latest skin flick? A case study on the fantasy life of a troubled adolescent? Nope. Just a plot summary of an episode from the hottest new television show of the season. Television? That's right, television.

Everybody knows about the power of a great idea whose time has come. What often gets overlooked is that the strength of a mediocre idea whose historical moment has arrived can be just as awesome. This is especially worth considering in the weird realm of regularly scheduled prime-time commercial television, that bargain basement of American culture, where the very nature of the environment usually precludes great notions and the merely good ones are rare. Instead, the insipid and the tasteless constantly push and shove, tug and haul, rudely jockeying for position in the ratings that mean the difference between survival and death for programs. Financially a couple of points make the difference between profits that are merely terrific for the network with a bunch of flops or simply stupefying for the one with the most hits. Here timing is everything. Whoever guesses right when mood swing afflicts the customers becomes TV's merchant king—for a day—while competitors retreat to a sullen contemplation of their demographics and a glum reshuffling of their schedules.

This year the aesthetically ridiculous, commercially brilliant brainstorm surfing blithely atop the Zeitgeist's seventh wave is a little number called Charlie's Angels, starring sexy Farrah Fawcett-Majors, sweet Jaclyn Smith and smart Kate Jackson. The series is about delicious ladies who get into scrapes that threaten life and virtue in the course of working as operatives for a private detective with such a passion for anonymity that he is never seen on camera. The show is not just a winner but a certifiable phenomenon. Seldom has a brand-new entry broken into Nielsen's top ten in its first week and then stayed there, steadily improving its position with each subsequent airing. Generally it takes a half season at the very least for a show to achieve these heights.

The crowd that collects around the Angels every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. E.S.T. is truly astonishing. According to the latest Nielsen rating figures, 59% of all the television sets in use in the U.S. are tuned to them. This kind of audience share is usually achieved only by special events like the World Series. It means that people in 23 million households choose to get their weekly fix of girl watching, double-entendre sex jokes and mild violence here. It is not, apparently, a show for mental prepubescents only. Angels ranks fourth among all programs in metropolitan areas, seventh among college graduates, seventh among viewers with incomes above $20,000. Most important, it ranks first with adult viewers regardless of their station in life—which may or may not say something about the state of adulthood in the U.S. these days.

It certainly says something about the shrewdness with which the American Broadcasting Co. has calculated the mood of the moment. Traditionally the No. 3 network, ABC has been coming on strong in the past couple of seasons. This year it has finally taken a firm grip on the top of the ratings, if not on the hearts and minds of television critics and the other amateur moral philosophers who keep outraged eyes on the tube. Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, its vulgarly nostalgic sitcoms, so far this season rank first and second among regularly scheduled programs, while Baretta, the ethnic undercover cop, and The Bionic Woman are right up there near Charlie's Angels among the leading action-adventure shows.

What distinguishes all these programs is a frank and total lack of pretense. They all seem to proceed from the belief that a television series should not aspire to any greater intellectual or emotional depth than the comic books that seem to have inspired them. The dialogue is apparently borrowed from old Batman balloons. Brightly lit and crudely shot, the visual style indeed reminds one of comic art at its least sophisticated level.

Sometimes it is necessary to put the mind in neutral and let it idle for a while. The uncampy sobriety with which these shows offer their childlike simplicities can be curiously refreshing, a time trip back to the simple pleasures of trash fiction for kids. Wonder Woman, which ABC so far runs as a recurring special rather than as a series, is a particularly satisfying show in which Lynda Carter plays a World War II female Superman, lap-dissolve costume changes and all. Nevertheless, after admiring Lynda's sexy little red, white and blue suit and her golden lasso, one mostly feels that after decades of painstaking research, much trial and error, many false reports of success, the ABC gang has finally found television's Holy Grail—the one, true least common denominator.

