Crime Television (The Praeger Television Collection)

Crime Television

DOUGLAS SNAUFFER

PRAEGER

Crime Television

Recent Titles in The Praeger Television Collection David Bianculli, Series Editor Spy Television Wesley Britton Science Fiction Television M. Keith Booker Christmas on Television Diane Werts Reality Television Richard M. Huff Drawn to Television: Prime-Time Animation from The Flintstones to Family Guy M. Keith Booker

Crime Television

D OUGLAS S NAUFFER

The Praeger Television Collection David Bianculli, Series Editor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Snauffer, Douglas. Crime television/Douglas Snauffer. p. cm. — (The Praeger television collection, ISSN 1549–2257) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–98807–4 1. Detective and mystery television programs—United States—History and criticism. 2. Crime on television. I. Title. PN1992.8.D48S63 2006 791.45'655—dc22 2006018108 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2006 by Douglas Snauffer All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006018108 ISBN: 0–275–98807–4 ISSN: 1549–2257 First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

For Richard J. Snauffer My dad and viewing companion

With special appreciation to Bob Shayne, for his insights into the entertainment industry and the craft of writing, and his willingness to share both.

I’d also like to acknowledge the following individuals for their invaluable support: Mark Dawidziak, Television Critic; The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio); David Bianculli, Television Critic; The New York Daily News Gabriel Scott, Press Liaison; Writer’s Guild of America West

Contents

Preface

ix

1 Crime Television—The 1950s

1

2 Crime Television—The 1960s

31

3

Crime Television—The 1970s

65

4

Crime Television—The 1980s

113

5

Crime Television—The 1990s

159

6 Crime Television—The 2000s

199

Index

239

Preface

Much of the enjoyment of writing Crime Television has come in reviewing so many classic television programs from so many eras—eras not only in TV history but from different periods of my own life as well. I am thankful that the entertainment industry in this day and age has been accommodating. There are a myriad of cable channels now available that are rerunning series that would otherwise be lost, including black-and-white gems from the Golden Age of television, engaging yet short-lived ventures that have too few episodes for general syndication, and other shows that may have just become lost in the vacuum of time. Then there is the DVD—an invention that those of us who hail from the TV generation rank right up there with the creation of the wheel. Thanks to my local cable provider, a well-used membership to Netflix, and numerous private collectors found on the Internet, I was able to spend 12 months studiously reliving 60 years of television. I was also fortunate enough to have spoken to many of the talented writers and producers responsible for some of the most influential programs in TV history, such as Stephen J. Cannell, creator of The Rockford Files and Wiseguy, and Glenn Gordon Caron, whose credits include Moonlighting and Medium. Their anecdotes truly added an entirely new dimension to this book, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them and their peers for their time and candor. My intention with Crime Television has been to both educate and entertain, and what better way than to hear firsthand the trials

x

Preface

and tribulations that had to be overcome to get many of TV’s most wellrevered hits on the air. It is hoped that between their contributions and my own, the reader will be able to view their old favorites in a brand new light. In doing so, however, I do not wish to belittle the contributions of the many producers, writers, directors, and other cast and crew who supported these men in realizing their visions. Obviously, writing a book designed to cover six decades of television requires honing in on only certain programs and personalities. But those interviewed for this book were the first to admit that they didn’t do it alone, and although their collaborators may not be mentioned personally in these pages, their dedication and work certainly did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The material in this book has been divided into six chapters, each targeted at a different decade. Of course, television shows often traverse one decade and run well into the next. Hawaii Five-O, for instance, premiered in 1968, then flourished in the 1970s before finally ending in the spring of 1980. But I’ve chosen, for ease of reference, to include it in the chapter on the 1960s, the decade in which it was conceived, sold, and first introduced to viewers.

CHAPTER 1

Crime Television—The 1950s

n many ways, crime dramas, whether they’ve focused on uniformed police officers or private investigators, have more closely mirrored actual society than any other genre. Situation comedies, particularly those introduced in the early days of television, usually offered an ultra-idealized vision of family life, and westerns, perhaps the most popular genre of the 1950s and early 1960s, presented larger-than-life heroes whose lives hinged on being the fastest draw with the sharpest aim. Crime dramas, however, reflected and continue to reflect our societal mores in the most focused and honest way possible, by portraying crimes and those responsible for them and in contrast, focusing on the men and women whose job it is to bring them to justice. This book provides a look at how, as a society and a viewing audience, our perceptions of the good guys and the bad guys have changed since the inception of television in the late 1940s, along with our definitions of what constitutes heroes and villains. The earliest crime series that came to television closely resembled the radio dramas of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Many in fact were literal translations. The people involved with the production of these programs, for the most part, had actually come from radio. Television was a young medium and, in the eyes of many at the time, nothing more than a passing fad. But to others, namely those aspiring writers, actors, and directors who were still struggling to make a name for themselves, television opened up a new world of opportunity. Radio had become home to hundreds, even

I

2

Crime Television

thousands, of hopefuls who hadn’t been able to break into the glamorous world of Hollywood and motion pictures. For these people, television offered yet another opportunity to hone their skills. By the late 1940s, four television networks had begun to broadcast nationally: ABC, CBS, DuMont, and NBC. Because most of the talent pool that migrated to these channels had come from radio, naturally the two mediums shared a similar style. A majority of television programs took place on one or two standing sets to save money and space and featured characters that spent most of their time simply exchanging banter, regardless of the genre. Because television was in its infancy, no one really had a clear understanding of how the day-to-day operations should be handled, not to mention where the future of the medium might lie. Even those with prior production experience in radio, the theater, and motion pictures found themselves blindly improvising on a daily basis. There was no playbook to provide instructions or veterans to consult in times of crisis. Producers wisely chose to refrain from developing programs that would require large casts, elaborate sets, or complicated staging. This put much of the burden on the writers, who had to craft stories that would grab viewers’ attention and keep them on the edge of their seats without the benefit of much action. An occasional fistfight was permissible, but little else. Exterior scenes were practically unheard of, except for prerecorded establishing shots that might open or close a program. Not surprisingly, this led to a great number of nondramatic programs. One early genre that found appeal with mass audiences was the panel show. A prime example is NBC’s Meet The Press, which began on radio and moved to the fledgling NBC television network in 1947, where it earned the moniker of longest running series on television (still playing as of 2006). News programs, both local and network, sporting events, live music programs, and the extremely popular quiz shows also helped to fill the schedules of the four networks. Interspersed with these shows were filmed shorts that had previously played in motion picture theaters, such as one-reel western shorts and Our Gang comedies. Running times varied, 15-minute programs were not uncommon at the time, and the networks would often have blackouts between programs, sometimes an hour of nothing but bars and tones, when no programming was available. The networks did whatever they could to cobble together an evening of entertainment for their viewers, whose numbers were growing rapidly. Television emulated radio and motion pictures in another manner: it created its own universe of stars: Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Imogene Coco, Dave Garroway, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey, Clayton Moore

Crime Television—The 1950s

3

(The Lone Ranger), Red Skelton, and Ed Sullivan, to name but a few. Many had made their names in radio and appeared in motion pictures, but fell short of making Hollywood’s A-list. But TV made them into royalty, instant celebrities, viewed by millions each week. The infancy stage of television did not last long. What was to follow would become known as “Television’s Golden Age.” Whereas in 1947 only a few thousand homes had TVs, within five years that number had grown into the millions. Television would soon eclipse radio as the nation’s top source of entertainment. TV was finally getting some respect, not because of the production values of its programs, but by the huge sums of advertising dollars it was suddenly stealing away from radio and newspapers. Because of all the money that was being invested in television production on behalf of their clients, advertising agencies controlled TV in the beginning. Ratings were important, but even a moderately rated series, if it provided a proper selling environment for the sponsor’s products, could have a successful run. A typical network season in the 1950s would consist of 39 original episodes. Most series were produced live, so few reruns were broadcast over the summer. Only filmed series could be rebroadcast. Instead, the networks would order limited-run summer programs to fill in until their primary lineup returned in the fall. This meant that working on a prime-time series was a full-time, year round job. Those involved in television appreciated their busy schedules and the money it brought in. There was little if any crossover for these individuals within the motion picture business; the movie side of the Hollywood looked down on television as being inferior. So a long production hiatus over the summer would have meant months of unemployment. As television grew in popularity and profitability, advertising agencies tightened their control of the medium. They carefully chose which programs would make it onto the air, being careful to select only those they felt would be the best fit for the client’s interests. Kodak Film, for instance, was most likely to be purchased by people wishing to capture family events such as weddings, birthday parties, and graduations. Therefore, the agencies would be on the lookout for family-friendly series such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet or The Danny Thomas Show to sponsor. If a series was promising but didn’t quite fit the bill, the sponsors would “strongly suggest” changes. If Philip Morris wanted to sponsor a season of I Love Lucy, you could expect the characters to light up regularly. The agencies soon found themselves responsible for investing millions upon millions of dollars in the medium. With so much money on the line, they felt compelled to involve themselves in every aspect of a show’s

4

Crime Television

production. In most cases, they would oversee casting, exercise script approval, and even choose a director. In an effort to protect the interests of their clients, the agencies made a concentrated effort to avoid anything that might be considered controversial. The best publicized of these battles occurred when Lucille Ball learned she was pregnant during the run of I Love Lucy. This was a recipe for disaster as far as the sponsors were concerned. Until that time, the Ricardos (Lucy and real-life husband Desi Arnaz) couldn’t even share the same bed. The on-screen couple had been forced to make do with twin beds. The eventual solution was to bring in a number of religious leaders and have them okay scripts in advance to guarantee that Lucy Ricardo’s pregnancy would not offend viewers regardless of their denomination. (The word “pregnant” was never allowed; rather Lucy was “expecting a blessed event.”) Other genres also came under fire. Crime series and westerns were particularly scrutinized for the amount of violence they showed on screen. Police and detective dramas rarely showed crimes being committed, but concentrated instead on the investigations that took place afterwards. These shows could present the ad agencies with particularly difficult choices. After all, how many companies wanted their products associated with crime? Obviously it could be advantageous to have the leading men and women dressed in the right clothes, smoking the correct brand of cigarettes, or driving a certain make of vehicle. But what about the villains? The imageconscious executives in charge of spending the sponsor’s advertising dollar certainly didn’t want their client’s products to be associated with those on the wrong side of the law. One solution was to cut down on the actual violence, so that the offending parties wouldn’t seem quite so evil. In motion pictures of the 1950s, it wasn’t uncommon to see someone being murdered—shot, stabbed, or strangled. But such scenes were rare on early television. Few sponsors wanted to risk alienating viewers, each one of whom was a potential retail customer. DuMont went on the air in 1946 but was never able to establish as strong a foothold as the other three networks. It was perhaps most notable as the first network to regularly broadcast professional football in prime time, and for introducing TV’s first network science fiction series, Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949–55), which became immensely popular with children despite its almost nonexistent budget (after salaries had been paid, $25 a week was allotted for new sets and props). DuMont struggled along for several years before finally signing off the air for good in 1954. Before closing its doors, however, it did manage to make an impression on the industry.

Crime Television—The 1950s

5

DuMont introduced some of the earliest crime dramas of the period. One such early venture was The Chicagoland Mystery Players. Gordon Urquhart starred as Jeffrey Hall, a police officer whose beat was the Windy City. The show had all the devices of its era: Hall was a dedicated professional who always solved the crime. This usually involved a careful analysis of the crime scene, questioning of witnesses, followed by a skillful interrogation of the suspect. The series had debuted locally in Chicago in 1947 with an interesting concept—the resolution to the case was never shown on the air. Instead, viewers were instructed to purchase a copy of the next day’s Chicago Tribune for full details. The gimmick was a prime example of the relationship between early television ventures and their sponsors. The Chicagoland Mystery Players premiered nationally on DuMont on the evening of September 18, 1949, and followed pretty much the same format as it had during its run on local television. The one primary difference was that viewers weren’t kept in the dark about the ending; the culprit was usually led away in handcuffs on screen at the conclusion of each episode. The program lasted a single season, ending its short run in July 1950. But it would be followed by scores of other crime shows, most consisting of similar components. Some would become legendary, but others would be unceremoniously dumped from the airwaves without further fanfare. December 16, 1951 proved to be a watershed date in the history of crime dramas on television. That evening viewers got their first taste of Dragnet, arguably the most successful detective drama in the history of the medium. The series arrived courtesy of multitalented writer-director-performer Jack Webb, who himself would become an icon. Dragnet would do as much to define Webb as he would do to define it. Like so many other performers of his era, Jack Webb got his start in radio. After service in World War II, Webb landed his first gig as a radio announcer in 1945. His voice was deep, assertive, and authoritative. Webb’s distinctive style quickly made him a star; within months of his first broadcast he was being barraged by offers to lend his vocal talents to the myriad crime dramas that populated the airwaves. Over the next few years, he became a familiar voice to tens of millions of listeners who gathered around their radios each evening to be entertained. Webb’s starring roles included Pat Novak, For Hire (1946–47), Johnny Modero, Pier 23 (1947), and Jeff Regan, Investigator (1948). None of these programs proved to be runaway hits, but Webb succeeded in establishing himself as one of the most recognizable personalities on the air. By 1949, he had also become a behind-the-scenes player as well and was in a position to call the shots on his next project.

6

Crime Television

Politically, Webb leaned to the right and greatly admired the Los Angeles Police Department. It upset him that scriptwriters took so many liberties in portraying members of the police force—liberties that in Webb’s view often made the L.A.P.D. seem unprofessional and inefficient. This led Webb in 1949 to develop a new series, titled Dragnet, for NBC Radio. The ambitious Webb not only assumed the lead role of L.A.P.D. homicide detective Joe Friday, but he also took the helm as director, producer, and lead writer of the program. Determined to make the show as accurate and by-the-book as possible, Webb enlisted the aid of the L.A.P.D. in developing stories for the series. The police department was quick to take Webb up on his offer, not only assigning him a liaison officer, but also opening their case files to him. Each episode of Dragnet was based on a real-life story, “Only the names were changed,” the announcer would proclaim, “to protect the innocent.” Webb also interviewed police officers to make sure the dialogue and his delivery were as realistic as possible. The show acquired a sponsor in Fatima Cigarettes and premiered in June 1949. Each episode followed Friday and his partner as they tracked down and elicited a confession from their suspect. Barton Yarborough, a veteran of the popular radio serial One Man’s Family, was brought in as Friday’s partner, Sgt. Ben Romero. Dragnet became one of the most popular series on radio, and Webb finally had the hit he’d been looking for. Many artists in Webb’s position would have been more than content to bask in the glow of their incredible success, but Webb was preoccupied by the possibilities that lay ahead—and for Dragnet that was the move to television. The NBC television network was quick to pick up Dragnet for their primetime schedule. They had high hopes that the show would pull in the same impressive ratings for their television division that it was pulling for their radio network. Liggett & Myers agreed to sponsor Dragnet for its first season. Webb’s anticipation grew as he began to personally turn out several of the series early scripts. As with radio, he would continue to act as a jack-of-alltrades—directing, writing, producing, editing, and overseeing the musical arrangement for each episode. But he still hadn’t decided whether he should continue to star as Sgt. Friday. He had proven his business savvy behind-the-scenes in radio by turning Dragnet into a hit. But those same instincts whispered to him that Dragnet on TV might benefit more from an experienced actor in the lead role. Webb’s first choice to play Friday was Lloyd Nolan. It turned out that Nolan, however, was already committed to another detective drama, Martin Kane, Private Eye. If it had been up to Webb, he would have continued his search for the right leading man to assume the part. But he was getting increasing pressure from the sponsor to get Dragnet on the air.

Crime Television—The 1950s

7

Liggett & Myers was already sponsoring an NBC comedy variety series titled Chesterfield Sound Off Time, which was languishing on Sunday nights despite the presence of star Bob Hope. Liggett & Myers was eager to get another show on the air that would help them sell their product. They already had a new dramatic anthology christened Chesterfield Presents ready to go on the air in January 1952, and they wanted Dragnet to alternate with it on Thursday nights. Webb would have preferred more time to get his series up and running, but keeping the sponsor happy was the key to getting and keeping the show on the schedule. Therefore Webb had no time to continue searching for another actor to play Joe Friday. The role was his by default. Webb faced the same struggle as many other radio personalities faced in bringing their characters to life on video screens. On radio these performers only needed to concern themselves with their characters’ voices. Now they had to take what they had accomplished on radio and expand on it to create a multidimensional character. They had to worry about everything from hairstyles to wardrobe to simple gestures and mannerisms. Radio audiences had spent years listening to many of these characters, and in the process they had created mental images that could now work against the actors portraying them onscreen. If the TV incarnations of these characters were too far removed from what the radio listeners had envisioned, they might simply choose to tune out. Webb had appeared in small roles in a number of feature films, the most recent and notable being the 1948 crime thriller He Walked by Night. Still, stepping into the lead in Dragnet meant appearing in almost every scene. Webb as always approached his role with as much vigor as possible. He immediately arranged to take classes at the Los Angeles Police Academy. This time he needed to learn more than just police jargon and procedure. He wanted to look like a cop, behave like one, and learn their mannerisms, everything from approaching a suspect to handling a weapon. With Webb in place as Joe Friday, the decision was made to recruit Barton Yarborough from the radio series as well. Dragnet was rushed onto the air with a special premiere on Sunday, September 16, 1951. The program did not actually debut under its own title, but rather as a featured episode of Chesterfield Sound Off Time. NBC and Liggett & Myers took the unusual step of choosing the program as a launching point for Dragnet. Audiences must have been taken by surprise when they tuned in expecting the humor of Bob Hope and instead got their first look at Webb. In that first episode (“The Human Bomb”), Friday’s nemesis was a man who walks into city hall wearing a bomb, threatening to detonate

8

Crime Television

it unless his brother is released from prison. Playing Friday’s superior was Raymond Burr, who would achieve star status himself years later as the title character on Perry Mason. Webb had made the decision to shoot Dragnet in Los Angeles, despite the fact that most programs were originating from New York. He reasoned that because Dragnet was going to be filmed rather than broadcast live, there was no reason to uproot those involved. Although most of the series was filmed on sound stages, occasionally the production would move outside. On those occasions, being in Los Angeles simplified matters. NBC had no objections as long as the sponsor had no objections, and Liggett & Myers backed Webb’s decision. Despite his preparations for the role, Webb appeared rigid on screen and often delivered his lines with a rapid-fire urgency. It’s difficult to gauge how much of this was a deliberate part of Webb’s characterization as opposed to his lack of depth as an actor. But when the final verdict was rendered, Webb’s performance worked and Sgt. Joe Friday became one of the most unique characters in television history—as well as one of the most lampooned. Dragnet assumed its regular Thursday night timeslot on January 3, 1952, where it spent the next two months alternating on a weekly basis with Chesterfield Presents. Although the other show never caught on with viewers, Dragnet was an immediate hit. Evidently, a great number of the program’s radio fans had TVs in their homes and were eager to tune into Officer Friday’s new exploits. Dragnet distinguished itself from other crime dramas in many areas. Each episode kicked off with a shot of Joe Friday’s Badge, number 714, accompanied by composer Walter Schumann’s classic theme song (also heard on radio). The instrumental tune opened with nine notes that would be become one of the most recognizable pieces of music every composed. “Dum-dedum-dum … dum-de-dum-dum—Dum.” The rest of the composition, often referred to as the Dragnet March, was a fast-paced, catchy number that became the first television theme to be released commercially and crack the top-10. (Although Schumann would continue to be widely recognized as the composer of the theme from Dragnet, in 1953 musician Miklos Rozsa filed a lawsuit claiming that he had actually written the piece for Universal’s 1946 Burt Lancaster-Ava Gardner thriller The Killers. Schumann was deeply upset by the accusations of plagiarism; he eventually opted for an out-of-court settlement of $100,000 and agreed to split all future royalties evenly with Rozsa. Despite the decision, Schumann continued to receive sole credit for the composition.) Webb was a huge fan of music, particularly jazz. Music would continue to play an important part in future Jack Webb productions.

