'Moonlighting', Bruce Willis' '80s Detective Series, Finds its Way to Streaming Platforms

Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd’s 1980s hit TV series Moonlighting has found a streaming home — finally. 

Hulu announced on Tuesday, September 26, that all five seasons of the detective dramedy will be available for streaming beginning on Tuesday, October 10. Fans of the series will be able to binge all 67 episodes, each of which has been digitally remastered in HD and includes Al Jarreau’s Grammy-nominated title track. 

Moonlighting follows Maddie Hayes (Shepherd), a former model who is struggling financially and discovers one of her few remaining assets — the Blue Moon Detective agency. As she prepares to sell the business, she meets snarky employee David Addison (Willis), who tries to save his own job by launching a new career for Maddie. Allyse Beasley and Curtis Armstrong also star as Agnes DiPesto and Herbert Viola, respectively. 

The ABC series, which aired from 1985 to 1989, was a critical success. The show earned 41 Emmy nominations across its five-season run, with Willis taking home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1987.

News of Moonlighting’s streaming availability comes one year after the show’s creator, Glenn Caron, expressed his desire for it to find a platform for the show. “Can’t keep it under my hat any longer- the business of getting all five seasons of  Moonlighting starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd ready for streaming has begun!” he wrote via X in October 2022, noting that it was “an ambitious project” with “lots of moving parts” that “could take quite a while.” 

While speaking to Entertainment Weekly at the time, Caron explained that “no one anticipated streaming” when deals were made for the show’s music, which caused issues. “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,” he said, adding that he hoped to “reinitiate a conversation with Disney about releasing streaming rights” with “all the attention” surrounding Willis. 

Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd in ‘Moonlighting’.

Willis announced his retirement from acting in March 2022 after being diagnosed with aphasia. The following year, his family revealed that a “more specific” diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia was determined. “Today there are no treatments for the disease, a reality that we hope can change in the years ahead,” his wife, Emma Heming Willis, along with ex-wife Demi Moore and his children wrote in February. (Willis shares kids Scout, 32, Tallulah, 29, and Rumer, 35, with Moore, 60, and Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9, with Heming Willis.)

Heming Willis, 45, appeared on the Monday, September 25, episode of Today in honor of World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness Week to discuss the disease. She revealed that it’s “hard to know” whether her husband is aware of his dementia.

“What I’m learning is that dementia is hard. It’s hard on the person diagnosed. It’s also hard on the family, and that is no different for Bruce or myself or our girls. When they say that this is a family disease, it really is,” she explained to host Hoda Kotb, but noted that there are still “beautiful things” in their lives despite their hardships.