All that aside, it is actually difficult not to admire the sheer brilliance of the network's commercial calculation, its bold strategies in positioning and promoting its products as it scrambles for an edge in its battles with CBS and NBC
There is no better example of ABC's business style than Charlie's Angels, which now sells ad spots for $100,000 a minute. The idea for the show germinated a couple of years ago in the offices of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, producers who specialize in action-adventure shows (The Rookies, S.W.A.T., Starsky and Hutch) for ABC. "Our motivation," says Goldberg, "was the fact that action-adventure shows were dominated by inner-city realism starring such gruff types as Colombo and Baretta. We just thought, 'Why not inject some really stunning beauty into the genre and see what happens?' "

What happened at first was not very much, with the network rejecting the producers' first proposal (titled The Alley Cats). Later, they got a go-ahead on a revised proposal for a pilot from then ABC Vice President Michael Eisner. Still, the notion languished on the back burner until Fred Silverman (see box page 70) took over last year as president of ABC Entertainment. He was immediately attracted to the show and ordered Spelling-Goldberg to get cracking. They made a slick pilot, which won a place for the series on the fall schedule.

Silverman had apparently divined a rising public interest in seeing women more prominently featured on TV. To be sure, NBC had spun Angie Dickinson's Police Woman out of its Police Story series two years ago and had done reasonably well with a show that portrayed a woman as brave and self-reliant. Then, of course, there was The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner. Silverman ordered her resurrected after she was erroneously bumped off at the end of a special appearance on The Six Million Dollar Man; a heart and a rather engaging spirit coexist with the electronic circuitry under Lindsay's lovely skin. The fact that The Bionic Woman consistently rates in the top ten, country in which Colonel Steve Austin, the six-million-dollar man, is rarely found, was surely seen as a sign that there was room for more strong women in television.

Silverman likes to claim that during his five years as head of programming at CBS, he pioneered in giving women more starring roles in variety and dramatic shows. (They have always been prominent in sitcoms. Mary Tyler Moore is a realistic girl next door. Maude a tough neurotic, Laverne and Shirley cheerful bumblers.) But there is nothing altruistic about this; what interests Silverman is the "heavy viewer" of the medium. According to Ed Bleier, executive vice president for television at Warner Communications, such people are the ones "you have to reach out for if you want the ratings." He explains: "They have seen it all—the entire coastline of California, every inch of Universal Studios. They've seen every detective plot, every comedic pratfall. To attract them you have to let them experience sensations and hazards that have not been dealt with before. What is left but the evolution of women in society?"

Shows that could at least be touted as exploring—some would say exploiting—the new role of women may have been inevitable. To a degree, programming follows the headlines. When television convinced itself that youth was in a prerevolutionary state during the late '60s, shows like Mod Squad tried to cash in on the excitement. When the blacks and other ethnic minorities asserted a claim on the nation's attention. Sanford and Son was sure to follow. Once the feminists started gaining attention, how could a producer fail to concoct something like Charlie's Angels?

So far, perhaps, so obvious. But no show that attempted to follow a social trend has exploded out of the starting block as this one has. If Angels starts a programming trend, as most industry sources think it will, very few imitators can expect to gain the same instant acceptance. Much of that was obtained by close attention to programming—sensible scheduling against the competition and sharp promotion. In these areas even his competitors agree that Fred Silverman is a master. Says Mike Dann, former CBS program chief: "He is compulsive about spots and ads. You can add 15 to 20 share points to a show by good promotion." Silverman is no less punctilious about the refinements of scheduling. Says Dann: "Before I saw Charlie's Angels, I knew it could be a big success. Pretty girls against The Blue Knight and Quest. If it was up against Police Woman and M*A*S*H it would not be a runaway hit."

The show also benefits from the lateness of the hour at which it airs and by the change in the audience that occurs around 9 p.m. Kids begin surrendering control of the dial, and women become the dominant force in program selection and the largest segment of the audience—60%. How it is that in all the years this pattern has persisted no one thought to angle a few of these shoot-up shows toward women is one of TV's mysteries. But Silverman, who was placed in charge of daytime programming at CBS when he was just 25, learned at an impressionable age to cater to the ladies. Typically, each Angels episode makes sure at least one co-star strips down to a bikini in the first ten minutes, the better to keep males in a state of gape-jawed passivity and expectation thereafter. But the show also spends a more-than-usual amount of the weekly $300,000 budget on things women enjoy observing—"fashions and hair styles," as one of its producers says.

If this be women's liberation, make the most of it. Beyond the fact that the Angels do manage to remain pleasant and feminine while performing roles until now reserved for men, the show offers very little to please a woman whose consciousness has been raised even a degree or two by the movement. Says Journalist Judith Coburn, a feminist: "Charlie 's Angels is one of the most misogynist shows the networks have produced recently. Supposedly about 'strong' women, it perpetuates the myth most damaging to women's struggle to gain professional equality: that women always use sex to get what they want, even on the job." She thinks the program is "a version of the pimp and his girls. Charlie dispatches his streetwise girls to use their sexual wiles on the world while he reaps the profits."