Crime Television—The 1950s

9

Besides the series theme song, another prominent aspect of Dragnet was announcer George Fenneman (Groucho Marx’s future sidekick on the quiz show You Bet Your Life), who, at the start of each episode, would offer the memorable lines: “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” This would be followed by a wide-angle shot of the city of Los Angeles. Then Webb himself would assume the duties of narrator: “This is the city, Los Angeles, California. I work here. My name is Friday. I’m a cop.” Webb would continue to narrate as the story unfolded, carefully explaining every move that he and his partner made in solving the crime. Just as production was beginning to move along smoothly, a sudden tragedy threatened to upset the apple cart. Barton Yarborough passed away unexpectedly of a heart ailment after completing only two television episodes. Despite having spent years working with Yarborough on radio, Webb’s initial thoughts were for the future of the series. Upon learning of Yarborough’s passing, Webb immediately placed a call to friend and story editor James E. Moser. Moser rushed over to Webb’s home and offered his condolences. Webb replied, “Yeah, yeah … now who are we going to get to replace him?” Actors Barney Phillips and Herbert Ellis filled in for the remainder of the first season, after which Webb selected Ben Alexander to fill the shoes of Officer Frank Smith. Chesterfield Presents ended its run on March 6, 1952. Still relatively new to the television game, Webb was still unable to turn out a Dragnet episode every week. Therefore, on March 20, NBC premiered Gangbusters, another police anthology, to continue alternating with Dragnet. Gangbusters, too, had its origins in radio, premiering in 1936. As a matter of fact, it had been an even bigger hit than Dragnet, a tradition that carried over to television, where Gangbusters continued to eclipse Dragnet in the ratings. It would finish the 1951–52 season ranked as the number 14 show on television. Dragnet would tie for the number 20 spot. Although Gangbusters was an anthology, it did offer a regular weekly presence in the person of series creator and narrator Phillips H. Lord. He would appear on screen at the beginning and end of each episode to introduce and wrap up that week’s story. Like Webb, Lord also informed viewers that the stories seen on Gangbusters were true, based on real-life police and FBI cases. Lord would be heard in voice over throughout the episode. Beyond that, however, Gangbusters and Dragnet took different approaches. Dragnet usually picked up after the commission of a crime and focused on the investigation. Therefore audiences were exposed to a minimum of violence. Gangbusters was just the opposite. The episodes generally dealt with

10

Crime Television

the planning and execution of a crime, often graphically. In one episode, subtitled “The Durable Mike Malloy Case,” a crooked insurance salesman teams with a neighborhood tavern owner to take out a life insurance claim on a homeless vagrant who frequented the bar. They then planned to murder him and collect on the policy. As the episode progresses, they spike the unsuspecting man’s alcohol with antifreeze and turpentine and taint his food with various poisons, all to no avail. The plot becomes almost comical because of the old man’s resilience. Ultimately, they resort to getting the man drunk and then running him over in a back alley with a car. Their plan is eventually foiled by a police detective who is able to link the crime with a previously unsolved murder in which the insurance salesman also wrote the policy. In the program’s epilogue, Lord announces that both men were summarily found guilty and executed in the state’s gas chamber. The cases depicted on Dragnet, on the other hand, were considerably less violent. In one classic episode, “The Big Little Jesus” (actually filmed in color and broadcast December 24, 1953), Friday and Smith are called to a local church on Christmas Eve to investigate the theft of the baby Jesus from a nativity scene. The two detectives follow a number of tips in hopes of returning the statue. When the leads all fail to pan out, the men return to the church to inform the priest that masses will have to proceed without the item’s return. Just then a young boy enters the church pulling a wagon with the statue resting inside. He explains he prayed for a wagon and promised the baby Jesus the first ride if he received it. The episode was aired regularly each Christmas. By contrast, other episodes were more dramatic, one notable example being “The Big Cast” (2/14/1952). This program began with Friday and temporary partner Sgt. Ed Jacobs (Barney Phillips) arriving at the apartment of Henry Ross (guest star Lee Marvin), a man who had been identified as the killer of a motorist. Ross put up a struggle, leading to a fistfight between him and Friday (amusingly, we get to see Jack Webb quickly subdue future movie tough-guy Marvin with a number of strategically placed punches). Later, Ross agreed to talk if Friday and Smith would take him out for his last meal as a free man. They head for Ross’s favorite health food restaurant, where Ross, dining on a vegetable burger and beets, molasses bread and yogurt, proceeded to confess to not only one, but a dozen murders over the past several years. Although both series were based on real-life cases, Gangbusters occasionally did not change the names. They did stories on famous criminals such as John Dillinger and Robert Quirley. Both series easily won secondyear renewals from NBC. By the time the fall 1952 season arrived, Webb had picked up those skills required of a television producer. Dragnet, under

Crime Television—The 1950s

11

his supervision, was moving along at an efficient, steady pace. Whereas the previous spring it had taken more than two weeks to complete an episode, Webb was now able to turn out two episodes in as little as five days. NBC realized there was no longer a need to alternate Dragnet and Gangbusters on Thursday evenings. In a bizarre decision, instead of choosing to move either show to a new timeslot, the network decided to simply cancel Gangbusters outright. At the time it was ranked the number eight show on television (pulling in a 42 share) and was devastating the competition on the other three networks. Gangbusters aired for the final time on December 25, 1952, clearing the way for Dragnet to begin broadcasting full-time. Ratings for Dragnet continued to climb. By the end of the 1952–53 season, it had reached number four. A year later, it landed in the number two spot behind only I Love Lucy. Dragnet had become a solidified hit, and Webb a major player in the development of network television. While the public was applauding him for his performance on screen, and—by way of ratings—as the shows leading creative force, behind the scenes Webb wasn’t always the easiest man to work for. Ken Kolb began writing for Dragnet during its later seasons at the invitation of head writer James E. Moser. (Moser had worked with Webb in radio in San Francisco and had contributed to the development of Dragnet’s unique style). Moser left Dragnet in 1954 to create his own series, Medic, which starred Richard Boone as dedicated physician Dr. Konrad Styner. In bringing Medic to the screen, Moser used many of the more recognizable aspects of Dragnet. Boone provided narration for the program, story lines were drawn from real cases, and the series was even shot on location inside real hospitals, using actual health care professionals as extras. Even the show’s theme song, “Blue Star” (by Edward Heyman and Victor Young) became a hit. Ken Kolb was living in San Francisco at the time and was tipped off by a friend that Moser was looking for writers. Kolb phoned him, hoping the fact that they were both from the Bay City might score him a few points. It turned out he couldn’t have made the call at a better time. Moser was in dire straits, way behind schedule on Medic. Members of the crew were literally sitting outside Moser’s door waiting for him to finish the script pages. They’d rush them to the set where the actors were waiting. Kolb immediately landed three assignments, which he wrote while commuting back and forth from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Moser was so pleased with the young man’s writing skills that he offered Kolb a contract to do 10 more scripts if Kolb was willing to relocate with his family to Hollywood. Kolb accepted the deal.

12

Crime Television

Kolb packed up his family and their belongings and headed for Los Angeles, confident he’d gotten his foot in the door and there was no stopping him now. The assumption proved to be a bit premature. Even before the Kolbs could settle into their new home, everything fell apart. “We had a three-month-old child crying in the background and all our belongings had just been unloaded from the moving truck,” remembers Kolb, “and the phone rang. The very first phone call we ever got in that house was that the show had been cancelled. I was out of a job.” It turned out that Moser’s desire for realism, and his hope that it would turn Medic into the hit Dragnet had become, had backfired. In the spring of 1956, Moser shot an episode in which a woman underwent a caesarean section. NBC immediately came under fire from the Catholic Church. The head of the Archdiocese of New York got hold of General David Sarnoff, who was the Chairman of the Board for RCA at the time, and said, “I don’t want that show to be broadcast.” Sarnoff confronted Moser, who refused to budge. The issue was also taken to the program’s sponsor, Dow Chemical, and they, too, demanded the episode be shelved. But again Moser held firm. He was on solid footing at the time; because of a stipulation in its contract with Moser, NBC had to air the episode. But Sarnoff and the network made it clear to Moser that they weren’t pleased, telling him in no uncertain terms, “You’re done at the end of this season.” Medic was given the ax. Fortunately, Moser had Webb to provide him some cover. Although NBC wasn’t terribly pleased with having Moser back on the payroll, Webb asked him back as story editor on Dragnet in the fall of 1956. Ken Kolb, however, was still out of work. “Moving down there was not a great experience,” laughs Kolb. “That helped to motivate my desire to get out of Hollywood two years later. But at the time, I was on my own scuffling in Hollywood with three credits on a dead show. Then I got a gig doing a movie, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, but when that was done, I was still pretty much an unknown.” Fortunately, Moser called one day and offered him a writing job on Dragnet. Kolb found that Webb was a fair and talented, yet demanding, taskmaster. “I liked working for Jim [Moser], and I managed to stay out of Jack’s way, except for one particular day,” recalls Kolb. “I was a stand-in for Jim at a meeting with Jack, and Jim had fucked up on a new series they were trying to start up called The D.A.’s Man. Jim was in charge of gathering scripts for the show, and he forgot to change the name of one of the mobsters, who was by then out of jail and subsequently took offense, so I got one of Jack Webb’s famous tongue lashings, the kind that he used to give the villain in the final scene of every Dragnet.”

Crime Television—The 1950s

13

Kolb realized that despite Webb’s volatility, he was only doing what he had to do to keep Dragnet running smoothly and efficiently. “Jack gave Jim Moser full authority over the scripts,” explains Kolb. “Jim never had to get Jack’s OK. If Jack wanted to change something, he was also the star and the director. If he didn’t like something when he read the script, he could always change it on the set. But he would never interrupt the writing, he never demanded story clearance, he trusted that we knew what would work.” Webb (who was divorced from actress Julie London) was married to starlet Dorothy Towne at the time. Her pet name for him was “Hitler.” Webb was riding high, making a lot of money, and had an enormous amount of clout. Dragnet was a ratings hit and was also being recognized critically. The series won three consecutive Emmys for Best Mystery, Action, or Adventure Series in 1952, 1953, and 1954. In both 1954 and 1955, Webb was nominated for Best Actor, and Alexander for Best Supporting Actor, although neither would take home the trophy. In 1956, Webb received a nomination as Best Director, but again went home empty handed. But it didn’t seem to bother Webb, whose real satisfaction came from being able to immerse himself in the craft that he so deeply cherished and excelled at. In 1954, Webb produced and directed a feature film version of Dragnet. The movie, shot in color on a budget of $500,000, raked in $4,750,000 at the box office, making it one of the most successful films of the year. He could seem to do no wrong. Webb’s personal and private life became increasingly intertwined. He built a half-million dollar state-of-the-art building on the Republic Pictures lot, where Dragnet was filmed, to house his Mark VII Limited production company. The facility also included a lavishly furnished apartment where Webb took up residence. This allowed him to indulge himself in his art, viewing dailies and editing footage, late into the night. Webb’s success with the Dragnet feature, along with his love of jazz, led to a second feature film, Pete Kelly’s Blues, in 1955. It, too, was a box office hit. Based on a short-lived 1951 radio series in which Webb had starred, he again played the lead in the film. In 1959, Webb would spin the movie off into an equally short-lived television series, this time starring William Reynolds as Kelly. During the mid-1950s, Webb also branched out as producer of a number of other projects, none of which equaled the success of Dragnet. Webb did receive kudos for his work as director, producer, and star of the feature film The D.I. in 1957. Webb played a Parris Island drill instructor trying to make a Marine out of an inept young recruit (Don Dubbins). Even the real-life Marines used as extras in the film were impressed by Webb’s powerful performance.

14

Crime Television

Dragnet, however, remained Webb’s primary focus. Says Ken Kolb, “You like to believe that there are cops like Joe Friday, and that they will always get the bad guys. Dragnet had a lot of the nice ritual qualities of a church service. Things happened with great regularity. It was an easy show to write because it was so rigidly structured. You opened with Friday and Smith talking to the victim, then you’d cut to a lead that doesn’t go anywhere, then you go to a lead that does go somewhere. The whole thing is shot in closeup. It was beautifully efficient.” Controversy seldom took center stage with Dragnet, for no other reason than Webb just wouldn’t have it. “Nobody was much worried about violence on the show, it was rare that there was even gunfire,” continues Kolb. “The whole thing devolved into creating a credible villain and then letting Jack filet him alive in the final scene. You wanted to get viewers to empathize with the victim, to detest the criminal, then watch as they melt down in front of your very eyes. An intelligence officer from the L.A.P.D. would come out once a week and offer us interesting things he’d pulled from the files, things he thought might make a good episode. So we worked from these suggestions. They were based on actual files, so we were careful not to mention names, to alter it enough that nobody could sue for libel. You also have to keep in mind that there isn’t much that comes out of the police files that fits neatly into a half hour. So to a large extent we invented, using real cases as the basis of each story. The hard part was to provide Friday and Smith with credible police work, to answer the question, How did they figure this out? In Los Angeles, most crimes are solved by the cops paying informers for what they know. I would say that 85 percent of the cases that I saw from the police files, they paid somebody to tell them who did it, then they’d go and arrest them, but that doesn’t make for good television.” By the late 1950s, Dragnet’s nearly decade-long rein in the Nielsen top-10 was over. The program had run for eight years, 276 episodes, following the same format, and the public’s taste was changing. On the summer evening of August 23, 1959, Dragnet aired its last original episode, “The Big Red.” As it turns out, Dragnet would prove more versatile and resilient than anyone could have imagined. It would not only prove to be a part of a pioneering force in the Golden Age of Television, but it would come back to be a presence in future decades of the medium. Television, however, continued to move forward. In the fall of 1958, even before Dragnet had taken its final bow, ABC had premiered the critically praised crime drama Naked City. The half-hour drama (based on the 1948 motion picture) was filmed on location in New York City, which added a great sense of authenticity to each episode. By this time, New York had

Crime Television—The 1950s

15

ceased to be the television production capital. Few live programs were still being telecast from the city other than daytime soap operas, and an increasing numbers of those were now being taped in advance. Most studios had closed up shop and relocated to Los Angeles. New York was now more of a location than a home base. But its look was refreshing now that so many programs were being shot in Los Angeles. The Naked City made great use of the city’s exterior locations, both prominent areas such as The Staten Island Ferry and the grittier back alleys that most filmmakers preferred to avoid. The series used a disembodied narrator (Paul Frees) who would begin each episode by proudly announcing that the series was indeed filmed “in the streets and buildings of New York itself.” Each episode would end with the classic phrase: “There are eight million stories in the naked city, this has been one of them.” Veteran character actor John McIntire starred as Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon, with young James Franciscus as his partner Det. Jim Halloran. Together, the two officers went after a variety of criminal offenders, from smalltime con men to thieves and murderers. The scripts for the series were particularly well written (31 of the program’s first-season slate of 39 episodes were penned by scribe Stirling Silliphant). Rather than being a simple exercise in police procedure, as Dragnet had been, Naked City was clearly meant to be a character study. The stories often unfolded through the eyes of the villains, with Muldoon and Halloran playing more peripheral roles. The Naked City debuted on Tuesday, September 30, 1958. It was scheduled against CBS’s immensely popular Red Skelton Show, which made it difficult for Naked City to find an audience. In early 1958, a major shake-up occurred that was the result of creative differences between star John McIntire and producer Herbert Leonard. In a surprising March 1959 episode, McIntire’s Det. Lt. Muldoon was killed during a high-speed pursuit when his police cruiser crashed into a gasoline tank and exploded. It was hoped that the episode would solve two problems: it would put an end to the feud between star and producer, and in the process might draw attention and a few new viewers to the series. It certainly accomplished the first goal. With McIntire out of the picture, Horace McMahon was added to the cast as Lt. Mike Parker, Jim Halloran’s new partner. Unfortunately, neither the deadly chase episode nor the subsequent cast change helped ratings, and The Naked City was cancelled in the spring of 1959. But the series still had some life left in it. Viewers protested its cancellation by writing to ABC and the program’s sponsor, Raleigh Cigarettes. The network finally gave in (more at the urging of the sponsor than the fans),

16

Crime Television

and after a year’s hiatus, The Naked City once again appeared on ABC’s schedule in the fall of 1960, this time in hour form. The new revamped Naked City premiered on October 12, 1960. Franciscus was no longer in the cast. Instead, Parker was now teamed with a new young partner, Adam Flint (Paul Burke). Nancy Malone also joined the series as Libby, Adam’s girlfriend. Apart from that, the series remained pretty much as it had before. Silliphant returned to write several episodes, but by then he had become heavily involved with the series Route 66. Scheduled on Wednesday evenings at 10:00 P.M., the series did see a moderate improvement in ratings, but it was still far from being a bona fide hit. However, it did continue to receive critical acclaim, not only for its inspired writing but also for its top-notch casting. Guest stars included James Caan, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Christopher Walken, Gene Hackman, and Jon Voight. In “The Tragic Success of Alfred Tiloff” (11/8/1961), Jack Klugman played the title character, a man whose controlling wife manipulates him into kidnapping a young girl from a poor family. They then simultaneously approach a wealthy man with no connections to the abducted girl to pay her ransom, or they’ll kill her. Parker and Flint are called in, but the real drama revolves around the tumultuous relationship between Tiloff and his wife as their scheme plays out, and between the missing girl’s family and the stranger chosen to pay for her safe return. Equally intriguing is “Portrait of a Painter” (1/10/1962), which cast William Shatner as a down-on-his-luck Greenwich Village artist who awakens one morning to find his wife murdered on the floor of their small apartment. With a history of mental illness, he has to reach deep into his own disturbed psyche to discover if he indeed is the murderer. Despite some wonderful episodes, the show never did achieve hit status, but with the backing of its sponsors and a solid 10 P.M. timeslot opposite less than imposing competition (The U.S. Steel Hour), the show managed to find a comfortable niche where it ran for three seasons in its new incarnation. Its final original telecast aired on the night of May 19, 1963, after 138 total episodes (39 half-hours and 99 hour-long segments). It would be remembered as one of the most influential and well-crafted crime dramas of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Naked City wasn’t the only new crime series brewing in Dragnet’s wake. A very different type of crime drama was about to take the industry by storm. In the mid-1950s, Warners entered into a deal with ABC that by 1957 was coming to fruition. Until that time, ABC had been a very weak third in network standings and jumped at the opportunity to suddenly have access to the kind of high production values that a deal with a movie studio would

