You can only pull off loud Hawaiian shirts and an outrageous mustache if your name is Tom Selleck. The rest of us ought to sit back in awe and wonderment, gazing longingly at that grooming/clothing combination that shouldn’t work but does. Somehow.

After wrapping up Hawaii Five-O, the CBS network was left with a lot of expensive sets hat would languish unused in the tropical island state. Producers recruited Selleck, a guest actor on The Rockford Files, for the role of Thomas Magnum, brainchild of prolific writer Donald Bellisario. Magnum made his living as a private investigator in Oahu; he was also a Vietnam vet who served with distinction as a Navy SEAL. Disillusioned, but not particularly haunted, by the war experience, Magnum falls into a dream situation when an author named Robin Masters (never seen on camera but voiced by Orson Welles) hires him to keep an eye on his sprawling estate, Robin’s Nest. The ex-Navy man does such a good job at exposing security flaws on the estate grounds that the author allows him to stay on the property rent-free, enjoy a never-ending supply of beer and use the boss's bright red Ferrari any time. If only all bosses were invisible and generous with their expensive toys, right?

Masters is always absent but Magnum still has to share the acres and acres of walled-in tropical paradise with Higgins, the estate’s prim and proper caretaker. With a cultured British accent and impeccable appearance, Higgins looks and is the exact opposite of lackadaisical Magnum. The two of them maintain a running banter, bickering and annoying each other throughout every episode. Truth be told, Higgins often comes out on top as he has at his beck and call two vicious Doberman dogs that guard the grounds and answer to the pants-wetting names of Zeus and Apollo. Though the two characters butt heads frequently, there is no real malice between them and they count on each other as much as on anyone else when there’s trouble afoot. Magnum’s other buddies include T.C., a fellow veteran who runs a charter helicopter service on the island, and Rick, a Humphrey Bogart fanatic who fashioned his bar on Rick’s Café from the movie Casablanca.

For inexplicable reasons Magnum keeps his job as a private investigator, even though he lives in the lap of luxury with Higgins fanning him and feeding him grapes. His cases provided fast-paced action for the show, balanced by a good dose of comedy and Magnum’s ubiquitous voiceover narration. Television audiences latched on to the series like they had never seen a mustachioed man drive a Ferrari before and made Magnum, P.I. one of the highest rated programs ever broadcast. After eight glorious seasons, the show went off the air but lives on in plentiful reruns the wide world over.