Even people connected with the show seem abashed by its implicit sexism. In the first few episodes, Charlie (whose face is never shown and whose voice belongs to Actor John Forsythe) is seen disporting himself with spectacular sex objects and cracking leering jokes. As a pretty snow bunny bounces past him in a ski resort, he archly informs the Angels (over the speaker phone by which he communicates with them) that the scenery reminds him of "the majestic shapes of Switzerland." Later, after an accident on the slopes, he speaks of his excellent physical therapist as another cutie slithers past the camera. He adds that he hopes he can "rise to the occasion." The show's new producer, Barney Rosenzweig, thinks such jokes are "terrible." He also claims that he will make the Angels "more involved in the key decisions. Why should they merely follow Charlie's instructions like a bunch of robots?"

Right on, says Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the spectacularly maned frosted blonde who is first among equals as a sex object, seen braless on all the shows. She has even on occasion refused to don a bikini, not because she has an objection to the costume, but because she felt the only rationale for it was that they had "reached a quiet point in the script and needed my body to liven things up."

These are small battles that she and her co-stars can often win. Overall it is hard to see how they can win the war. The show is inherently sexy and therefore, by some definitions, sexist. Says former Producer Rick Husky: "What we're talking about is a B exploitation movie, not even a B. We understood that we needed to exploit the sexuality of the three girls, and that's an obvious reason for its success." Indeed it is.

Says one TV executive: "It is S-M [sadomasochism] come to television." Producer Goldberg chortles, "We love to get them wet, because they look so good in clinging clothes"—a fact long ago noted by porn producers for whom water and mud, and women struggling in same, have long been a cliché.

What makes all this sexist nonsense just about bearable is the basic sweetness of the actresses who play the Angels. In background, they are not so different from the better-established stars with whom they compete. Though older than the Angels, Police Woman Angie Dickinson was just another beauty-contest winner who financed her acting lessons with a secretarial job until Director Howard Hawks cast her as Feathers, the dance-hall girl in his Rio Bravo. Like another Hawks discovery, Lauren Bacall, she was very feminine but very much a man's woman, easy to kid around with, pal around with—and as good as a man with a gun or a deck of cards. Those qualities have clung appealingly to Dickinson through two decades of movie work and on her TV show, which generally gets high marks from feminist viewers.

Neither Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner nor Wonder Woman Lynda Carter has, obviously, the mature appeal of an Angie Dickinson. But Los Angeles-born Wagner, who did a couple of low-budget features (notably Paper Chase), has potential. The show's creator, Ken Johnson, says he modeled her character after an ideal date he had in mind, someone "truthful, witty and eminently attractive," and Wagner seems to fill the bill. Says Wagner: "I'm trying like hell not to be Wonder Woman." Carter, 24, who is trying like hell to put that character across, is a former swimming champion and ballet student with the physical skills to do most of her own stunts. She is convinced the show has value because it "shows that women don't have to be unattractive to be independent." She, of course, has the hardest row to hoe—trying to humanize a cartoon character who is located in the never-never land of nostalgic camp.

As for the Angels, Texas-born Farrah Fawcett-Majors, 30, is the best known of the three. Off-screen she is married to Six-Million-Dollar Man Lee Majors and has starred in many oft-played commercials (Mercury's Cougar, Wella Balsam shampoo). A warm, giggly sort of girl, she is a practicing Roman Catholic who has a clause in her contract that allows her to leave the set to rush home in time to make supper for her husband. She has a sense of humor (asked once when she first realized she was beautiful, she replied, "Just after the makeup man got here; before that it was touch and go") and a developing shrewdness about her own power. Her contract specifies that she may keep any wardrobe items that strike her fancy, and because she does, her co-stars have the same privilege, since they are treated with scrupulous equality.

Jaclyn Smith, 28, who plays Kelly, the most streetwise of the Angels, is also out of Texas and commercials. She won an audition for Angels because she was dating Producer Husky at the casting time. On the set, she is not considered an easy person to get to know. She lives alone in a Beverly Hills mansion she bought largely as an investment and tends her career and her earnings carefully. But she also has a romantic streak. The twelve-room mansion is a replica of Tara, and Jackie is proud of it.