Crime Television—The 1950s

17

provide. As a result, three new series would soon make it to the air that would change ABC’s fortunes: 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside Six. Those series, along with a number of new westerns including Maverick, would change the face of television. Suddenly ABC was getting ratings on a par with CBS and NBC (DuMont had faded out of sight by the end of the 1954–1955 season). After witnessing ABC’s success with the Warners deal, the other networks naturally wanted to begin buying programs from the big studios as well. The studios too began to actively pitch series ideas to the networks, and the whole look of what was on everyone’s TV screens changed. What had been largely live and taped musicals and quiz shows became filmed westerns and detective dramas. (Of course, the quiz show scandals had a lot to do with that, too.) Suddenly, the relationship between the motion picture business and television took on a new dimension. Television had in the matter of a single decade gone from a blip on the radar of most studio executives, to a competitive concern, to an invaluable ally. Of course, things could have gone the other way if 77 Sunset Strip hadn’t worked. But thanks to its success, the domino effect went into motion. The heroes of 77 Sunset Strip were far removed from the stifled officers of Dragnet and Gangbusters. Created by Roy Huggins, who’d scored in the fall of 1957 with the very off-beat and well-received Maverick (Huggins had spent the 1940s writing dime store detective novels before joining Warners as a young scriptwriter), 77 Sunset Strip starred Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Stuart Bailey, a private investigator whose offices were located in glitzy Hollywood. His clientele often tended to be the wealthy and famous. Bailey himself was suave, sophisticated, and Ivy-League educated. He had formerly worked with the Office of Strategic Services before becoming a P.I. His partner, Jeff Spencer (played by Roger Smith), was also a former government agent. They had a French secretary in the office and often hung out next door at Dino’s, a hip L.A. eatery. Their cases would often take the investigators to exotic locations around the globe. Unlike the police detectives so prominently featured in most series, who lived on a cop’s salary and rarely strayed from their local jurisdictions, the leads of 77 Sunset Strip were well paid for their services and lived extremely glamorous lives. The show was also unique in that it was television’s first hour-long private eye series. The pilot for 77 Sunset Strip actually aired as an episode of another Warner Bros. series that Roy Huggins was producing, a dramatic anthology titled Conflict. The episode, subtitled “Anything for Money,” aired on April 16, 1957 and featured only Zimbalist. (Another episode of Conflict, featuring guest Will Hutchins, led to the popular western Sugarfoot, meaning that

18

Crime Television

while Conflict lasted a mere 20 episodes, it served as the launching pad for two of the era’s long-running hits.) Warners quickly green-lighted 77 Sunset Strip and production began in the summer of 1958 on a special 90-minute premiere episode. Titled “Girl on the Run,” the plot centered on P.I. Stuart Bailey’s hunt for a missing singer before a hired killer can locate her. The enigmatic assassin had an interesting character trait: he was constantly combing his hair while waiting to kill his victims. A young, relatively unknown actor by the name of Edd Byrnes played the role. By the conclusion of the episode, he’d been arrested and sentenced to death. Creator Huggins later described the character as “Charles Manson with a comb.” The studio decided to test the episode in front of preview audiences that summer and was stunned by the results. Byrnes tested through the roof; the audience literally mobbed him after the screening. Huggins was taken aback, he couldn’t understand how they had become so taken by this character who was portrayed as such a psychotic monster. But the results were clear and unmistakable, and a star had been born. Huggins and Warners quickly consulted and the decision was reached to add Byrnes to the cast as a regular. A new character was created for him, that of parking lot attendant Gerald Lloyd Kookson, II, or “Kookie” to his acquaintances. (Although Byrnes’s psycho character in the pilot had been named “Smiley,” Huggins couldn’t remember it, and kept referring to him during post-production as the kook.) Unlike Bailey, the stoic lead, and Spencer, his playboy partner, Kookie was designed to be a tried-and-true product of the times, cool and hip, a cat who walked the walk and talked the talk. He referred to anyone in a suit as “Daddio” (in Zimbalist’s case, it was often just plain “Dad”), and termed anything or anyone he admired as “the ginchiest.” He even retained his comb and the habit of constantly adjusting his hair as he had done in the first episode. The only thing left to do was explain to audiences how this cold-blooded killer from that initial episode had suddenly become a fun-loving, dedicated member of the regular cast. The decision was reached to make a direct appeal to the viewers, asking them to basically play along. As the second episode opened, Zimbalist stepped out of character, turned to the viewers and explained: “We previewed this show, and because Edd Byrnes was such a hit we decided that Kookie and his comb had to be in our series. So this week, we’ll just forget that in the pilot he went off to prison to be executed.” The program was not an immediate smash hit, but it did generate quite a bit of buzz. The detectives of 77 Sunset Strip were a sharp contrast to the type of heroes that had been seen on television in the past. Their cases

Crime Television—The 1950s

19

and their lives were much more exciting than those portrayed on Dragnet or Naked City. The days of the police procedural seemed to be fading in favor of pop culture theatrics. No sooner had Kookie been added to the cast of 77 Sunset Strip than the producers handed him a microphone and told him to sing. In one episode set during a musical review, Kookie took to the stage and performed a novelty song titled “Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb.” It was then released as a duet between Byrnes and Connie Stevens and topped the charts. From then on, Byrnes could be counted on to perform regularly. He had become the Fonzie of his era. It also meant an end to any notion that the series would play out as a serious crime drama as Huggins had originally intended. With Byrnes now arguably the most popular character, the series tended to take a lighter tone. One representative episode from early in the second season was subtitled “Six Superior Skirts” (10/16/1959) in which the detectives are hired to protect an expensive diamond collection during a charity fashion show. When one of the stones disappears right off the neck of one of the models, Bailey and company are left with only hours to recover it and save the insurance company $200,000. The episode contained all of the elements that had made 77 Sunset Strip a hit: a daring crime committed in a glamorous setting (even legendary Daily Variety columnist Army Archard was on hand as himself to cover the Tinseltown event), beautiful women at every turn, and Kookie doing his thing (performing with that week’s musical guest, The Mary Kaye Trio.) This new direction certainly didn’t hurt the show; on the contrary, the series remained highly entertaining. Huggins did toss a ringer into the mix every now and then. One episode, “The Silent Caper” (6/3/1960), written by co-star Roger Smith, contained no dialogue. Other episodes were inspired by films such as Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder. But like just any other series that becomes hugely popular, dissention eventually threatened to derail this one. By the second season, Byrnes was becoming restless. He felt he was being used as nothing more than a glorified second banana. He was tired of his character parking cars and doing occasional legwork. He wanted to be part of the on-screen A-team; off screen he also wanted more money. When he didn’t feel the studio was taking his concerns seriously, he decided to walk. Warners responded by replacing him with another young unknown named Troy Donahue, who took over Kookie’s job as valet at Dino’s. The new character was the opposite of Kookie: he was a long-haired intellectual who wore glasses and could often be found with his head stuck in a book. The situation turned out to be only temporary, however. Viewers responded quickly and angrily and so did the show’s sponsors. Byrnes’s demands were quickly agreed to and by the

20

Crime Television

third season, Kookie was back on the series as a full-fledged private eye. But the change wasn’t necessarily for the best. Something about Kookie wearing a suit, sitting behind a desk, and taking on responsibility didn’t quite fit with the image that had been created in those early episodes. (Just check out Fonzie in the later seasons of Happy Days.) Still, the show climbed to number six that year. 77 Sunset Strip became so popular, as a matter of fact, that Warners immediately began work on possible spin-offs. The first to make it the air was Hawaiian Eye in the fall of 1959. The show was introduced in the second season premiere of 77 Sunset Strip in which Stu Bailey traveled to Hawaii in search of counterfeiters and teamed with local P.I. Tom Lopaka (Robert Conrad). Hawaiian Eye telecast its first go-alone episode on Wednesday, October 7, 1959. The similarities of the two shows were unmistakable, from the jazzy opening theme song to the two swinging bachelor detectives, not to mention that Roy Huggins personally oversaw this one, too. Lopaka’s partner in crime prevention came in the person of Anthony Eisley as Tracy Steele. The two shared a poolside office at the Hawaiian Village Hotel. Connie Stevens was cast as a sexy young local singer, Cricket, and Poncie Ponce lent a hand as comical sidekick Kazuo Kim, a taxi driver with an endless array of relatives throughout the islands who could be called on in time of need. Kim was Lopaka and Steele’s Kookie. Unlike some of the stories on 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye had more than its share of episodes that could be termed adventure rather than strictly crime dramas. In “Second Day of Infamy” (10/21/1959), for example, a former Japanese military officer escapes from his confinement in a mental institution and, unaware the Second World War has ended, begins to prepare for an imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Another, “The Kamehameha Cloak” (1/13/1960), had Lopaka agreeing to protect a client’s husband from an ancient curse. But there was always plenty of excuses for sand, surf, and a bevy of beautiful girls. Just three days after Hawaiian Eye premiered as part of 77 Sunset Strip, ABC debuted another detective drama from Warners, this one produced by Charles Hoffman, but definitely a program akin to the others. Bourbon Street Beat opened on the evening of Monday, October 5, 1959. The series was about—you guessed it—two bachelor private eyes working out of a glamorous location, aided by a young, humorous sidekick and surrounded by beautiful women. Only this time, the concept had been situated in New Orleans. Local P.I. Cal Calhoun (Andrew Duggan) and his partner, Ivyleaguer Rex Randolph (Richard Long) practiced their profession down on the bayou surrounded by colorful characters. Kenny Madison (Van Williams)

Crime Television—The 1950s

21

was their young assistant, who, although studying for his law degree, was always good for a few laughs. Sexy Melody Lee Mercer (Arlene Howell) also stepped up to the plate and helped the guys on their cases. To add some local flavor, the team occasionally crossed paths with jazz musician Billy the Baron (Eddie Coleas) and his singer Lusti Weather (Nita Talbot). Warner Bros., confident the show would be a huge hit, went as far as to buy a partial interest in a real New Orleans restaurant, The Absinthe, and placed Calhoun and Randolph’s offices above it. (It amounted to little more than a gimmick to generate press, as the series was shot on location at Warner Bros. Studios. Some second unit photography was filmed outside The Absinthe, however.) Bourbon Street Beat tried its best to emulate those traits that made its parent series, 77 Sunset Strip, a hit. Episodes such as “The Missing Queen” (3/14/1960) contained all the prerequisites: murder, blackmail, sex, music, all set against the backdrop of the Miss Dixie Belle Beauty Contest. Unfortunately, Bourbon Street Beat failed to catch on with viewers. Hawaiian Eye was renewed for a second season, but Bourbon Street Beat aired the last of its 39 original hour-long episodes on July 4, 1960. Warners and ABC, however, had been impressed enough with the performances of Long and Williams that they decided to keep them in the family. That fall, Long joined the cast of 77 Sunset Strip, still playing the same character, as a new partner; meanwhile, Van Williams was sent packing to sunny Miami where his alterego, Kenny Madison, now a full-fledged detective, opened his own agency in Surfside Six, another spin-off of 77 Sunset Strip. Although Surfside Six began its run on October 3, 1960, it would be negligent not to batch it in with its 1950s Warner Bros. counterparts. Williams’s partners, all of whom shared a swanky houseboat, included Lee Patterson as Dave Thorne and Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield II. Diane McBain costarred as Daphne Dutton, the girl next door, or in this case the incredibly wealthy socialite who kept her yacht anchored next to the boys’ boat. She provided most of the comic relief. Also on hand was Margarita Sierra as Cha Cha O’Brien, who performed in the Boom Boom Room of the nearby Fountainebleau Hotel. Although the trio worked as a team, Donahue got a little more attention, at least initially, because he had just encountered big-screen success with 1959’s A Summer Place. Unfortunately, despite the exotic locale, the stories for Surfside Six were mostly pedestrian. By this time, Warners had stretched the 77 Sunset Strip formula as far as it could. By the early 1960s, ratings had begun to slide for these once mighty television phenoms. Surfside Six ended its two-year run in 1962 after 74 episodes; Hawaiian Eye ended a year later after airing 134 segments. By the

22

Crime Television

summer of 1963, Warners had only one original series left in production, the original, aging 77 Sunset Strip. In an attempt to revitalize the studios TV division, Jack Webb was named head of production at Warner Bros. Television. He assumed his duties in the spring of 1963, allowing him time to develop and sell only one new series for that fall, Temple Houston, which starred Jeffrey Hunter as a lawyer in the Old West (it ran for only a single season). Webb then went to work trying to save 77 Sunset Strip. He did so by giving the program a complete overhaul, ousting the entire cast except for Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. William Conrad, best known as the voice of Matt Dillon on the radio version of Gunsmoke (and later as star of the 1970s crime drama Cannon) was brought in as director. In the revamped series, Stuart Bailey was now a freelance P.I. who traveled the world solving high-profile crimes. The fall season started with a special five-part episode in which Bailey went after a smuggling ring, tracking them across Europe and the Middle East. He never did return to 77 Sunset Strip as his continuing adventures kept him globetrotting through the end of the season (the title seemed to remain as a merely symbolic gesture). The changes failed to reverse the series’s downward spiral, proving too drastic for long-time fans of the series. 77 Sunset Strip was cancelled in midseason. Its final first-run episode was broadcast on February 7, 1964 (for a total of 206 episodes over six seasons). The show actually outlived Webb’s tenure at Warners, however. He was fired in December 1963 after only 10 months on the job. But Webb’s career was still far from over. To the contrary, his greatest successes were still ahead of him. ABC, too, would again conquer prime time, but it would be with another genre in another decade. ABC wasn’t the only network cashing in on the private investigator craze of the late 1950s; NBC had a hero of its own. In the fall of 1958, with Dragnet faltering in the ratings, NBC also saw the need for a more modern, updated hero. To come up with a workable scenario, it turned to a young writer/ director named Blake Edwards, whose resume at the time consisted almost solely of a handful of B-movies and a stint with CBS’s anthology series Four Star Playhouse. He’d also created the character of “medium-boiled” detective Richard Diamond for radio. Edwards was a child of Hollywood—his father, J. Gordon Edwards, was a prolific silent-screen movie director. Blake grew up around the business and understood it. He took his task to heart and created a hero Peter Gunn, who was the polar opposite of Webb’s Joe Friday. Although both characters were about the same age and worked in the same city, they were still from different worlds. Peter Gunn worked as a private detective rather than a police investigator. He was well-educated. He wore suits that probably cost more than Friday made in a month on his

Crime Television—The 1950s

23

police salary. Whereas Friday was seldom seen with a female companion, Gunn dated a beautiful blonde singer who performed regularly at Mother’s, the hip nightclub where he would hang out during his off hours. Gunn lived in a glamorous Hollywood apartment that would be well beyond the means of any civil servant. Unlike Friday, who would let loose on his suspects with long-winded, moralizing speeches chastising them for the error of their ways, Peter Gunn was soft spoken. He could still defend himself when necessary and wouldn’t put up with any nonsense, but he really didn’t seem to care if the villain he was out to expose that week felt any remorse for the crime, so long as they were being brought to justice. As a matter of fact, Peter Gunn was a much more violent series than Dragnet. Not only were the criminal acts presented graphically on camera, but most episodes contained at least one violent confrontation between Gunn and his assailants. The production itself relied heavily on atmosphere: 90 percent of the series took place at night, the streets damp, the neighborhood draped in a light fog, the clubs filled with (presumably) cigarette smoke. Peter almost always had a cigarette, a drink, or a gun in his hand. Craig Stevens (who resembled Cary Grant) was cast as Peter Gunn and Lola Albright played his love interest, Edie Hart. Character actor Hershel Bernardi was Gunn’s cop friend Lt. Jacoby. Actress Hope Emerson rounded out the cast as the jazz club owner known only as “Mother” (the role was assumed by actress Minerva Urecal at the beginning of the second season). Peter Gunn premiered on Monday, September 22, 1958. Its animated opening credits accompanied by Mancini’s impressive score hinted to viewers immediately that they were in for something different. That something was a more mature, sophisticated drama. Whereas Jack Webb always boasted that he would put nothing in Dragnet that he wouldn’t want any member of the family to see, Peter Gunn was aimed primarily at adults. As highly regarded as the series was, several standout episodes rose above the rest. One first-season entry was subtitled “The Blind Pianist” (10/13/1958), in which a “blind” pianist is the only “witness” to a murder. It turns out the musician, Stephen Ware (Barney Phillips), an old friend of Peter’s, had just returned from Europe where he had undergone a corneal transplant and had regained his sight. But concerned that his professional image might hinge on the fact that he is a blind virtuoso, he has withheld his recovery from the public. To identify the killer (Richard Ney) would mean revealing he is now sighted, which could damage his livelihood. So he hires Peter, fills him in on what he saw, and asks Peter to track down the killer without exposing his secret.

24

Crime Television

In “Death House Testament” (12/1/1958), Whitey Collins (George Mitchell), a convicted killer on death row, summons Peter to his cell shortly before his execution and offers him clues to the whereabouts of $700,000 in stolen loot. The catch is he wants Peter to find the money and turn it over to the insurance company, collect the 10 percent finder’s fee, and give it anonymously to his daughter Margaret (Kathy Coombs), who has no idea who her real father is. He feels Peter is the only man honest enough not to keep the entire $700,000 for himself once he gets his hands on it. Peter agrees, but before he can make good on his promise, he has to locate the money and keep one step ahead of those who would kill to get hold of it themselves. Music became an important element of Peter Gunn. Composer Henry Mancini was the man responsible for the wonderful jazz score heard on the series. Mancini had an exclusive contract with Universal Studios and had written the music for films ranging from The Glenn Miller Story to Creature from the Black Lagoon. The record of his main title theme for the show (known simply as “The Theme from Peter Gunn”) became a commercial hit. Eventually two albums of music were released based on his score, The Music from Peter Gunn and More Music from Peter Gunn. He earned a Grammy nomination in 1959 for his efforts. Peter Gunn immediately connected with audiences and finished its first season on the air tied at number 16 along with Wanted: Dead or Alive. Edwards followed up on his success by selling another series with a similar style, Mr. Lucky, to CBS for the fall of 1959. The half-hour adventure series was loosely based on the 1943 film starring Cary Grant. Like Peter Gunn, Mr. Lucky starred an actor with more than a passing resemblance to Grant. John Vivyan, an actor with very little previous television experience, landed the role of Mr. Lucky, a professional gambler who won a luxurious yacht called The Fortuna, which he turned into a floating casino. To stay legal, he had to anchor his endeavor 12 miles off the California Coast in international waters. The stories revolved around the assortment of guests who visited the Fortuna, some just to experience a little fun and excitement, others with more sinister goals in mind. Basically, Edwards took a 15-year-old movie and used it as the basis for a sophisticated, witty, and charming series about a man who becomes a sort of unofficial private eye without portfolio for friends in need each week. Edwards brought Mancini along for the ride. The composer put together another winning score for this series, everything from the jazzy opening title number to the thriving background score (for which he was nominated for a Grammy in 1959). Mancini released two popular albums based on his work for the show, The Music from Mr. Lucky and Mr. Lucky Goes Latin.

