Upper Lip Service

Sometimes I have to shake my head in wonder at the subject-matter choices made by online reporters. Take, for instance, Dave Lake and Sarah Haas, who have compiled a photo-heavy list of the top 21 mustaches on television for MSN TV Entertainment.

Perhaps the only unexpected thing about this rundown is that it features so many characters from crime series, including Thomas Magnum (Magnum, P.I.’s Tom Selleck), Andy Sipowicz (NYPD Blue’s Dennis Franz, pictured at left), Hercule Poirot (Poirot’s David Suchet), and Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis: Murder’s Dick Van Dyke). I think that Burt Reynolds, credited here for Evening Shade, ought to be included as well on the detectives side of the board, since he had the same ’stache when he played a slacker Miami private eye in B.L. Stryker (1989-1990).

Oddly, Lake and Haas include Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek on their roster, even though he long ago shaved his upper lip clean. Better that they should have mentioned any of the following: Mike Hammer (Stacy Keach, from Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer), Hec Ramsey (Richard Boone, from Hec Ramsey), Stewart McMillan (Rock Hudson, who wore a mustache in McMillan & Wife, at least during that series’ first season), Harry Tenafly (James McEachin, from Tenafly), John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, from the Shaft movies and TV series), Mike Torello (Dennis Farina, from Crime Story), Frank Cannon (William Conrad, from Cannon), Rick Simon (Gerald McRaney, from Simon & Simon), or even Matt Houston (Lee Horsley, from Matt Houston) and Cody Allen (Perry King, from Riptide).

Why is it, by the way, that so many TV sleuths over the years have sported “cookie dusters”?

(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)