Question: I thought Cybill ...

Question: I thought Cybill Shepherd was in The Mod Squad. If not, who was?

Televisionary: That was Peggy Lipton playing San Francisco-born runaway Julie Barnes in the teen cop series, which ran on ABC from the fall of 1968 to August of 1973. Shepherd, who first made her mark on the entertainment scene way back in 1971's The Last Picture Show, didn't star in a series until much later, in NBC's The Yellow Rose, which debuted in 1983.

I can sort of see how you'd mix them up in memory, which tends to blur faces a bit. Shepherd and Lipton don't look all that much alike in my opinion, but they're the same physical type. In addition, if you're anything like me (and God help you if you are), the actor or actress who's hit it big most recently tends to bleed into the recollection of older shows.

Shepherd, after all, was on top of the TV world when she starred alongside Bruce Willis in ABC's Moonlighting from 1985 to 1989, plus she had a successful sitcom on CBS in the mid-'90s. Lipton, for her part, stayed away from series TV until she played Norma Jennings in 1990's Twin Peaks — and even then she was overshadowed by the show's leads.

Still, she can console herself with the thought of how, compared with the thoroughly dreadful big-screen version, her earlier show was sheer artistry. It's a shame how every time we get a successful film like The Fugitive, which actually was entertaining, we end up slimed with celluloid wastes like The Avengers and — mark my words — the upcoming theatrical version of Charlie's Angels.