Crime Television—The 1950s

25

Mr. Lucky premiered on Saturday, October 24, 1959, and initially pulled in decent ratings. But not everybody was happy with a series that featured a hero who ran a seedy gambling operation, even if he managed to skirt the law by putting out to sea. Many CBS affiliates (particularly in the South) were uncomfortable with the entire concept and pressured the network to cancel the show. Instead, CBS issued an edict to Blake Edwards: turn that gambling ship into a restaurant by mid-season or they’d sink the entire enterprise. So beginning with the episode aired February 6, 1960, the Fortuna went legit, no more cards or slots, just surf and turf. The seafood may have been fresh, but the plots became stale and viewers began to tune out. In the end, CBS cancelled the series even with changes in place. After 34 episodes, Mr. Lucky completed its slate of original telecasts on June 18, 1960. While CBS was gambling on Mr. Lucky that season, NBC was making room for a tough guy with a tough name: Johnny Staccato. When casting the series, the producers decided they wanted an actor they could truly sell in the leading role. Johnny Staccato was to be a young, hip, street-smart, and moody hero who also possessed a strong right hook and knew how to handle the ladies. It was unclear if he was a jazz musician who moonlighted as a private detective, or whether it was the other way around. But without doubt he was meant to be a “bad boy.” From a creative standpoint, the powers-that-be made an excellent choice in casting John Cassavetes, a temperamental New York-born filmmaker whose reputation closely matched the designated character traits of Johnny Staccato. The February 26, 1956, issue of TV Guide even included Cassavetes in an article titled “Potential Valentionos”. Realistically, the producers should have realized, however, that they were asking for trouble. Although Cassavetes had worked within the Hollywood system on occasion, he had openly criticized it as being unoriginal and uninspired. Many of his fans were surprised that he had accepted NBC’s offer to star in a series. But his intentions were made clear from the get-go: he’d only agreed to star in Johnny Staccato to pay off the large private debts he had accrued while filming his independent feature film Shadows. Nonetheless, he still made a number of demands in exchange for his services. He wanted a hand in developing storylines, and also insisted on directing a number of episodes himself. The producers gave him what he wanted, anxious to sign Cassavetes, hoping to capitalize on his reputation as an angst-ridden Hollywood rebel. Johnny Staccato premiered on Thursday, September 10, 1959. The series was very stylish, shot like a B-grade film noir gangster flick. Johnny was a Greenwich Village jazz musician who played piano at Waldo’s, a coffeehouse

26

Crime Television

frequented by beatniks and other assorted music lovers. Johnny also worked as a private investigator to supplement his income. Each week he would end up helping out someone in need, so long as it didn’t interfere with, or in some manner detract from, his personal life. The series did strive for realism but rarely achieved its goals. Many of the plots were plausible—involving murder, theft, and extortion—but seldom did the show distinguish itself. The writing was too often subpar. Considering that the series’ main character was a musician, it was surprising that the show’s music score, although composed by the talented Elmer Bernstein, seemed underused, and, when featured, was less than compelling. Cassavetes was called on to do narration, but not on a regular basis. Instead, it seemed as if the voiceover was used more or less to fill in plot holes as needed. Fans of Cassavetes readily admit that Johnny Staccato was not among the artist’s best work. His acting seemed stifled, as if he himself felt constrained by the role. He seemed restless, bored. Nor did his directorial efforts prove outstanding. Some of the episodes did manage to rise above average. “Tempted,” (11/19/1959) featured a guest turn by future Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery as a femme fatale who cons Johnny into helping her steal a diamond valued at $200,000. Johnny catches onto the scheme and ends up in possession of the precious stone himself, debating whether to turn it in for the reward, or go along with the scheme and protect the woman, whom he realizes he’s falling in love with. Surely, Joe Friday had never been so strongly tempted to look the other way. Cassavetes’s true acting abilities finally managed to shine through in a scene in which Johnny has a heartto-heart with Waldo, whom Johnny sees as perhaps the only honest man he really knows. “If I cheat a little bit, once, who does it hurt?” he ponders. “Why does a man have to be honest all of the time, cut and dry?” The series could have used a little more soul searching. Instead, too often, we were given episodes such as “Shop at the Four Winds,” (10/8/1959), in which Johnny ends up in Chinatown investigating the death of a friend who was beaten to death. Johnny uncovers a scheme to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country, but instead of dealing with the issue in a thought-provoking manner, the episode ends with an intense chase scene across several village rooftops. Naturally, Johnny has a beautiful woman in tow, both hoping to evade the clutches of a Japanese Goliath who murders his victims with his bare hands. While an exciting action sequence, it’s far from the type of story that Cassavetes seemed to be fighting for. Cassavetes was clearly unhappy. He’d grown tired of the weekly grind only to see, in his opinion, mediocre results. When he proposed an epi-

Crime Television—The 1950s

27

sode about a fellow musician’s drug addiction, the network and sponsors balked at the idea, at which point Cassavetes asked to be released from his contract. Although Johnny Staccato was far from being a ratings hit, it was still performing respectably and NBC refused to let its star walk. Cassavetes responded by making public his displeasure with the series. His remarks weren’t reserved for the show, either. He also went after the sponsors. His goal was clearly to create as much animosity as possible with both NBC and the advertisers, and ultimately he succeeded. NBC cancelled Johnny Staccato late in mid-season, after 27 of its planned 39 episodes had been produced. The programs final original telecast played on March 24, 1960. ABC immediately picked it up and aired reruns through the fall. Cassavetes by then was enjoying the release of his film, Shadows, which Johnny Staccato had helped to fund. The 1959–60 season had not only been unkind to both Mr. Lucky and Johnny Staccato—Peter Gunn imitations—but it had also been a tough year for Gunn as well. After its successful first year, ratings for Peter Gunn began to drop during the programs sophomore year, and NBC elected to cancel the show in the spring of 1960. ABC stepped in at the last moment and gave the series a reprieve, adding the program to its fall 1960 schedule. The show remained on Monday nights, where NBC had played it, but it moved from 9:00 P.M. to 10:30 P.M., where even fewer viewers tuned in. The last original episode aired on September 18, 1961, after three seasons and 114 episodes. Blake Edwards would go on to great success as the acclaimed director of such feature films as Operation Petticoat, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Experiment in Terror, and The Pink Panther movie series. In 1967, he decided to revisit Peter Gunn in a theatrical film titled Gunn (which he co-wrote with Exorcist author William Peter Blatty). Craig Stevens was back as Peter, but neither Albright nor Bernardi returned (their roles were played by Laura Devon and Edward Asner). The movie tanked at the box office. In 1989, Edwards revived the character yet again in a pilot for a new series version, this time starring Peter Strauss (Rich Man, Poor Man) in the lead. It didn’t sell. As the 1950s were drawing to a close, pop culture had taken the place of hard-hitting crime dramas. Police procedurals like Dragnet and Gangbusters that had made the move from radio to the small screen and helped to establish television’s place as the number one source of entertainment in American culture (as well as the greatest single advertising tool in history) had run their course and been replaced by the earliest examples of “popcorn television.” Programs such as 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn were there to entertain, to make sleuthing seem sexy and lucrative. The changes

28

Crime Television

of course were a direct reflection of society at that time. These shows had represented a new genre of programming that would serve as a precursor of the swinging 1960s to come, with James Bond, Frank Sinatra, and the Rat Pack. But before the 1960s had officially chimed in, the 1950s would offer up one more classic television series that would be a hybrid of both the old and new styles of crime drama. By the spring of 1957, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were no longer appearing on screen regularly as the Ricardos in I Love Lucy. (The program would continue for the next couple of years as a series of one-hour specials titled The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show.) Although their marriage was also in trouble, the two continued to run Desilu Studios together (turning out such product as December Bride and The Ann Southern Show). In 1958, Desi Arnaz acquired the rights to the book The Untouchables, written by retired federal agent Eliot Ness. In the book, Ness detailed how he and his men had brought down renowned Prohibition-Era mobster Al Capone. Arnaz oversaw the development of a pilot script based on the novel. Desilu Studios was financially strapped at the time, and several executives at the company were against spending the large sum of money, $500,000, that would be needed to finance the project. Lucy backed her husband, however, and production was green-lighted on The Untouchables (subtitled “The Scarface Mob.”) Desi originally cast actor Van Johnson in the role of Ness, but at the last minute Johnson demanded that his $10,000 salary be doubled (on the pretense that the pilot was being shot in two parts for airing on Desilu Playhouse). Arnaz refused, and with less than 48 hours to go before cameras were set to role, he began searching for a new leading man. He came across Robert Stack’s listing in an actor’s directory, tracked him down on a Saturday night, and offered him the role. Stack, who’d received an Oscar nomination as supporting actor for 1956’s Written on the Wind, accepted and began work on Monday morning. When The Untouchables pilot aired (over two consecutive weeks, April 20 and 27, 1959), it scored in the ratings. ABC took notice and found a place for the show on its schedule that fall. The largest hurdle to overcome creatively was the program’s lack of historical accuracy. In real life, after Ness and company put away Capone (as dramatized in the pilot), he disbanded his unit of Untouchables. For the series, however, the group remained intact and began a weekly vendetta against some of history’s most notorious gangsters, including Frank Nitti, Mad Dog Coll, Dutch Schultz, and Ma Barker. The series premiered on October 15, 1959, playing Thursday nights at 9:30 P.M. ABC wanted it on at a late hour in hopes of avoiding controversy aimed at the amount of violence prevalent in just about every episode. Just

Crime Television—The 1950s

29

protecting younger viewers wasn’t enough, however, and the network was deluged by protests from adult viewers taken aback by the amount of mindnumbing violence. (Machine gun battles were commonplace and the body count often rose into the double digits each week.) The violence became such an issue that a Congressional committee was formed to investigate the series and the effect it might be having on society. Despite the controversy, the series still managed to pull in impressive numbers. Behind the scenes, however, the series was beset by problems. Arnaz had hired a young writer-producer named Quinn Martin as showrunner. Martin had gotten his start on Desilu Playhouse. After he was handed The Untouchables, he and Arnaz began to have disagreements. Martin wanted quality above all else and insisted on shooting night-for-night (which refers to actually shooting night-time scenes at night, as opposed to the cheaper alternative of shooting night-time scenes during the day using special lenses that simulate darkness), which was quite expensive considering that the show was set mostly during the night-time hours. Martin also had no problem approving additional production days when needed, which meant overtime pay to the actors and crew. Desilu was still in a financial crunch and was spending a small fortune to produce The Untouchables. Arnaz’s temper flared when he was handed the production reports and saw all the overtime costs. Martin left the series after the first season and was replaced by Alan A. Armer, but Martin’s career wasn’t irrevocably damaged. He went on to become one of the most well-known, respected, and prolific producers in the business with shows such as The Fugitive, The FBI, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones. The program was also plagued by lawsuits. Al Capone’s son, Sonny, was the first to sue for defamation of character. Later, Capone’s widow sued as well, claiming the show was making a profit using her late husband’s image without permission. Other lawsuits were also filed over the years. At the same time, there were real-life mobsters who actually wanted to pitch their stories as possible script ideas. The series ranked number eight for its second season on television. But the fame proved fleeting, and just as quickly as it came, the program’s success began to diminish. By the end of the show’s third season in the spring of 1962, the ratings had fallen dramatically. In an effort to revitalize the show during its fourth year, the producers tried to cut down on the violence and add a little more substance, with Ness using his brains to outwit the bad guys rather than his tommy gun. Their efforts fell short and in the spring of 1963, ABC decided the low ratings didn’t outweigh

30

Crime Television

the lawsuits and controversies. The Untouchables aired its 120th and final original episode on May 21, 1963. There were certainly other series that made their mark during the 1950s: Martin Kane, Private Eye, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, Rocky King, Detective, Treasury Men in Action, Man Behind the Badge, Racket Squad, The Line-Up, The Thin Man, Mr. & Mrs. North, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and The Detectives, to name but a few. In the late 1950s, the networks began to phase out full-program sponsorships. Instead of an advertising agency buying an entire program, they were now simply buying 30 seconds of advertising space during that program. Previously, under corporate sponsorship, a single ad might air before a show began, followed by another commercial after the end credits had rolled. Under the new system, a single episode of a given series might have as many as a dozen commercials, each for a different product, interspersed during their time period. The networks’ sales division began selling commercial time, or “spot sales,” to anyone who could afford to purchase time. The fee depended on the popularity of the program. Under these terms, ad agencies started to lose their hold on Hollywood, and the networks themselves gained increasing control over the content of the programs they ordered. When an advertiser sponsored an entire program, if they didn’t like something about the content, they would order it to be changed. Now their option was to simply look for another show, one that attracted that segment of the viewing audience they were trying to sell their products to. The 1950s was a crucial time for the development of television. Had those involved in the new medium not been as enthusiastic and dedicated as they were, not to mention as talented, television truly could have become the passing fad that many had originally believed it would be. Instead, it revolutionized the entertainment industry and became a part of everyday life, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. Television had passed its first test, but with a new decade would come new challenges. Society was changing quickly, and one important question that would arise in the 1960s was whether television would be able to change with it.

CHAPTER 2

Crime Television—The 1960s

he early 1960s proved to be a transitional period for crime dramas. The shows that were still on the air at that time had mostly premiered during the late 1950s and were quickly on the decline, titles such as Surfside Six, Peter Gunn, Hawaiian Eye, Naked City, and 77 Sunset Strip. Not only were these series on the way out, but also many felt the genre had been tapped out. The networks were therefore hesitant to develop similar programming. Westerns and sitcoms continued to thrive: Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, and The Nurses were busy saving lives; Perry Mason, The Defenders, and Slattery’s People were practicing the law; and the heroic service men of Combat, The Gallant Men, and Twelve O’Clock High were busy on the front lines. A few new crime dramas did make it to the air, but it was tough going for them. NBC premiered Michael Shayne in the fall of 1960. The hour-long drama, scheduled on Friday nights, starred Richard Denning as the title character, who had first appeared in a series of detective novels written by author Brett Halliday, who served as a consultant for this series. Shayne had also been the subject of a radio series and several movies starring Lloyd Nolan and later Hugh Beaumont. Shayne was a Miami-based private eye who specialized in unsolved murders. He wasn’t wealthy, nor did his cases take him to exotic locals. But at least he usually ended up with the girl. Shayne’s exploits didn’t seem to click with viewers, though, and NBC put Shayne out of business after only a single season of 32 episodes.

T

32

Crime Television

A few other entries came and went in equally short order: ABC’s The New Breed (1961–62) starred Leslie Nielsen as the head of an elite team of L.A.P.D. officers who specialized in high-tech police procedures; NBC’s 87th Precinct (1961–62), a forerunner to Hill Street Blues, followed the professional and personal lives of cops at a rundown Manhattan police precinct. Robert Lansing, Norman Fell, and Gena Rowlands starred. At CBS, James Franciscus worked as an insurance investigator in New York City in The Investigators, a drama that was cancelled after only three months in the fall of 1961. In the fall of 1963, ABC tried to revitalize the cops-and-robbers genre with Arrest and Trial, a valiant effort that could be called a precursor to NBC’s Law and Order. Arrest and Trial ran on Sunday nights from 8:30 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. and was divided into two separate segments. The first 45 minutes featured Ben Gazzara as Los Angeles police detective Nick Anderson, who investigated a crime and made an arrest, then turned the suspect over to the courts. Then Chuck Connors took over for the remaining 45 minutes. The twist was that Connors did not portray a district attorney, but a defense lawyer, John Egan, who would then try to punch holes in Gazzara’s case and get his client off the hook. Arrest and Trial was a noble effort that unfortunately faired no better than the others. It, too, was cancelled after only a single season. Not until 1965, halfway through the decade, did crime dramas begin to make a comeback. Once they did, they ruled prime time for the next 15 years, even killing off the western. (Their return also happened to coincide with the switch by all three networks from black-and-white to color programming.) By 1965, producer Quinn Martin already had an impressive batting average. Martin had produced the first season of The Untouchables, and although The New Breed had been short-lived, Martin had bounced back with The Fugitive in 1963. Martin’s first color effort was about to become his longestrunning hit as well. By the fall of 1965, the United States was a country mired in change. The Vietnam conflict was in full swing, widespread civil unrest was growing in intensity, and flower power was beginning to be adapted by many of the nation’s young people as an alternative to what they viewed as totalitarian control by parents and the government. With the political climate of the period being what it was, it seemed like an unusual time to develop a television series about one of the countries most controversial agencies—The FBI, then headed by the equally controversial J. Edgar Hoover. But that’s exactly what ABC and Warner Bros. Television did. Surprisingly, the program was to become one of the most successful in television history. At the same time, it would be looked down on by many in left-leaning Hollywood for its decidedly whitewashed portrait of the agency.

