V.I.P. is an American action/comedy-drama television series starring Pamela Anderson, Molly Culver, Shaun Baker. Created by J. F. Lawton, the series aired in syndication for four seasons from 1998 to 2002.
Synopsis
Anderson stars as Vallery Irons, a woman who accidentally saves a celebrity and then is hired by a real bodyguard agency (V.I.P. a.k.a. Vallery Irons Protection) as a famous figurehead while the rest of the agency's professionals work to solve cases. Her lack of investigation skills ends up defeating the antagonists in every episode.
The other team members are an assortment of people of different backgrounds: a former member of the KGB, CIA, FBI, a computer expert, a former law officer, a former street boxer/martial artist and, later, a karate master/stuntman joined.
The series uses a mixture of action, comedy, and camp, with Anderson often poking fun at her tabloid image. In November 2001, a video game version of V.I.P. was released on the PlayStation console.
Many first season episodes opened with cameos of famous celebrities being protected by Vallery. Among them were Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jay Leno, Charles Barkley, Jerry Springer and Alfonso Ribeiro.
V.I.P. received video game adaptations from Ubi Soft, for the PC, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2002. An adaptation for Xbox was announced but cancelled.
In 2000, Johnny Lightning released two sets of V.I.P. themed diecast cars in 1/64 scale. There were 8 different vehicles issued in total.
TV Comics! published a comic based on the series in 2000.
The series V.I.P. was co-produced with Telewizja Polsat from Poland. This is the first foreign series co-created by Telewizja Polsat, which exclusively aired the show in Poland.
Awards and nominations
In 1999, the series was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. In 2002, V.I.P. was nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards, winning one for Outstanding Single Camera Editing.
Syndication
The show premiered in syndication on September 26, 1998. Among the stations that carried it was the ensemble of Fox's 22 owned-and-operated stations, who signed when the show was in pre-production in December 1997. As of 2026, the series is currently airing on MeTV+ and is available for streaming online on Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel (both via the Howdy subscription-video-on-demand streaming service that Roku owned) and the Fox Corporation-owned Tubi (that added in May 2021), but formerly on Crackle (until 2023). Episodes in Spanish debuted on CineSony on February 14, 2014.
Select episodes of the show are also available on the Piece of the Action and Throw Back TV YouTube channels (managed by Sony Pictures).