The Closer

One of the biggest television stars of the 1980s, Tom Selleck, has returned to television in The Closer, Mondays at 9:00PM ET/PT on CBS. His new series is a sitcom, and is somewhat of a departure from his work on Magnum, P.I.

At the CBS 1998 Winter Press Tour, Selleck told critics what kind of series he was looking for.Selleck told executive producers John Strauss and Ed Decter (producers of Chicago Sons) NOT to write a likable guy."I told them to write somebody they wanted to write, but I also told them to write a character with an edge."

The result was Jack McLaren, a legendary advertising executive known as "The Closer" because he rarely misses a deal. Jack's creative team includes Carl "Dobbs" Dobson, the best and most biting creative director in the business; Bruno, copywriter and ever-shifting reed in the political wind; Jack's nocturnally active secretary, Beverly, who copy repairmen all over Denver both fear and lust after; and the team's Ivy league educated accountant Erica, who wants nothing more than to shed her bean counter image.

Tom Selleck said he considered doing The Closer without his trademark mustache until CBS President Les Moonves and Warner Bros. President Tony Jonas gave him "goofy looks."

"I did a movie without the mustache that opened the weekend of the L.A. riots," said Selleck. "And no one saw it. Polls have suggested I shouldn't work without it."