As the creator of TV series such as Battlestar Galactica, Quincy, Magnum PI and The Fall Guy, the producer and writer Glen Larson, who has died aged 77, was one of the most astute makers of small-screen American dramas in the 1970s and 80s. He made TV gold from the most unlikely material, whether it be a show premised on a talking car (the 1982-86 drama Knight Rider, starring David Hasselhoff as a crime fighter aided by a Pontiac Trans Am with artificial intelligence), a culture-clash cop show featuring a sheriff from New Mexico transferred with his horse to crime-fighting in Manhattan (the 1970-77 series McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver) or the Mormon beliefs that he mobilised in the creation of the science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica (1978).
Larson also used the musical skills he had developed during the 1950s and 60s with the close-harmony vocal quartet the Four Preps to write many of the theme songs for his TV shows. He composed The Unknown Stuntman for the opening credits to his 1981-86 series The Fall Guy, about a stuntman, played by Lee Majors, moonlighting as a bounty hunter. In 1979, he was nominated for a Grammy for his score for Battlestar Galactica.
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