Bill Dekker
Created by Timothy Harris  and Herschel Weingrod 

Cheaper To Keep Her was a smirky 1980 romantic comedy TV flick with good ol' boy singer/songwriter Mac Davis as skirt-chasing private eye BILL DEKKER, who's hired by a feminist lawyer named K.D. Locke (Tovah Feldshuh) to find out why two deadbeats (played by Ian McShane and Jack Gilford) haven't been keeping up with their alimony payments.

Adding to the hilarity, Dekker himself has just packed up and left his own wife, who seems more than happy with her new guard dog and the community property settlement that put a lien on his detective agency.

Starting to get the drift?

Leonard Maltin tags this one as a BOMB, and deems it "Sexist, racist, and obnoxious." He forgot to mention homphobic and outdated the moment it was released, but you get the idea.

Too bad. Writer Harris had given us the very good, Chandleresque P.I. Thomas Kyd just a few years earlier. And Mac Davis, despite his sometimes smarmy bumpkin charm, has given far more memorable performances in the football flick North Dallas Forty and the 1991 made-for-TV thriller Blackmail, where he also played a private eye.

TELEVISION

• CHEAPER TO KEEP HER...Buy this video
  (1980, American Cinema)
  Teleplay by Timothy Harris  and Herschel Weingrod 
  Directed by Ken Annakin 
  Starring Mac Davis as BILL DEKKER
  Also starring Tovah Feldshuh, Bruce Flanders , Steven M. Gagnon, Jack Gilford, Patrick Gorman, Chuck Hicks, Gwen Humble, Priscilla Lopez, Rose Marie, Rod McCary, Ian McShane, Art Metrano, Pat O'Malley, Joe Regalbuto, Wallace Shawn, Jane Strudwick, Fred Stuthman, Shannon Wilcox

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.