Crime Television—The 1960s

33

The FBI premiered on the evening of September 18, 1965, and would become a staple of Sunday evening viewing for the next nine years. The series had been inspired by a 1959 film entitled The FBI Story (starring Jimmy Stewart). The film had taken a documentary-style approach in showcasing the creation and history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was a hit in theaters. Mervyn LeRoy, the film’s producer and director, was a personal friend of J. Edgar Hoover, who gave the project his seal of approval. When ABC decided to do a weekly series based on the agency, Hoover was open to the idea, but LeRoy had no desire to do television. So with Hoover’s approval, Quinn Martin was brought in to oversee production. But from the beginning, it was clear that if the series was going to happen, it would have to be done as a collaboration. Martin may have been the showrunner, but it seemed few aspects of the series would escape Hoover’s scrutiny. Former 77 Sunset Strip lead Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. was cast as Inspector Lewis Erskine; Philip Abbott as Erskine’s superior, Arthur Ward, assistant to the director; and Stephen Brooks as Special Agent Jim Rhodes. Erskine was the cool-headed, analytic agent who each week led efforts to track down another of America’s most wanted. In the earliest episodes, viewers got a look into Erskine’s personal life through actress Lynn Loring’s portrayal of Erskine’s daughter Barbara, who was engaged to Jim Rhodes. Erskine had lost his own wife in a gun-related incident and worried that his daughter could face the loss of her spouse the same way. In the series fourth episode, “Slow March up a Steep Hill” (10/10/1965), an agent did die in the line of duty, leaving his young bride behind. Barbara and Jim decided to postpone their wedding, and Barbara soon vanished from the series completely. Afterwards, Erskine was all business as he traveled around the country wherever a crime was committed under federal jurisdiction. In a way, The FBI was a definite throwback to the days of Dragnet and Gangbusters. The show was clearly designed as a procedural drama. The cases were taken from actual FBI files, and attention to detail and accuracy was a priority. The real FBI’s reach extended far beyond simply contributing story ideas. FBI advisors were a constant presence on the set, ensuring that the actors’ performances were authentic—everything from the way they interrogated suspects to when they could draw their weapons. Hoover was very strict, and when he did allow exceptions they were usually minute, such as allowing the agents not to wear hats, when in actuality all agents were required to do so. They were also permitted the luxury of not buttoning their suit jackets when in the confines of their offices. Hoover also had a hand in casting and demanded that both the regular cast members and guest stars, along with directors and other crewmembers,

34

Crime Television

undergo FBI background checks before being hired to weed out any Communists or other undesirables. Although it rarely turned out to be a problem, one actress who was turned down for a planned guest appearance was Bette Davis, who in 1943 had been investigated for the death of her husband Arthur Farnsworth. (It was later ruled that he died from an accidental fall.) Whether this was the actual reason the FBI rejected Davis is unknown, as they never gave an official explanation. The agents’ behavior was also carefully monitored. They were never seen smoking, drinking, or carousing, although for a short time Erskine was allowed to keep company with FBI technical assistant Joanna Laurens (played by Lee Meriweather). In exchange, Hoover allowed the producers to shoot scenes at the real FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. The set designers were allowed to take photos and detailed notes to later re-create the offices on a Hollywood soundstage. There were relatively few casting turnovers. Stephen Brooks was replaced in 1967 by William Reynolds as Special Agent Tom Colby. He in turn was replaced by Shelly Novack as Agent Chris Daniels for the show’s final season in 1973–74. Although Zimbalist made a charismatic leading man, The FBI was at its core a procedural, and the scripts remained the real star of the series. As with Dragnet, although the stories were taken from actual case files, they were passed through the typewriters of Hollywood writers before being filmed. The results were fictional stories constructed on a foundation of realism. The F.B.I. performed well over the years, reaching the height of its success during its sixth season (1970–71) when it rose to number 10 in the Nielsens. With the agents presented on The FBI being so straight-laced, it was left up to the villains to add real color and flavor to the show. The series debut telecast was a perfect example. Subtitled “The Monster” (9/19/1965), it followed Erskine as he searched for a killer named Francis Jerome (guest-star Jeffrey Hunter), a serial killer who strangled his lovely female victims with their own long hair. The episode upset Hoover, who disapproved of the violence, particularly against women. But it was explained that it was the premiere telecast and therefore had to catch the public’s attention. There were many other notable episodes during the program’s run. In “The Mechanized Accomplice” (3/31/1968), guest star Andrew Prine appeared as a terminally ill ex-convict who, after being released from prison, kidnaps Gustav Franz Lang (Bobby Sherman), the 17-year-old son of a wealthy businessman, and demands $150,000 for his safe return. In an attempt to tap into the generation gap that might limit the number of younger viewers tuning in, the young man and his father are in the midst of

Crime Television—The 1960s

35

an alienated relationship, a key plot point. After abducting the boy, Prine’s character, Spencer Lang, decides to hide out with his prisoner in the HaightAshbury district of San Francisco. There, he leaves his young victim, bound and gagged in a rundown apartment along with a time bomb set to go off in six hours, to collect the ransom. If the boy’s father plays along, there will plenty of time for Lang to call the authorities after the money exchange and inform them of Gustav’s location. But the father’s distrust of his son, and the belief that the boy may somehow be involved in the plot, may delay Erskine and his men from finding Gustav before it’s too late. Besides kidnappers and bank robbers, the agents also managed to rope in spies, neo-Nazis, and hired killers. Quinn Martin also made use of an off-screen narrator for this series, a popular gimmick that he used on many of his series (including Walter Winchell’s highly respected vocal talents for The Untouchables, and William Conrad for the producer’s classic man-onthe-run drama The Fugitive). For The FBI, veteran voiceover artist Marvin Miller’s talents were featured. Zimbalist also stepped out of character each week to ask viewers for help in apprehending real-life federal fugitives. One such plea helped lead to the arrest of Martin Luther King, Jr. assassin James Earl Ray. In addition to its obligations to J. Edgar Hoover, the producers also serviced the needs of its sponsor, the Ford Motor Company. Ford insisted that only its brand of vehicles be featured on screen. During the closing credits of each episode, Zimbalist was seen driving that year’s newest model around the bustling streets of the nation’s capital. By the spring of 1974, although the series was still doing well in the ratings, ABC finally pulled the plug on the aging show. The last of the program’s 240 episodes aired on the evening of April 28, 1974. Despite the series strong ratings and durability during its network run on ABC, it languished in the domestic syndication market. Thankfully for its studio, Warner Bros., the program did find an audience overseas where it has continued to play in reruns. After the demise of the series, Martin made a number of one-shot TV movies involving the agency, including The FBI Story: The FBI versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One (11/8/1974); Attack on Terror: The FBI versus the Ku Klux Klan, a four-hour mini-series (February 20 and 21, 1975), and Brinks: The Great Robbery (3/26/1976). None, however, included cast members from the TV series. A year after The FBI premiered, CBS introduced its own team of government agents. Mission: Impossible could best be described as a cross between The FBI and an NBC spy series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Created by the multitalented Bruce Geller (he was an accomplished composer, writer, and director), Mission: Impossible followed the exploits of a covert group of

36

Crime Television

federal agents who made up The Impossible Missions Force (IMF for short). The IMF team took on the toughest cases—tackling third-world dictators, preventing assassinations (or sometimes carrying them out, should the occasion call for it), and breaking up major crime rings that dealt in anything from drugs to black-market weapons of mass destruction. The series stood little chance of earning the endorsement of J. Edgar Hoover, but at the same time, Geller wanted his new series taken seriously, and therefore refused to allow it to become as outrageous as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. When the series debuted on Saturday, September 17, 1966, actor Steven Hill starred as senior agent Daniel Briggs. Briggs had no immediate supervisor, no direct contact with the government at all. Instead, he received his assignments via one of the most original and well-remembered scenarios in TV history. Each episode would open with Briggs in some remote location, where he would locate a hidden tape recorder and envelope. The tape would contain details of a mission that needed to be carried out, and the envelope would usually contain photos corresponding to the recorded message. The voice on the tape would state: “Your mission, Dan, should you decide to accept it…” Of course, Briggs was never one to decline a challenge. After finishing its briefing, the Voice would then warn Briggs that “As always, should you or any member of your Impossible Missions Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.” He would then wish Briggs good luck, followed by the warning that “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds” (and it did, in a puff of smoke). Briggs would then be seen sitting at his desk sifting through a portfolio of possible agents, each with a different talent. He would select those whose skills would best suit the mission at hand, then summon them to duty. For the sake of continuity, Briggs always settled on the same team (or at least viewers were only treated to those particular missions). The original IMF team consisted of sexy actress/model Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain), master-of-disguise Rollin Hand (Martin Landau, Bain’s real-life husband), electronics wizard Barney Collier (Greg Morris), and muscle-bound Willie Armitage (Peter Lupus). Bob Johnson was the voice heard on the tape recordings. Viewers at home were rarely clued in to Briggs’s precise plan. This allowed the writers to throw a few surprises into each script. When things went wrong, viewers never knew if the plot twists were a part of Brigg’s scenario or if things had truly gone badly for the team. Another element of the series that pulled in viewers was the original music score by composer Lalo Schifrin. His theme song for Mission: Impossible would become one of the most famous pieces of music ever written for series television. Originally recorded during production on the

Crime Television—The 1960s

37

pilot as a piece of background music, Geller was so impressed with it that he designed the program’s opening titles around the composition. The title sequence, which played just after Briggs received his instructions and the tape went up in smoke, began with a match being struck and lit, then held up to an animated fuse that would continue to burn across the screen as images from that night’s episode would flash by in a series of quick cuts. The theme from Mission: Impossible was released as a single in 1968 and spent more than three months on the charts. Schifrin later released two TV soundtracks of additional music from the series. Although Mission: Impossible was never a ratings sensation, it managed to attract a loyal following that would keep it on the air for the next seven years. There were a number of key cast changes during the series run, however, the most notable being the departure of Steven Hill after the first season. Hill is an Orthodox Jew and therefore could not work on the Jewish Sabbath. This led to dissention between him and the series’s producers, who needed him on set to meet the program’s hectic production schedule. Hill would run into a similar situation 23 years later when he accepted a lead role on the NBC crime drama Law & Order. The producers of that series were able to accommodate him, and he remained with the cast for 10 years (1990–2000). But no such compromise could be reached on Mission: Impossible, and Hill left the show in the spring of 1967 after 28 episodes. He was replaced with Peter Graves, a young character actor (and brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness). Graves, as Jim Phelps, would preside over the IMF team for the remainder of the show’s run. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain departed the show in the spring of 1969. Landau was replaced by Leonard Nimoy (fresh from Star Trek). Replacing Bain, the team’s only female member, was a little more difficult. A trio of beautiful actresses—Lesley Ann Warren, Lynda Day George, and Barbara Anderson—came and went during the final seasons. Co-star Jerry Lupus almost became a casualty himself. After most of the original stars of Mission: Impossible had either left the series or held up the producers for large raises, Lupus, who played the strong man character, decided it was his turn to hit Bruce Geller up for a salary increase. So he had his agent make an appointment for him with the producer. When he walked into Geller’s outer office, he saw the waiting room filled with muscle builders sitting on the various chairs and sofas. Lupus opened the door to Gellar’s inner office, said to the boss, “Bruce, I get it,” closed the door and walked away, and never asked for the raise. Mission: Impossible took many innovative approaches to its storytelling over the years. One involving episode from the third season, “The Mind of

38

Crime Television

Stefan Miklos” (1/12/1969), was a well-crafted tale that also featured an all-star guest cast: Walter Townsend (Jason Evers) is a high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer who is found to be a double agent, leaking valuable information to a foreign power. After discovering the truth about Townsend, the U.S. government feeds him false “intel” hoping he’ll pass it along. But his contact in America, George Simpson (Edward Asner), learns the information is false and informs his superiors. Realizing there is dissention between Townsend and Simpson, the enemy state sends its own intelligence officer, Stefan Miklos (Steve Ihnat), to the United States to learn who is telling the truth and whether the information that Townsend has is legitimate. The IMF team’s job is to convince Miklos that the fake data in Townsend’s possession is indeed for real. Another interesting episode from early in the program’s second season is “The Survivors” (9/24/1967) in which enemy agent Eric Stavak (Albert Paulsen) sets out to kidnap a trio of American scientists, who together hold the key to a super weapon. After Stavak manages to get hold of the first two men, Phelps and Carter step in and pose as the third man and his wife, in hopes that once they’ve been abducted, Stavak will take them to where he’s holding the other two. To make their plan complete, the IMF team must convince Stavak, once he and the others are deep underground, that a major earthquake has devastated San Francisco above them. In the end, Stavak emerges from a drain cellar only to realize he has been totally duped. Over the years, the series garnered a number of awards for those involved. Barbara Bain was the most recognized, winning three consecutive Emmys between 1966 and 1969 for outstanding lead actress in a drama series; Peter Graves and Martin Landau both received Golden Globes. Behind the scenes, Lalo Schifrin won a Grammy for best score, and Bruce Geller took home a best writing trophy. Mission: Impossible finally ran out of steam after seven years, airing its 171st and final episode on March 30, 1973. The series had a fairly successful syndicated run afterwards. It had an even more notable run overseas. By 1970, the program was already playing in more than 60 foreign territories, where the missions undertaken by the IMF force gave many people an exaggerated vision of what the United State’s intelligence agencies were up to. For that matter, even many citizens in the United States tended to take the series’s authenticity a little too seriously. Geller had succeeded in his quest to make a show that would play to Cold War fears and the nation’s need to feel secure in the belief that there were people like the Impossible Missions Force protecting us.

Crime Television—The 1960s

39

Unfortunately, Bruce Geller and his wife Jeannette Marx were killed when a plane Geller was piloting crashed on the morning of May 21, 1978. But Geller’s creation would continue to live on. When the Writers Guild of America went on strike in 1988, the networks became desperate for programming. With no new scripts being written, ABC decided to dust off some old Mission: Impossible teleplays and reshoot them. Peter Graves returned as Jim Phelps, who now received his messages on a video disc. (Bob Johnson still provided the familiar voiceover.) His new team consisted of Thaao Penghis as Nicholas Black, master-of-disguise; Antony Hamilton as Max Harte, the muscle; Terry Markwell as sexy Casey Randall; and in a clever bit of casting, Phil Morris, the real-life son of original series star Greg Morris, was cast as Grant Collier, Barney Collier’s son, who had followed in his father’s footsteps as an electronics expert. To save costs, the cast was sent to Australia to shoot the new episodes. The updated Mission: Impossible hit the airwaves on October 23, 1988. The initial episodes were all filmed using scripts from the original series, some shot almost verbatim, whereas others were tinkered with to varying degrees. Greg Morris showed up in the November 20, 1988, outing, subtitled “The Condemned.” But perhaps the most memorable episode was “The Fortune” (2/18/1989). Since episode one back in 1966, each episode had begun with that well-known admonition, “As always, should you or any member of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.” But the agents had always seemed to escape with their lives—until “The Fortune,” that is. Early in the episode, Casey’s cover is blown while on an undercover assignment, and she is killed. Just as promised, the government denies any knowledge of her activities. Her fellow team members have no choice but to do likewise. Covertly, however, they take over her last case, involving an exiled dictator and his domineering wife, and bring them both to justice. Replacing Markwell was actress Jane Badler as Shannon Reed. The new Mission: Impossible performed well enough that even after the writers’ strike ended, ABC kept it on its schedule, ordering new, original scripts. The series played for two seasons (35 episodes total) before being dropped in the spring of 1990. In 1996, a feature film version of the series hit theaters. Directed by Brian DePalma (who had brought another retired television drama, The Untouchables, successfully to the big screen in 1987) and starring A-list Hollywood leading man Tom Cruise, the movie was a huge success, although it struck a sour note with some cast members and fans of the original series. The plot had Jim Phelps (now played by Jon Voight) secretly betraying his IMF team by leading them into a deadly

40

Crime Television

trap. The lone surviving agent, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) must then try to piece together the clues and find out why the others were killed. The idea of portraying Phelps as a double agent angered devout loyalists to the TV show, but the movie still managed to rake in $180 million and spawned, as of this writing, two sequels. Mission: Impossible was not Bruce Geller’s only successful series. Impressed with his work on that series, CBS immediately green-lighted another pilot Geller had in the works. Just one year after successfully launching Mission: Impossible, Geller dealt the bad guys another blow by putting Joe Mannix into business. Mannix premiered in the fall of 1967, and during its first season, it was every bit as stylish as Mission: Impossible. Mannix was a Los Angeles private investigator who had gone to work for a high-tech security company called Intertect. In the office, Mannix was just another spoke in a larger wheel. But in the field, Mannix counted on no one except himself. Intertect relied heavily on computers and other high-tech gadgets of the time, a gimmick that may have been an attempt to give our hero a “James Bondish” quality. Geller hired actor Mike Connors to play Joe Mannix. Connors was a busy young character actor during the 1950s and 1960s, appearing both in feature films such as The Ten Commandments (1954) and Panic Button (1964) and doing guest spots on television programs such as The Millionaire and Gunsmoke. In 1959, he starred in an intriguing CBS series titled Tightrope, in which he played an undercover agent who infiltrated organized crime rings, gathered evidence, and then ducked out just before the feds arrived to take everyone down. The character had no name, simply assuming another false identity each week. The series had elements of the hit 1990s crime drama Wiseguy. Tightrope, however, lasted only a single season of 37 half-hour episodes. Mannix premiered on the evening of September 16, 1967, scheduled on Saturday nights at 10:00 P.M. The timeslot was carefully chosen to attract more adult viewers, and with good reason. Mannix proved to be one of the most violent series of the decade. Mannix may have had easy access to the latest technological wonders, but he seemed to revert most often to his fists and ultimately his gun in apprehending villains. Mannix threw more punches in his line of work than most professional boxers. A fairly high body count could also be tallied most weeks. Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella) was Mannix’s superior at Intertech and dispatched Joe on his assignments. Cases ranged from searching for missing scientists to squelching blackmail attempts to investigating murders. Most clients of Intertech were people who didn’t want their plights to become public and trusted the company to keep things discreet.

