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1990 - The Year Santa Died

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A Look Back at Tales of the Gold Monkey

By: mickyarber

Due to it's surprising popularity, Indiana Jones & The Raiders of the Lost Ark was frequently imitated. Tales of the Gold Monkey was frequently lumped in with the other ‘Raiders’ clones but it had actually been thought up by it's creator Donald Bellisario at least two years before the famous Indiana Jones film came out. In the beginning, it was rejected by network executives, who thought nobody would watch a show set in the 1930’s. However, Tales of the Gold Monkey was quickly picked up by ABC once Raiders of the Lost Ark showed that audiences would respond to a historical adventure.

The show was set on the fictional Pacific island of Boragora in 1938. The main character was Jake Cutter, a cargo pilot who provided the only inter-island transportation with his plane, that he called the Grumman Goose. His best friends were Corky, the drunk mechanic, and Jack, a one-eyed terrier who could communicate with his owner through barking. One bark meant no, and two barks meant yes.  But this communication method was often misinterpreted, especially in the opening of the pilot episode during a poker game when Jake was getting advice from Jack!


Jake stayed in a room over the Monkey Bar, the island’s central hub of activity and social life. The little bar was owned by Bon Chance Louis, a French magistrate who did a lot of underhanded business behind closed doors. Also working at the Monkey Bar was Sarah, a torch singer who was secretly an American spy. Our man Jake, her would-be love interest, was the only one who knew her secret. Princess Koji maintained a fleet of trading ships on a nearby island, Matuka, with the help of her main henchman Todo. The cast of characters was rounded out by Reverend Tenboom, a German spy masquerading as a Dutch man of the cloth.

Themes on the show usually came from Jake’s line of work. Although he was a cargo pilot, Jake usually wound up using his plane to search for missing people or recover stolen goods. But tying all these stories together was the search for the mystical object mentioned in the show’s title, an idol made of alloy that was supposedly heat-resistant. Also, there were a large number of German and Japanese spies around the island chain that Jake would have frequent run-ins with.


Sadly, the show was canceled in July of 1983 after only 21 episodes. Audiences gave up on the Indiana Jones themed glut of TV programming, and all were cancelled within one season.  Donald Bellisario recovered nicely, however, going on to create shows like Airwolf and Quantum Leap.

I didn't watch the show while it was in it's first run on the air.  When I first got cable in 1988, it was being shown in syndication on the USA Network on Sunday evenings, I think at 6 pm.  Fortunately, USA showed the whole season a couple of times, and I was able to watch the whole series.  I'm not gonna spoil anything for anyone who may end up tracking this down and watching it, but the finale had one of the most awesome reveals of any show in television history, and left a satisfying conclusion, for me at least.

If you're interested in knowing what that conclusion was, PM me here on RetroDaze and I'll gladly fill you in, but everyone really should check this show out and watch it for themselves.  If you watched the show, please share your memories with me in the comments!




And if you're interested in owning the series on DVD, Amazon has it here for $31.67

Mickey Yarber is a freelance writer and lover of all things fun from our childhoods.  He has a blog where he shares childhood memories of tv shows, toys, movies, games, cartoons, food, school days, and a host of other things.  Stop by and check him out at:


And be sure to follow me on Twitter at @yesterdayville for constant retro goodness!

And for more from Mickey Yarber here on RetroDaze, check out these articles:

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Vaporman87 Posted on Aug 02, 2015 at 04:17 AM

I hope to catch this series some time. Perhaps on YouTube or elsewhere. I hate that I missed it on it's first go around. This is something that would have interested me in my youth. I like shows like this and Fantasy Island. Anything with a bit of intrigue and mystery/adventure.

mickyarber Posted on Aug 01, 2015 at 10:29 AM

Since I missed out on Tailspin, I never made the connection myself. As for dog fights...eh. Some chases and stuff and some small fights. You never got the feeling, at least I didn't, that the show was under budget though. At least not then. Watching it again recently, you can see where a slightly bigger budget could have helped a lot though. It really is a fun series though. Well worth a look if you haven't seen it.

And I too was a big fan of Just the Ten of Us. But I watched it in it's original run on ABC when it was part of TGIF! That was always a really fun block of programming too.

jkatz Posted on Aug 01, 2015 at 10:02 AM

I was going to say this reminds me a lot of Talespin. But I love pulp adventures and this one seems as good as any. Was the show's budget big enough to have dogfights like the ad implies?

Hoju Koolander Posted on Aug 01, 2015 at 01:40 AM

So this was really less of an Indiana Jones clone and more of a live action pre-cursor to Tailspin, huh? Never caught this one during my USA Network watching, but reruns of Just The Ten of Us were hard to beat!

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