Sabrina, cast as the most intellectual of the Angels and their unofficial leader, is played by Kate Jackson, 27, who is the only one of the three women who had real acting experience before the show. From Birmingham, she studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Then came a four-year run in Spelling-Goldberg's The Rookies. When that show was canceled last spring, she was promised the lead in another series, which accounts for her top billing on Angels. She insists that "I'd rather share the glory of a hit than star by myself in a flop," but observers find her the tensest and toughest of the Angels on the set. Says an executive: "At times Kate makes me feel like Kissinger negotiating between the Israelis and the Arabs. She ain't easy." Says a crewman: "She's got to be clever to make an impact on the screen. All Farrah has to do is smile; Jackie can just walk by in a bikini. Kate has to get to the audience by strength of personality—a much harder role."

Angels fans are curious about whether the three beauties can coexist on one sound stage. The answer is obvious: they get along well because their futures depend on it. There is some restrained competition. After Jackie began bringing Albert, her poodle, to work each day, Kate appeared with her Husky, Catcher, and before long Farrah was toting a Pekingese called Pansie. When a script called for a dog, the atmosphere on the set became so tense that the part was finally written out.

In general, good manners come easy when each actress counts her money. Kate gets $10,000 a show, the other two, $5,000. With Kate's Rookies residuals and the big commercial fees that Farrah and Jackie still collect, the Angels' robes are lined with something like $500,000 annually.

But there is a toll. Says Kate: "I've stopped smoking and drinking and staying out late. My love life ain't what it used to be. I've just got to discipline myself or the work would just kill me."

Actually, it would kill almost anyone. Like most series performers, the Angels must put in a twelve-hour day on the job. But because their beauty is so important to the show, they have to rouse themselves around 5 a.m. to give the hairdressers and makeup artists time to work their magic. They also stay late to try on and approve the next day's costumes. Even so, they are cosseted and primped all day long so that in every shot their looks err on the side of the fantastic rather than the realistic. "We treat them as if they were American Jewish princesses," says one crewman, "and they aren't even Jewish."

All this leaves little scope for drama. Scenes are staged with all the complexity of the fourth-grade class play, and everyone is expected to say her lines correctly first time out if possible. Says one director: "I've printed scenes that made my stomach turn. But extra minutes eat into profits, and unless you have an obvious flub, you keep grinding."

It shows. But no one really cares. As a producer told an editor when refusing permission for overtime retakes, "Aw, what the hell, it's only television." The main thing is that on some primitive level the show is working. Fans mob the girls when they go into the streets for location work. The mail runs to 18,000 pieces a week—even more after something as raunchy as the prison show. The fact is that, for the moment anyway, ABC has stumbled onto something big. Charlie's Angels might be called family-style porn, a mild erotic fantasy that appeals about equally to men and women. The show has been launched at a moment when there is franker discussion of sexual needs and wishes and when women, in particular, are beginning to reveal their sexual fantasies. Though hardly a credible treatment of these, Charlie's Angels seems to speak to and for them.

Nobody could have calculated all that. Producer Goldberg admits that he was already deep into production before anyone had "a real handle on the characters. We were in the process of searching for answers when the big ratings hit. Now we are all afraid to tamper with success." He adds, a little wistfully: "Maybe it's best to leave it all amorphous."

Maybe he's right. But Fred Silverman, knowing that the best and longest-running television shows (M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore) have been the ones with sharply defined characters who catch at viewers' minds and offer them something to identify with, has been pressing for shows that are less job oriented and that give viewers an idea of how the Angels live off-duty.

The initial results are not promising. Lately no Angels have been tied up or stripped down, and there have been fewer dumb sex jokes. Dullness has been increased, but with no real gain in intelligence—and at the expense of the antic badness that sometimes enlivened the initial episodes.

It is possible, therefore, that the show will turn out to be just another passing fancy and not the shape of things to come. Or that it will merely settle into a prosperous rut, another gimmicky private-eye show with a following that keeps it safely anchored somewhere in the middle of the ratings. About all that, it is too early to speak. Right now, the last word must belong to Producer Spelling, in whose voice can be heard television's truest, bottom-line tones. Refusing to argue with the show's detractors, he utters what television people all believe is the unassailable defense of the indefensible: "The people out there love it, and we have the numbers to prove it."