Crime Television—The 1960s

41

Mannix failed to attract much of an audience during its first season, so Geller instituted major changes the next year. Mannix quit Intertech (and Campanella left the series), then hung up his own shingle and began conducting investigations out of a small office at 17 Paseo Verde. (He lived in a bachelor apartment upstairs.) Gail Fisher joined the cast as Peggy Fair, Mannix’s widowed secretary. Her husband Marcus, an old friend of Mannix’s, was a police officer who’d been killed in the line of duty, leaving Peggy to raise a young son alone. Mannix also had two police contacts. Ward Wood appeared as Lt. Art Malcolm; actor Robert Reed, who was also starring in The Brady Bunch, showed up on occasion as Lt. Adam Tobias. Gone were the electronics featured during the first year. The changes seemed to help as the series began to gather steam. It was still a slow build, however. It would take until its fourth season for Mannix to finally break into the top-20. The next year, in 1971–72, the show reached its peak at number seven. The relationship between Mannix and Peggy was a welcome addition to the show. Such a strong friendship between a white man and black woman was unique and refreshing for the time. But Mannix still remained a very violent show, both on screen and off. While shooting the pilot episode (“My Name Is Mannix”), Mike Connors dislocated his shoulder and broke his left wrist. Several Hollywood stuntmen could have made a very good living off the show, as car chases, high falls, and explosions were commonplace. Occasionally, Peggy would even get in on the action, usually while trying to cover her boss’s back. Adding to the tone of the series was composer Lalo Schifrin’s winning music score. The show’s main title theme, a jazz-styled piece combining saxophones, piano, and trombones, worked well with the program’s creative opening credit sequence, which employed split-screen techniques with a series of quick cuts. As with Mission: Impossible, Schifrin released an LP of music from Mannix. The series often presented well-written stories within the context of its action format. One example is “The Sound of Darkness” (12/6/1969) in which Mannix is blinded during an attempt on his life and must then stay one step ahead of his assailant. Connors gives a wonderfully powerful performance as a man trying to retain his dignity and independence. Another aspect of his character was explored in “Return to Summer Grove” (10/11/1969), when Mannix returned to his hometown hoping to patch things up with his alienated father (Victor Jory). Several episodes were scripted particularly to showcase the talents of Gail Fisher. In “Medal for a Hero” (1/3/1970), the name of Peggy’s late husband Marcus pops up in an investigation of crooked police officers. Peggy turns to Mannix to help prove that Marcus was innocent. An interesting aspect to

42

Crime Television

the episode is the warm relationship between Mannix and Peggy’s son, Toby (Mark Stewart). Unfortunately, Toby appeared only occasionally; it would have been nice to have seen him and Mannix interact a little more. Peggy saw her share of the action, too. In “Out of the Night” (1/21/1973), Peggy actually went undercover to help Mannix nail drug smugglers. After rising to the number seven spot among prime-time programs during the 1971–72 season, the ratings for Mannix plummeted the next year when the series was uprooted from Wednesdays and moved to Sunday night. It hobbled along for the next two years, butting heads with the highly rated NBC Mystery Movie wheel. Ironically, during the 1974–75 season, ratings suddenly surged, taking the series back into the top 20. But CBS had evidently already made up its mind, and Mannix ended its eight-year run that fall, after 194 episodes. In the fall of 1967, just as CBS was gearing up Mannix, NBC and Universal entered into a risky venture by developing a pilot that would revolve around a physically disabled detective. Their protagonist was Robert Ironside, a 25-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department who’d worked his way up to chief of detectives. In the two-hour pilot movie (3/28/1967), Chief Ironside was vacationing at a remote cabin owned by his friend, Police Commissioner Dennis Randall, when an assassin took a shot at him, hitting him in the back and seriously wounding his spine. Ironside woke to find himself a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down. Although he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Ironside bravely fought his way back to health otherwise. To avoid being forced into retirement, he convinced Commissioner Randall to keep him on as a special consultant. His first case was to track down his own would-be killer. Very few attempts had been made to wrap a show around a disabled lead, but in the case of Ironside it paid off. As of this writing, it remains one of the few successful series to feature such a scenario. NBC realized from the beginning that Ironside being in a wheelchair would limit the amount of action that could be featured in any given episode, so the hero would have to be able to outwit his adversaries using his deductive skills. They also had to be sure the actor playing the role could handle the complicated characterization of Ironside: nobody wanted him to simply play on the sympathy of viewers. Despite his disability, he had to be a strong character with a fierce streak of independence—a curmudgeon if you will. NBC and Universal eventually turned to Raymond Burr, who was just coming off a nine-year run as Perry Mason (CBS, 1957–66). Burr accepted the role, undaunted by the idea of jumping into another series so soon after Perry Mason wrapped. Burr did have strong opinions

Crime Television—The 1960s

43

about certain aspects of the character, though. One concerned the type of wheelchair Ironside would be using. After all, if Ironside became a hit and ran for many years, Burr would be spending nearly all of his screen time in it. Cy Chermak, the series’s executive producer, recalls Burr’s approach to playing a disabled individual: “Collier Young created the show, and I assume he believed that it was the disability that made Ironside unique. I think it was a combination of Raymond Burr and the stories we gave him. The series could have been successful without the wheelchair, but it was what the network bought, and we were stuck with it. To that extent, the wheelchair became very important. It was also a colossal nuisance. In the beginning we used an electric wheelchair, but it made noise and we couldn’t have dialogue while the chair was moving, or if we did, we had to loop it later. So the electric chair went out the window.” Burr came to consider the chair as an extension of his performance, and in doing so also became concerned with its aesthetic values. “One year we changed the back rest from a drab brown to a tiger striped motif,” laughs Chermak, “and Raymond hated that. He hated the chair and he would be out of it every chance he got.” Ironside didn’t go it alone in his crime-fighting efforts. Two former assistants, Detective Ed Brown (Don Galloway) and Policewoman Eve Whitfiled (Barbara Anderson), followed Ironside into his new position as special consultant to Commissioner Randall. Ironside was also assigned a personal aide in the person of Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), a young black man who had run afoul of the law as a juvenile and was now trying to straighten out his life. Being best friends with the Police Commissioner seemed to have many perks: not only did Ironside remain a member of the force, but a spacious apartment was actually constructed in the attic of police headquarters for Ironside’s use (it was naturally designed to accommodate his disability). It served as both his home and office. During the first season, Mark drove his boss around the city in a converted armored car. Beginning with the second year, he was given a van that was especially equipped for the Chief’s use. Chermak did not specifically go after scripts that would deal with Ironside’s disability. He simply wanted to tell good stories, and wanted Ironside written no differently than any other character. One advantage was that Chermak had the option to hire freelance writers. (By the late 1980s, just about all series would employ staff writers, who would turn out almost all scripts in-house. Hiring freelance writers had been all but completely phased out.) Chermak believed that the old way had its advantages and paved the way for better teleplays. “I did use the entire pool of freelance

44

Crime Television

writers available to me through the Writers Guild of America,” he explains. “The reason I feel that contemporary shows are not as good as programs from the ’60s and ’70s is because of cheap networks and greedy executives who conspire to have one or two people write all the episodes. With brilliant writers like Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) or David Kelley (The Practice), it might work. Most of the time it doesn’t. I used freelance writers and they came to me with their own ideas, instead of asking the same people to come up with ideas year after year.” Chermak was dedicated to preserving the series originality and felt rewarded with how viewers were drawn into Ironside’s storylines. “What I think attracted most viewers to the show, and one of the areas of which I am most proud, is that each episode was, in some way, different from the others,” he states. “Ironside, unlike Perry Mason or Matlock or Columbo, was different every week. Some weeks he was the world’s greatest detective, but in others he was a romantic lead. I never looked for relevant material, although current events sometimes dictated stories to us. There was a time when rumors were flying that Raymond was really paralyzed. We countered that with a story, told in flashback before his accident, in which he walked. We used flower children because they were there in San Francisco.” Chermak also wanted to make the show relevant to its era. One way he did this was through the program’s musical score. Quincy Jones composed the show’s powerful theme song, and well-known musicians such as Oliver Nelson contributed to the series weekly background score, much of it with a decidedly jazz-flavored approach. One of Ironside’s producers was Joel Rogosin. He left Ironside in the early 1970s to produce another show with a disabled lead, an insurance investigator named Longstreet, who was blinded by an explosion in the series pilot (2/23/1971) but continued in his occupation with the aid of a seeing-eye dog. One night Cy Chermak was sitting at home when he heard familiar music resonating from the TV in the next room. He got up to investigate and found it was an episode of Longstreet. “I knew instantly that it was an Oliver Nelson arrangement,” claims Chermak. “Please understand that I knew a composer would be working for many different series. But what Oliver and I had come up with, I thought of that as Ironside music. That was the end of our relationship. Luckily, Oliver was followed by Marty Paich and his son David (founder of the rock group TOTO).” Ironside was an immediate hit, ranking number 26 in the Nielsens for its first year. The next season it entered the top-20, where it remained for the next five years, claiming the number four position in 1970–71, and

Crime Television—The 1960s

45

making it the highest-ranking television crime drama in almost a decade. Raymond Burr was nominated for Emmy consideration for five years running (1968–72) but never took home the trophy; Barbara Anderson won as Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role in 1968. She left the series in 1971 in a dispute with producers and was replaced by Elizabeth Baur as Officer Fran Belding. Another area in which the series took a hard look at itself was with the character of Mark Sanger. Recalls Chermak: “Pretty soon we realized that Mark was there to primarily push the wheelchair, and we wanted him to have more personality than that. So we began to develop more stories around him. So the wheelchair was really responsible for Don Mitchell receiving some juicy parts. I think the drive to have Mark Sanger appear as more than just a pusher for that chair and the entire black pride movement in general, including the Watts riots, were what developed the character for us. I received an NAACP Image Award in 1968 for developing Mark as an intelligent and angry young black man.” Mark began going to law school at night and graduated at the beginning of the 1974–75 season, when he began practicing law. In the third episode of the season, “What’s New with Mark?” (9/26/1974), Mark and his girlfriend Diana happened across a murder scene while on a date. Mark ended up defending the suspect when it appeared the killer might have acted in selfdefense. (By the end of the episode, he and Diana (Joan Pringle) were married.) Mark moved out of the Chief’s apartment above police headquarters, and Ed moved in and assumed most of Mark’s former duties. By that time, The Chief had also evolved and become very self-reliant. He had even gotten a van he could drive himself. But after passing the bar and taking his wedding vows, it was truly Mark Sanger’s evolution that was the most prominent. Ironside’s rating had begun to decline in its seventh season, and NBC finally cancelled the series midway through its eighth year. The final telecast was January 16, 1975 (three additional episodes were left unaired). In all, 199 episodes were produced. During its tenure, Ironside was used to launch two spin-off series: “The Priest Killer” (9/14/1971) introduced viewers to the NBC drama Sarge, with George Kennedy as a newly ordained priest who had formerly been a homicide detective for the San Diego police department. The show lasted half a season. The two-hour May 23, 1974 episode of Ironside was used to preview Amy Prentiss, a new addition to the popular NBC Mystery Movie series (which that season also included Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan & Wife). Jessica Walter starred as San Francisco’s first female chief of detectives. It had a short run during the 1974–75 season.

46

Crime Television

Eighteen years after Ironside ended its run, the entire original cast (including both Barbara Anderson and Elizabeth Baur) reunited for The Return of Ironside (5/4/1993). By this time, Ironside had married (his wife Katherine was played by Dana Wynter) and was ready to retire to run his vineyard, but was talked into assuming temporary duty in Denver, replacing their late Chief, who, it turns out, might have been murdered. Ed Brown now worked for the Denver police department, and Mark had become a judge. Burr had been in the midst of doing a series of extremely popular new Perry Mason movies at the time, and fans had reason to hope that additional Ironside projects might also follow. Unfortunately, by the time production began on The Return of Ironside, Burr had already been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. He was determined to revisit the character once more, however, and completed the film. He died that fall, on September 12, 1993. Ironside, like Perry Mason, had a successful run in syndication, leaving Burr’s fans with a long-lasting legacy of his outstanding performances. Whereas Ironside proved to be a big step forward for television in its portrayal of a physically challenged lead, another series that premiered earlier the same year was actually a throwback to the earliest days of crime dramas. It would also herald the return of one of TV’s most recognized and trusted genre figures. After Jack Webb’s failed tenure as head of Warner’s TV division in 1963, he redirected his attentions to running Mark VII Limited, his production company. Back in the 1950s when Dragnet was still ruling the airwaves, Webb was a busy producer, using Mark VII to launch both feature films and TV projects. Trying to reenter the prime-time market in the mid-1960s, however, would be an uphill battle. Television had changed and a new crop of talented producers, such as Roy Huggins and Quinn Martin, had taken their place as the kings of the crime genre. Webb realized it was going to be difficult to get back into the game. At the same time, he had an ace up his sleeve that he was ready to play. After leaving NBC’s schedule in 1959, Dragnet had entered the syndication market with a vengeance and was still popular all over the world. Webb saw this as a path that might possibly lead him back into the good graces of Hollywood. He went to Universal in 1965, pleaded his case, explained that there was still a huge audience out there for Dragnet, and if people were still tuning into reruns after all these years, they’d certainly jump at the chance to see new episodes. After some deliberation, NBC, who’d aired the series back in the 1950s, bit again. The network ordered a two-hour movie titled Dragnet ’66, which would pick up on the exploits of L.A.P.D. homicide

Crime Television—The 1960s

47

detective Joe Friday seven years after the old series had closed its final case. The plot of the new telefilm had Friday and his partner, Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan), hunting a serial killer (Vic Perrin) of beautiful young models. Ben Alexander, Webb’s partner in the 1950s, was by that time committed to a new ABC crime series, Felony Squad, and therefore was unavailable to begin production on the new Dragnet telefilm. When NBC executives eventually viewed the finished product, they loved what they saw so much that they gave Webb the green light to begin production on a new half-hour series version, titled Dragnet ‘67. Oddly, instead of using the completed movie to kick off the new series, NBC made the bizarre choice to shelve it. Dragnet ’66 would not air until January 27, 1969, almost three years after being completed. (The movie involved a subplot in which Gannon was planning to retire. At the end of the original version, he handed in his badge and was given a send-off by Friday, who then immediately began interviewing his new, young partner. That ending was reshot before the film ultimately was broadcast to reflect Gannon’s remaining with the force.) Work proceeded throughout the fall of 1966 to get the series ready for a mid-season birth on NBC’s 1966–67 schedule. This time around, for an inexplicable reason, Joe Friday had been demoted. By the time the original series had completed its run, Friday had been promoted to lieutenant, but his rank was back to sergeant by the start of Dragnet ’67. The new series, besides being filmed in color, was also being peppered with much more humor than the 1950s version. In this regard, Morgan proved to be a valuable asset. He’d appeared in the sitcoms December Bride (1954–59) and Pete and Gladys (1960–62), but was also quite adept at doing drama. Webb and Morgan had wonderful chemistry, rivaling and perhaps surpassing that of Webb and Alexander. Webb realized that the seven years that had passed since he last played Joe Friday had been very influential years—much had happened that had changed the face of America. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, Vietnam was heating up, and young people were rebelling all across the nation. Such elements were particularly prevalent in the multicultural environment of Los Angeles, and Webb realized he would have to tap into these changes if he was going to paint an accurate portrait of the Los Angeles Police Department. Perhaps nowhere was Webb’s desire to tackle the most groundbreaking issues more on display than in Dragnet 67’s debut telecast, “The LSD Story” (1/12/1967), which Webb both wrote (under his pseudonym John Randolph) and directed. In what would become one of the program’s most

48

Crime Television

well-remembered outings, Friday and Gannon personally witness the emergence of a new drug—LSD—on the streets of L.A. They are initially unable to act, as LSD had yet to be classified as an illegal narcotic. When it is finally outlawed (on October 6, 1966), the two detectives attempt to shut down a young dealer, known on the streets as “Blue Boy,” who has been peddling the drug openly for months to other teens. Webb deserves kudos for attempting the story. LSD was front-page news at the time, and certainly was atop the L.A.P.D.’s agenda when it came to drug enforcement. The episode even contains information pertaining to the origins of the drug. But where the episode perhaps missteps is in the portrayal of Blue Boy, real name Benjie Carver (played by actor Michael Burns). The character earns his street name by painting his face half-blue, half-yellow. When Friday and Gannon first encounter him, he’s in a park, eating the bark off trees, burying his head in a hole (where he sees “the purple pilot light of all creation.”) The absurdity of the character likens the episode at times to such films as Reefer Madness. With the law eventually on their side, Webb and Gannon go after Blue Boy, armed with all the ammunition they need to arrest him. But they arrive too late. After tracking the young man to an apartment, they burst in and find Blue Boy dead from an LSD overdose. Ironically, it would be the more exaggerated components of the episode that would allow it to remain so fondly remembered in years to come. An early 2000’s TV Guide/Nick-AtNite poll named “The LSD Story” as the 85th Greatest Episode in television history. The episode was prophetic, however, as Dragnet ’67 (or ’68, ’69, or ’70, as the title would change every January 1 during its run) would go on to reflect the generation gap that was for the first time so severely dividing families and communities in the United States. Jack Webb was the oldschool father figure, and if you were watching Dragnet, you were basically under his roof. It became apparent as the series continued over the years that Webb was using it to voice his own ultra-conservative views, usually at the expense of anything that fell under the countercultural umbrella. Of course, depending on a viewer’s own political or moral beliefs, that could be either a good or bad avenue to explore. One thing that was clear by the end of Dragnet 1967’s first season is that TV viewers were tuning in. The show ranked number 21 for the year. The other elements of Dragnet remained the same, however. Walter Schumann’s winning score was again in place, jazzed up a little for the new decade. Stories were still taken from the actual files of the Los Angeles Police Department, and great detail was paid to police jargon and procedure. Whenever the detectives would move from location to location, Webb

Crime Television—The 1960s

49

would announce in voiceover the address that they were heading for, traffic conditions, and the precise number of minutes the trip would take. He was still no-nonsense when it came to interrogating witnesses, still jumping in with “Just the facts, please,” when an excited witness would stray from the details of a crime. There were many other notable episodes of the new Dragnet. In the series’s third season opener (9/19/1968), Friday and Gannon appear on a local television talk show titled Speak Your Mind. The subject of the fictional show that week is “The Police—Who Needs Them?” Opposing the detectives’ pro-stance is an area college professor (Stacy Harris) and an underground newspaper publisher (Howard Hesseman). The episode, written by Burt Prelutsky, touches on issues of smoking pot, gun laws, police discrimination, and civil disobedience and does a nice job of presenting the genuine concerns of many of the era’s flower children. Webb was never one to hide from the issues and even seemed to enjoy bringing them to the forefront, an expression of the confidence he held in his beliefs, which were expressed in this particular episode through Friday and Gannon’s responses to their detractors. Webb also deserves credit for not pretending that his answers work for everyone. The Speak Your Mind studio audience doesn’t become suddenly enlightened by Friday’s words. Many still boo the detectives at the end of the show. Webb never pulled any punches either. In “The Big High” (11/2/1967), Friday and Gannon receive a tip from an elderly man that his daughter and son-in-law’s marijuana use is endangering the welfare of their daughter. The couple, Paul and Jean Shipley (Tim Donnelly and Brenda Scott), is portrayed as unapologetic for their pot use. At the conclusion of the episode, the detectives arrive to find the Shipleys and another couple lounging in the living room, high from smoking marijuana all evening. When questioned about the whereabouts of their baby daughter, Jean suddenly remembers she left the child in the bathtub with the water running. They all rush to the bathroom, where they discover the infant drowned. The scene is especially shocking and horrific and ranks as one of the series’s most unforgettable moments. Other episodes were much lighter in tone. Viewers got a look at the private lives of Friday and Gannon in “The Big Neighbor” (10/12/1967), in which Bill and his wife Eileen (Randy Stuart) invite Joe over to the house for dinner and to watch a football game on TV. The two partners try their best to enjoy a relaxing evening despite constant interruptions from neighbors who continue to take advantage of having a police officer living next door. Joe and Bill end up missing most of the game, but manage to apprehend a

50

Crime Television

neighborhood burglar before the night is over. Webb also chose to remake a classic episode from the original series, “The Big Little Jesus” as “The Christmas Story” (12/21/1967), using basically the same script. The new Dragnet performed well for three seasons. During its fourth season, ratings began to fall, and NBC cancelled it in the spring of 1970 after 98 episodes. But this version of Dragnet, like the previous, would not be the last. A syndicated version appeared in 1989, but did not feature a character named Joe Friday. Instead, actors Jeff Osterhage and Bernard White starred as plainclothes detectives Vic Daniels and Carl Molina. Daniels provided Joe Friday-esque narration for the series, which failed to catch on. It ran for 52 episodes. In 1987, comedian Dan Aykroyd played Joe Friday’s nephew, also named Joe, in a winning, feature-film send-up of the television series. Tom Hanks co-starred as Joe’s partner, Pep Streebeck. Together they set out to uncover a possible correlation between the thefts of a shipment of porn magazines and some dangerous chemicals by members of a group of pagans. Harry Morgan even showed up for the farce as Captain Gannon, who had a special place in his heart for the nephew of his old partner. Finally, in the spring of 2003, television producer Dick Wolf, the man responsible for the critically hailed Law and Order franchises, brought Dragnet back to TV in a gritty, hour-long format, rechristened L.A. Dragnet. Ed O’Neill (Married … With Children) assumed the role of Joe Friday, and Ethan Embry played his young partner Frank Smith. Although the characters’ names were the same, and even Schulmann’s theme was called out of retirement, this incarnation of Dragnet was unlike all the previous efforts. Wolf even made it clear in press releases that this was “Not your father’s Dragnet.” Indeed it wasn’t, as the plotlines tended to be incredibly violent. In one episode a teenage girl is burned to death (“Daddy’s Girl,” 10/4/2003); in another, a woman is murdered by being shot in her vagina (“The Magic Bullet,” 10/25/2003). In “Retribution” (5/5/2004), a priest is decapitated. Viewers were not impressed and the series was cancelled after only 22 hours had been filmed. Although the 1960s revival of Dragnet lasted only three-and-a-half seasons, it had an even longer-lasting effect on Jack Webb’s career. Webb, who had seen his empire crumble after the original series was cancelled in 1959, managed to use Dragnet ’67 to maneuver his way back into the Hollywood mainstream. By the early 1970s, he would be back on top, and his company Mark VII would be one of the leading suppliers of hit television series. Once Webb got Dragnet ’67 on the air and it became a hit, he didn’t waste anytime getting his next project off the drawing board and onto the

Crime Television—The 1960s

51

schedule. He was able to quickly sell NBC on another police procedural titled Adam-12. The half-hour drama (which Webb co-created with R.A. Cinader) was similar to Dragnet in that it was set in Los Angeles and followed two law-enforcement partners as they performed their duties. The leads in Adam-12 were not detectives, however, but uniformed police officers who patrolled the streets in their black and white. Actors Martin Milner (Route 66) and newcomer Kent McCord played Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed. Malloy was the hardened veteran, Reed the young rookie. The premise provided a perfect excuse for Malloy to continually school his young partner (and viewers at home) on all aspects of proper police procedure. Webb went to great lengths to ensure that Adam-12, like Dragnet, was accurate in every detail, from the police jargon used during radio calls to how spit and polish the officers’ uniforms were required to be. “One Adam-12” was Malloy and Reed’s call sign for their vehicle. Seeing that the series was about two cops who spent a majority of their time rolling around in a squad car, Webb wanted the vehicle itself to be considered a character. In the pilot episode, before Reed ever sets foot inside the cruiser, Malloy stops him and inquires strictly, “Do you know what this is?” “Yes, sir, it’s a police car,” Reed responds. “This black and white patrol car,” Malloy snaps back, “has an overhead valve V-8 engine, develops 325 horsepower at 4800 rpms. It accelerates from zero to sixty in seven seconds, it has a top speed of 120 miles an hour, it’s equipped with a multichannel DFE radio and electronic siren capable of emitting three variables: wail, yelp, and alert. It also serves as an outside radio speaker and a public address system. The automobile has two shotgun racks, one attached to the bottom portion of the front seat, one in the vehicle trunk. Attached to the middle of the dash, illuminated by a single bulb, is a hot sheet desk, fastened to which you will always make sure is the latest one off the teletype before you ever roll. It’s your life insurance. And mine. You take care of it, and it’ll take care of you.” In the premiere telecast, “Log 1—The Impossible Mission” (9/21/1968), Malloy and Reed are brought together for the first time. Webb both wrote (as usual, under the guise of John Randolph) and directed the entertaining pilot episode. It begins on 23-year-old Reed’s first day on the job, which may also be Malloy’s last. Three weeks earlier, Malloy’s former partner, a young man about Reed’s age, was killed in the line of duty, leaving a wife and six-month-old baby behind. A disillusioned Malloy, after seven years on the force, has decided this will be his last night as a police officer. (Reed himself has a young bride who is now expecting their first child.) As the evening wears on, the two officers respond to a number of calls. One involves

52

Crime Television

them in a high-speed pursuit through an L.A. confluent that ends with an awe-inspiring car crash, an unusual occurrence even in a crime series at the time. In an even more nerve-wracking sequence, the partners are then called to an apartment where a baby has stopped breathing. Malloy administers CPR and, after several intense minutes, is able to revive the infant. Their last call of the night takes them to a public park where a number of rowdy teenagers are holed up, including a boy dressed in a Nazi uniform and wielding a shotgun. In attempting to subdue the suspect, Reed ignores Malloy’s orders and puts his own life in danger. Malloy eventually changes his mind and decides to stay on, taking Reed under his wing. Adam-12 performed well, but was not the immediate hit that Dragnet ’67 was. It wasn’t until the program’s third season, when NBC moved it from Saturday nights to Thursdays, that it suddenly shot into the top-20. Over the years, the characters continued to develop and grow, particularly Jim Reed. Whereas in the early episodes he was an insecure kid who walked in Pete Malloy’s shadow, he steadily grew into his own—confident and capable. Eventually, he was promoted to a full-fledged officer, and Malloy was slowly making his way toward the rank of sergeant. Their personal relationship also changed over the years as they became best friends. When Reed’s son, James Jr., was born, Malloy was named his godfather. The chemistry between the two lead actors was a major factor in the success of Adam-12. William Boyett co-starred as Sgt. MacDonald, the watch commander; Gary Crosby appeared as fellow officer Ed Wells; and Shaaron Claridge was heard weekly as the familiar voice of the police dispatcher. Adam-12 presented many dramatic stories over the years. Perhaps the most heart-wrenching and well regarded is “Elegy for a Pig” (11/21/1970), in which Malloy (who also provides off-screen narration) recalls the stormy night that his previous partner, Officer Tom Porter (Mark Goddard), was shot and killed while he and Malloy were on a call. The episode, written by James Doherty and directed by Alan Crosland, Jr., used flashbacks to recall Porter as he began his career in law enforcement amidst the concerns of his wife Marge (Rachel Romen). The segment includes several disturbing scenes, one being Porter’s death, after which Malloy must inform Marge that her husband won’t be returning home. Finally, there is the official police funeral afforded Porter. Webb was given the full cooperation of the Los Angeles Police Department in enacting the burial sequence. The closing credits then played out in silence over a black screen, in honor of all the real-life police officers who’d died in the line of duty. All good things must come to an end, and in 1975, after seven seasons on the air, Adam-12 ended its run after 174 episodes. In 1989, the series

Crime Television—The 1960s

53

was updated (along with the new version of Dragnet) with two new partners driving a cruiser with the Adam-12 call sign. Peter Parros was senior officer Gus Grant, and Ethan Wayne his partner Matt Doyle. The show was unremarkable, and was dropped after 52 episodes had played out in firstrun syndication. Adam-12 was a huge hit for Jack Webb, but the series is also notable for another reason. Whereas Webb is remembered as one of the most successful producers of his era, one of the young writers who got his start on Adam-12 would go on to become one of the most successful and prolific writer/producers of all time. In 1968, Stephen J. Cannell managed to get his start in the business when Webb bought a script from him. Webb was so impressed with the young man’s talent that he hired him from near total obscurity to become Adam-12’s new story editor. Like Webb, Cannell had an interesting background. He was born in 1941 and raised in Pasadena. His father was Joseph K. Cannell, co-owner of Los Angeles’s Cannell & Chaffin Furniture Company. Stephen truly grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He dreamed of being an author, but was deterred by dyslexia, which went undiagnosed until he was in his twenties. But he never gave up on his ambitions. After high school, he enrolled at The University of Oregon, where he took his first creative writing class. Despite his learning disability, he managed to earn a bachelor’s degree in English in 1964. That same year he married Marcia Finch, his eighth-grade sweetheart. He then took a job working for his dad at Cannell & Chaffin driving a furniture truck. But when he’d get home each afternoon at 5 o’clock, he’d immediately sit down at the kitchen table and write for five hours. On weekends, he’d write all day. Eventually it paid off and he sold stories to series such as It Takes a Thief and Mission: Impossible. But it was at the hands of Jack Webb that his fortunes finally turned. Both Cannell and Webb would mutually benefit from their collaboration. After five years of writing spec scripts at his kitchen table, “I finally managed to get an agent,” recalls Cannell. “After that, I started to sell some of my material. I had a chance to write a couple of stories for Mission: Impossible, but they wouldn’t let me write the scripts because they thought I was too young. Back then, most of the writers in television were the old guys out of radio. Young writers didn’t exist like they do today. But I began meeting people here and there and finally managed to write a couple episodes of Ironside as a freelance writer. And then one afternoon I got a call from a guy that I actually knew socially who was the producer on Adam-12, Herman S. Saunders, and he asked me if I would be interested in getting into a script bake-off. They had lost the last script of the season. The network

54

Crime Television

didn’t like it and had thrown it out. They were having trouble with their story editor and they were going to let the guy go. They had put five people to work on Monday, and it was Thursday when they called me, trying to get one script. They had five writers shot-gunning for one script. So they asked me if I wanted in on this, and I said, ‘Yeah!’” Cannell went in on Thursday afternoon and pitched Saunders a number of ideas. Saunders picked one he liked and sent Cannell home to write a story pitch he could submit to NBC the next day. Cannell managed to complete the 12-page narrative and got it to Saunders shortly before 5:00 P.M. on Friday afternoon. With all the executives at NBC preparing to leave for the weekend, Saunders had no time to messenger Cannell’s pitch to the network. So he picked up his phone and with Cannell present in the room read all 12 pages aloud and got it okayed from the liaison on the other end of the line. “As I’m walking out the door,” remembers Cannell, “Herm says ‘You’ve got two days to write this script. And it won’t do me any good if it comes in on Tuesday.’ I said, ‘Herb, don’t worry, I’ll have it for you.’ And I knew I would, because I’d been writing for five hours a day for six years by this point, and I knew how much I could write in two days, and a half-hour Adam-12 script was 35 pages long, and I just knew there was no problem.” Cannell turned in his completed script on Monday. As it turned out, the other four writers, who’d gotten a five-day head start on Cannell the previous Monday, all missed the deadline and failed to hand in their teleplays. NBC and Universal had no alternative but to shoot Cannell’s script. But they also happened to love it so much that two days later, Saunders called Cannell in and offered him the job of story editor on Adam-12. Cannell was floored, his lifelong dream suddenly realized. “I was the head writer on Adam-12, I was under contract to Universal, I had a studio deal, I had a parking place, an office, a secretary, and a career,” he explains. “I didn’t know if I was up to it, if I could supervise other writers. I knew I could write the show, but I’d never been on the inside and didn’t know what the game was. I remember driving on the lot the first day and pulling into my assigned parking space and looking over at the truck on my left, and there’s a sign there that says ‘Clint Eastwood.’ I was parking next to Clint Eastwood, I couldn’t fucking believe it. It was like being at Disneyland.” Cannell is grateful for the time he got to spend working for Jack Webb, who he remembers as a one-of-a-kind character. “There’s never going to be another guy like him,” Cannell says fondly. “I never met anyone who was like Jack. He was funny, he was smart, and he was persuasive. You could never win an argument with Jack, because he would blow you over with that radio voice of his.”

Crime Television—The 1960s

55

He found that working with Webb could often be very trying. Webb had lost his empire once, and now that he had rebuilt it, he was determined not to lose it again. His line-up of shows during the late 1960s and 1970s would not only include Dragnet ’67 and Adam-12, but titles including O’Hara, U.S. Treasury (with David Janssen), The D.A. (with Robert Conrad), Emergency, and Project U.F.O. Webb became very protective of his shows and the talent behind them. Explains Cannell: “I come from a fairly wealthy family because of my father’s businesses. Jack had about four or five shows on the air at Universal at one point, and he always had somebody, a spy, who was sort of reporting back to him what was going on in every unit. He didn’t want anybody to leave Mark VII, his company, and go off and become a writer and producer for somebody else on the lot. He used to say, ‘There’s only one way out of Mark VII, and that’s out the front gate. If you think you guys are going to go from Mark VII to one of these other shows on the lot, forget it, because you’re going to be fired before that happens.’ He really didn’t want anybody stealing his people. So if I was going to lunch with Steven Bochco, what I would do is tell this spy in our company that my dad and I had just bought a 20-story building in downtown L.A. and we were having a real estate closing, and I had to go to that thing during lunch. It was all bullshit, but my father’s company had decorated Jack’s home, so Jack knew my family really well.” Cannell also had the occasional run-in with Webb. One such incident occurred at the end of the 1971–72 season, at which time Adam-12 was ranked as the number eight series on television. One day Webb called Cannell and the other writers into his office. Webb’s desk was up on a riser so that he was always looking down at anyone else in the room. With the high numbers that Adam-12 had pulled in that season, the group was expecting raises and praises from Webb. After all, the show had never performed so well before. Instead, what they got was Webb’s wrath. “This show sucks! You guys are stealing your fucking money,” he admonished. The staff just sat in stunned silence as Webb went on to excoriate the show. “This isn’t what cops are really doing, you guys need to spend more time in the squad cars. You’re stealing your damn money!” Webb went on and on. As he did, Cannell began to grow angry. He’d written half the episodes that season, arriving each day at five in the morning and not leaving until nine at night. He’d poured his heart into the show. He was rightfully proud of not only his work but also that of the staff he’d shepherded along that year. Cannell didn’t mind the long hours, or the lower-than-average pay scale he’d been working for. But he’d been working

56

Crime Television

hard and didn’t like being told that he was stealing his money. Finally, Webb made the accusation one too many times, and Cannell lost it. “Jack, stop saying that,” Cannell exclaimed. “Saying what?” Webb responded, shocked by the sudden outburst. “Stop saying I’m stealing my money,” Cannell shot back. “I’ve got more money than you have. I could buy this chicken company of yours.” The room went silent. Webb just sat there, staring down at Cannell, who was probably more shocked than anyone by his anger-fueled tirade. The others sat awaiting the next volley. Finally, Webb sat back in his chair and broke his silence. “So, I want everybody to get back in the squad cars, you’re going to ride in the back of the black and whites and make this show more like it was in the first and second seasons, because you guys are all stealing your money—except for Cannell, who doesn’t need it.” Most young writers would have lost their jobs—perhaps their careers— that day. But Cannell had proven himself too valuable a commodity. Cannell eventually did leave Adam-12 in 1973 to work with Webb on cocreating a new series called Chase. The half-hour series was in some ways similar to Mission: Impossible. But instead of working for the U.S. government, the team lead by Capt. Chase Reddick (Mitchell Ryan) was employed by the L.A.P.D. and answered only to the Chief of Detectives. Chase’s plainclothes squad would go undercover to tackle the most difficult crimes, the ones no one else could solve. Chase ran for a single year (consisting of a 90-minute pilot movie and 21 half-hour episodes), but Cannell jumped ship mid-season when other opportunities beckoned. During a 1973 Writer’s Guild strike, Cannell found himself on the picket line next to producer Roy Huggins (77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive). Earlier that year, Cannell had stepped in when Huggins needed someone to write a script in a hurry, and Huggins had been extremely impressed by Cannell’s work. Huggins approached him on the picket line. “Listen, I know I’m not supposed to talk to you [as a producer],” Huggins began, “but I want to tell you that I really loved the script you wrote and I want you to come and work for me.” “Great, I’d love to,” answered Cannell, who’d been a big fan of Huggins. “But you’re going to have to go through the studio and get Sid Sheinberg to work it out with Jack.” So Huggins went to Shienberg, the President of Universal Studios, and explained that he wanted Cannell to come and join his team, and that Cannell also wanted to make the move, but Webb would never stand for it. Shienberg then called Cannell.

Crime Television—The 1960s

57

“Listen, this could get messy. So what do you want to do?” he asked Cannell. “Well I want to work with Roy. I think I’ve gotten all I can out of Mark VII. I really need to move on and write bigger dramas for my own career. And I think I’m up to it.” “OK, I’ll give you as much cover as I can.” So Cannell went in to Webb’s office and told him he was quitting, and had accepted a position over at Public Arts, Roy Huggins’s company. As everyone had predicted, there was quite a dust up. As promised, Shienberg stepped in, told Webb if he couldn’t deal with it, “to go fuck himself.” “I was the only guy who ever left Mark VII and didn’t get fired,” laughs Cannell. Cannell then moved over to Public Arts, where he and Roy Huggins created The Rockford Files with James Garner, one of the top crime dramas of the 1970s. Cannell also created and produced Baretta, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, The Duke, and Stone, before becoming an independent producer in the early 1980s and scoring a number of hit series including The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Wiseguy, The Commish, Silk Stalkings, and Renegade. Although there were initially some hard feelings, it wasn’t the end of Cannell and Webb’s relationship. “He was an amazing guy and I really loved Jack,” says Cannell. “There were times when he could be a tyrant, but I wouldn’t have taken Jack out of my life for anything. Years later, after I formed the Cannell Studios, I was renting offices over at the old Goldwyn Studios and Jack was also renting an office over there. He was basically retired. He had nothing going on, but he’d come in every day and sit there with his secretary, Jane. About once a month, I’d swing by on my way home and spend an hour with him, and he was great. He was at that point in his life where he was reminiscing, and he’d go ‘Boy, I’m so proud of you. I see your stuff on the air.’ He’d progressed to a different place.” They both had. Before the 1960s played out, two more big-name programs had yet to hit TV screens. Both premiered in 1968. The first, Hawaii Five-O, was about a team of officers who fought crime against the beautiful backdrop of the Hawaiian Islands. These officers weren’t just ordinary cops; they were a special unit whose leader, Detective Steve McGarrett (played by stoic Jack Lord), was given great latitude in conducting his investigations. As one colleague explained in the series’s two-hour pilot film, “Everybody knows Steve McGarrett only takes orders from the Govenor and God, and occasionally even they have trouble.”

58

Crime Television

What made Hawaii Five-O unique right from the beginning was that it was filmed entirely on location, unlike previous efforts such as Hawaiian Eye. The series was not only shot on the islands, but great care was taken to actually make the exotic scenery a character in and of itself. McGarrett and his elite team were headquartered in the historic Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu. The producers continued to add to the local flavor by using the talents of many local actors, not only as extras and guest stars, but as regular cast members. Backing up Lord was young James MacArthur as Det. Danny Williams, McGarrett’s right-hand man. Rounding out the original cast were Kam Fong as Det. Chin Ho Kelly and Zulu as Det. Kono Kalakaua, both natives of the islands. Richard Denning appeared occasionally as Govenor Philip Grey. The Five-O team handled cases ranging from high-profile murders and kidnappings to international drug smuggling and threats to national security. McGarrett was a former military man and, on a number of occasions, was recalled to active duty with the Navy. The Hawaii Five-O pilot movie first aired on CBS on September 20, 1968, not only establishing McGarrett and his men but also introducing the villain Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who would go on to become McGarrett’s arch-nemesis during the course of the series’s 12-season run. Wo Fat was an intriguing character, a well-educated criminal mastermind, who in the opener was kidnapping U.S. intelligence officers and conducting behavioral modification experiments on them. McGarrett went undercover and managed to thwart Wo Fat’s plans, but in the end he was unable to apprehend the man himself. This cat-and-mouse game between them would become a highlight of the series over the years. After the pilot, Hawaii Five-O settled into its regular timeslot on Thursday, September 26. The show struggled in the ratings during its first season and was shifted to Wednesday nights in December. The ratings improved enough so that the series earned a second season in the fall of 1969. That’s when the show really began to take off, driving it into the top-20, where it would remain for the next six years, reaching number three during the 1972–73 season. The show’s popularity also did wonders for Hawaii’s tourist trade, attracting thousands of the program’s fans to the islands each year. Familiar settings from the series ended up on most tours. Hawaii Five-O worked on many levels. Along with the scenery and the cast, the show also had top-notch writers turning out the scripts, and directors experienced with location shooting working behind the camera. Scriptwriter Ken Kolb (Dragnet, Peter Gunn) wrote the first post-pilot episode of Hawaii Five-O, subtitled “Full Fathom Five” (9/26/1968) in which a pair

Crime Television—The 1960s

59

of husband-and-wife con artists scam rich widows out of their money, then murder them and dump their bodies into the ocean. The husband, Victor (Kevin McCarthy), quotes Shakespeare while committing the murders, and McGarrett’s investigation at one point includes an encounter with a group of hippies. McGarrett’s advice to them: “Peace, brother.” Kolb vividly recalls his experiences behind-the-scenes on Hawaii Five-O. “That was a nicely done series,” he recalls. As soon as the network viewed the pilot film and green-lighted the series, “CBS took a group of us over there to find locations and write scripts to fit what was available to us,” recalls Kolb, “because there was nothing built, no sets, no production facilities.” Along with Kolb were writers John D. F. Black and John Kneubuhl. Kneubuhl, remembers Kolb, “was part German, Swiss, and Samoan. He’d gone to high school in Punaho in Hawaii, so he knew everybody there. He was a great help to CBS.” Once the series became a hit, CBS built a stateof-the-art production facility there. During the course of its run, Hawaii Five-O offered a great number of memorable episodes. A prime example is the three-part offering in which a mob crime family targets McGarrett for death. In part one, subtitled “V for Vashon: The Son” (11/14/1972), McGarrett investigates a daring hotel robbery, eventually fingering Chris Vashon (Robert Drivas), a young man whose father and grandfather run an island crime syndicate. The episode ends with McGarrett shooting the young Vashon, who manages to lead police on a chase that ends up in his father Honore’s driveway. Chris dies in his father’s arms as McGarrett looks on. In the closing seconds, Honore Vashon swears vengeance on McGarrett. In part two (“V for Vashon: the Father,” 11/21/1972), Honore (Harold Gould) tries to have McGarrett killed by a bomb, but fails. He’s found guilty at trial and sentenced to prison, but before being carted away, his father Dominick declares “My turn,” setting up the final confrontation. In the concluding segment, “V for Vashon: the Patriarch” (11/28/1972), Dominick (Luther Adler) hires an assassin to kill McGarrett to avenge both his son and grandson. His plans, too, fail in the end, and McGarrett brings down the entire Vashon crime family. The Vashon saga proved so popular with fans that producers worked out a follow-up episode three years later. In “The Case Against McGarrett” (10/17/1975), McGarrett agrees to trade himself for hostages taken in a prison riot. Once the exchange has been made, McGarrett learns that it’s all been a ploy to get him inside, where Honore Vashon, still doing his time, plans to try him before a court made up of other inmates. Other episodes went for a less grand approach, such as the light-hearted fan favorite “I’m a Family Crook—Don’t Shoot” (12/19/1972), which guest

60

Crime Television

starred Andy Griffith and Joyce Van Patten as Andy and Rhoda Lovejoy, who, along with their daughter Melissa (Kimberly Louis), have arrived in Hawaii for a vacation. Their close-knit, down-home appearance, however, turns out to be an act, as they’re actually a family of con artists. But when they unwittingly steal a bag belonging to a gangster’s henchman, they become caught in the middle of a war between two rival crime families. But the Lovejoy’s determination, not only to get out of their situation but also to make a profit in doing so, complicates McGarrett’s efforts to help them. (The episode was directed by Bob Sweeney, whose previous credits include episodes of The Andy Griffith Show.) Everything seemed to be going right for the cast and crew of Hawaii Five-O until a move to Friday nights in the fall of 1975 proved disastrous. Ratings suddenly plummeted. A panicked CBS, fearful of losing one of its most popular hour-long dramas, relocated the program in November to Thursday nights where it began to rebuild its audience. Ratings rebounded, and the show remained on the air for another four years, but it never again made it into the top-10. Behind the scenes, everyone seemed to get along. There were very few stories about backstage feuds. It was clear, though, that Jack Lord was in charge and he could be a strict taskmaster. Sadly, creator and executive producer Leonard Freeman passed away on January 20, 1974, as a result of a heart problem. Philip Leacock assumed his duties, but Lord began to take a larger role in making decisions at that point. There were a number of cast changes as well. Kam Fong left the series after 10 years; his character was killed while on an undercover assignment in the episode “A Death in the Family” (5/4/1978). At the conclusion of the 1978–79 season, James MacArthur decided he, too, wanted out. When the series returned in the fall of 1979, his character had left the unit and several new detectives joined McGarrett, including Sharon Farrell as Lori Wilson, Five-O’s first female officer. The new faces didn’t help and, with the ratings in decline, CBS decided to cancel Hawaii Five-O at the end of the season (only 20 new hours were produced that year). Word of the series’s fate was handed down in time for the producers to plan a finale. In the program’s last original telecast, subtitled “Woe to Wo Fat” (4/5/1980), McGarrett goes undercover when three scientists vanish, only to come face-to-face once again with Wo Fat. McGarrett is able to disrupt the villain’s plans, and this time, apprehend him. In the series final scene, McGarrett finally receives the satisfaction of seeing Wo Fat locked away securely in a holding cell. Whether he was able to pull another fast one and escape we’ll never know.

Crime Television—The 1960s

61

Hawaii Five-O ran for 12 seasons, which translated into 284 hours. Jack Lord retired after the show ended and settled in Hawaii with his wife Marie. He passed away on January 21, 1998, of heart failure. The production facilities built for the series were immediately put to use on another hit series based on the islands, Magnum, P.I. (1980–88), in which Steve McGarrett was often referred to. Despite repeated requests, Lord refused to reprise the character. In the late 1980s, a pilot was made for an updated Hawaii Five-O, starring Gary Busey but also featuring many of the original cast members, including MacArthur and Kam Fong (ironically, the new producers hadn’t been aware that his character had been killed off during the run of the original series, and Fong was in no hurry to point out their mistake). It proved a moot point, as the pilot was not picked up as a series. The fall of 1968 also became the starting point for a series that would define a generation. By the mid-to-late sixties, most television producers were attempting to tap into the culture of the decade. For most, however, that usually meant using the flower power generation simply as window dressing. A murder or robbery might occur in Haight-Ashbury or some similar location, requiring the series’s leads to drop in and mingle with the hippies for a single episode. Or perhaps a supporting player would be added to the cast, such as Edd Byrnes’s Kookie was to 77 Sunset Strip a decade earlier, mostly for comic relief. But few producers were willing to bet their fortunes on developing an entire series around members of the counterculture. But in the fall of 1968, producers Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas decided to do just that and their gamble paid off. That September, they premiered The Mod Squad, a one-hour crime drama about a special squad of young officers whose job it was to mix in with other members of their generation, something the average undercover police officer was unable to do, and bring down the bad guys. The catch was that seldom if ever did the villains turn out to be the street kids themselves, but rather the adults who preyed on them. The program was obviously designed to appeal to a young demographic. The officers never carried guns and rarely arrested anyone. They simply gathered evidence, then pointed their older superiors in the right direction, allowing them to make the busts. Everything about this series was geared toward the hippie culture of the 1960s—the clothing, the language, the sets, the politics. Buddy Ruskin, who had worked undercover with such a team while with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office in the 1950s, had created the series. Certainly the cast that Spelling and Thomas assembled did a lot to ensure the success of The Mod Squad. Michael Cole (age 23) played Pete Cochran,

62

Crime Television

who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’d become disillusioned with his Beverly Hills upbringing and was thrown out of the family mansion by his parents, after which he stole a car and went for a joyride before being picked up by the L.A.P.D. and charged with car theft. Clarence Williams III (age 29) was cast as Linc Hayes, an angry young black man who’d grown up in the ghetto in a family of thirteen. Linc had been arrested during the Watts riots and booked into custody. Last but certainly not least was Peggy Lipton (age 21) as Julie Barnes, the daughter of a prostitute, who’d left home and was living on the streets until she was picked up for vagrancy. Then, to the rescue came Captain Adam Greer (Tigh Andrews), who offered them a way to avoid jail time by becoming members of the L.A.P.D. Not informants, but actual officers (only on TV)! Greer had convinced his superiors that Pete, Linc, and Julie would be the perfect undercover officers, able to go where regular cops couldn’t. All three accepted the offer and were soon working for Greer. But they did so only with the guarantee that they wouldn’t be asked to betray their peers. Their jobs, as they saw it, was to save kids who had lost their direction in life—the social outcasts—from the gangs, drug dealers, and other assorted threats that awaited them on the streets. In doing so, the three hoped to discover their own identities as well. Not only was their chemistry apparent on screen, but Cole, Williams, and Lipton became overnight celebrities and role models when the series debuted on September 24, 1968. When Michael Cole first went in to meet with Spelling, he was less than enthused at the prospect of starring in The Mod Squad. “I walked into Aaron’s office and was doing my James Dean, rebel number,” he recalls. “Of course I wanted to work and be on a show, but I didn’t know my ass from a flagpole. I would have gotten thrown out of any other office in town. The way someone had explained it to me first was cops breaking down doors with machine guns and bad guys all around, and I was like, ‘Oh, no no no no…. ’ I told Aaron I thought it was a stupid idea and that nobody was going to buy it. Aaron just let me rant and rave for awhile, and then he said, ‘Alright now, will you calm down and shut up and let me tell you what we’re going to try and do?’ Then he explained to me that we were going to care for the people that we got involved with … and the next thing I know I’m running down an alley (filming the series’s memorable opening title sequence).” After convincing Cole, Spelling then had to win over ABC, which was beginning to have second thoughts. “ABC didn’t even want to put it on,” explains Cole. “They didn’t feel they could sell it in certain markets. Their attitude was, ‘You throw a black guy and a white guy together at that time that really care about each other, and then you put a beautiful blonde girl

Crime Television—The 1960s

63

in between them, and what … are you fucking kidding? What are we going to do with this in Mississippi?’ But Aaron stuck to his guns and refused to change the show, and it became a hit. We crossed all the barriers and appealed to blacks, whites, youths … we even got letters from parents. The Nixon White House watched; Governor Rockefeller and his family even visited the set once to say how much they enjoyed the series. We did shows on adoption, anti-Semitics, drugs, the Vietnam War. We were topical and that’s what made the show so different.” The Mod Squad ranked number 28 in the ratings after its first season. It finally made it into the top-20 during its third season (landing at number 11). The cast was inundated with letters from viewers, many from young viewers whose lives were deeply affected by the show. Remembers Cole: “Aaron actually called me over to his office one day because he wanted to read me a letter he’d received from a 16-year-old girl. She had been a hooker, was addicted to drugs and living on the streets. But she started watching The Mod Squad and for some reason it clicked in her mind, and she got herself off of drugs and was working in a rehab center helping other kids. And she thanked us. That’s pretty powerful stuff.” The program continued to attract a large audience through its fourth year. Then in the fall of 1972, as the series was about to begin its fifth season, ABC moved it from the Tuesday night timeslot, where it had played successfully at 7:30 P.M. for the past four years, and dropped it down on Thursdays at 8 P.M. opposite powerhouses The Waltons and Flip Wilson. The scheduling move proved to be the series’s death knell and the next spring, with ratings significantly down, ABC cancelled The Mod Squad after 124 hour-long episodes. Cole, Williams, Lipton, and Andrews reunited in the TV-movie Return of the Mod Squad (aired May 18, 1979), in which Pete, Linc, and Julie re-team to protect Adam Greer after attempts are made on his life. It later turns out they are the targets, not Greer. In 1999, MGM released a poorly received feature film version of the series, starring Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi, and Omar Epps as the young leads. The series was a product of its time, however, and just didn’t translate to the 1990s. The state of crime dramas at the end of the 1950s was rather dreary. The genre had been dying out. But a decade later, as the 1960s came to a close, the situation had completely turned around. Hour-long crime shows were the rage; even a few half-hours were still going strong, and thanks to this resurgence, the networks had even more shows in development. The decade to come would be perhaps the greatest in history for crime TV producers and fans. Many of the greatest series and characters were soon to make their debuts. And it was all about to happen in the 1970s.

CHAPTER 3

Crime Television—The 1970s

any of the big hits of the 1970s had originated in the 1960s: Adam-12, The FBI, Hawaii Five-O, Ironside, and The Mod Squad. With the exception of Mod Squad, most of these shows featured leads who had a decidedly conservative approach to both life and law enforcement. In that regard, Mod Squad probably bridged the gap creatively between the decades. The 1970s would showcase a number of different approaches to the police and detective genres. The producers behind these programs—Stephen J. Cannell, Quinn Martin, and Aaron Spelling among them—would bring their own distinctive styles to each series, making the 1970s the busiest in TV history for those involved in the production of crime television. One studio in particular, Universal, would lead the pack in supplying product to the networks. During the 1970s, it became the single largest supplier of crime dramas. For novices hoping to get their foot in the door, Universal TV was the place to be, as even the greenest of young hopefuls would often be put to work. Although not all were destined for remarkable careers, there were a handful that carved a niche for themselves and went on to become top showrunners. Names on that list include Stephen J. Cannell, Glen A. Larson, Steven Bochco, Philip DeGuere, and Donald Bellisario. Universal was turning out so much product that quality often suffered for the sake of quantity. But many gems also emerged from this TV factory. This was certainly the case when it came to NBC’s Mystery Movie, which

M

66

Crime Television

was an umbrella title for a number of unrelated series that would alternate with each other, sharing the same timeslot. The episodes all ran either 90 minutes or 2 hours. This was not NBC’s first attempt at such a scheduling tactic. From 1969 to 1973, it carried a program titled The Bold Ones, which comprised three separate one-hour series: The New Doctors, The Lawyers, and The Protectors. The Bold Ones proved to be a hit both dramatically and critically, which inspired NBC to debut a new series in the fall of 1970 called Four in One. Scheduled Wednesday nights at 10:00 P.M., the show consisted of four different series, each of which would air for six straight weeks, then take a brake while another had its run. Those four programs were McCloud, San Francisco International Airport, Night Gallery, and The Psychiatrist. By the end of the season, San Francisco International Airport (which starred Lloyd Bridges and Clu Gulager as two men involved in running one of the largest and busiest airports in the country) and The Psychiatrist (with Roy Thinnes as a practitioner using the latest innovative techniques to help his patients) had both been cut loose. Night Gallery, which actually began as a highly successful TV-movie (11/8/1969) and featured host Rod Serling introducing weekly tales of terror, was given its own weekly birth. That left McCloud, with Dennis Weaver as a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico, on loan to the New York City police department. A fish out of water, he proceeds to pursue his suspects, for example, by riding his horse down the middle of Forty-Second Street. McCloud, too, had first been seen in a well-received TV-movie, McCloud: Who Killed Miss U.S.A.? (2/17/1970). As one spoke in the Four in One wheel, it was clearly the most successful of the group. NBC decided not only to renew McCloud but also to expand its running time to 90 minutes the next season. It then ordered two additional series to alternate with it on Wednesday nights from 8:30 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. Columbo, McMillan & Wife, and McCloud began to air collectively in the fall of 1971 as The NBC Mystery Movie. McCloud benefited from a strong supporting cast. Character actor J. D. Cannon played Chief of Detectives Peter B. Clifford. Clifford was the kind of man who wanted things done his way, so he and McCloud were constantly at odds. Clifford had to deal with the fact that McCloud not only bucked the system, but that his unorthodox methods usually got the job done. Terry Carter was Sgt. Joe Broadhurst, McCloud’s partner, who wanted to do things by the book but usually ended up caving in and doing things McCloud’s way. Diana Muldaur was cast as journalist Chris Coughlin, who became romantically involved with the visiting detective. McCloud’s big-city adventures tended to be, for the most part, as lighthearted as the program’s concept. For a majority of its run, McCloud’s

Crime Television—The 1970s

67

executive producer was Glen A. Larson, whose trademark was doing crime shows that were laced with a lot of humor. Some episodes did have a serious subtext, such as “Shivaree on Delaney Street” (11/3/1974), in which guest star Danny Thomas played a Jewish tailor with luck that runs hot and cold. He wins at the numbers, but then becomes an eyewitness that can finger those behind the racket. So he runs off to Miami with his winnings, followed by two hit men out to kill him, and McCloud, who is trying to save his life. All the while, a critically wounded Broadhurst fights for his life in the hospital. “The Day New York Turned Blue” (2/22/1976) had the mob planning a hit on police headquarters, aided by a blinding snowstorm and a looming strike by officers. The pendulum swung the other way in “McCloud Meets Dracula” (4/17/1977) in which a body is discovered completely drained of blood, and the search begins for aging movie actor Loren Belasco (John Carradine), who in his younger days starred in a number of vampire films. While McCloud did duty on the streets of New York City, eccentric Lieutenant Columbo (no first name) investigated homicides on the opposite coast. Writers Richard Levinson and William Link first created the character of Columbo for a stage play they’d written titled Prescription: Murder. The production, featuring Thomas Mitchell, Joseph Cotton, and Agnes Moorehead, never made it to Broadway, so the duo adapted it for a 1968 made-for-TV movie (2/20/1968). They’d hoped to get Bing Crosby for the role of the crumpled detective, but Crosby turned them down. Their second choice, Lee J. Cobb, had prior commitments. They eventually hired Peter Falk for the role, and again adapted the part to their leading man, who was much younger than the script originally called for. In the movie, directed by Richard Irving, Columbo tries to prove that a psychiatrist (Gene Barry) murdered his wife Carol (Nina Foch) using his young girlfriend Joan (Katherine Justice) to stage a very public alibi. The movie performed only moderately well, and it seemed as if Columbo’s screen appearance was simply a oneshot deal. Then on March 1, 1971, the character was revived for another TV-movie, “Ransom for a Dead Man,” which cast Lee Grant as a high-powered attorney who murders her husband for the insurance money. This time NBC was a little more impressed with the ratings and made Columbo a part of its Mystery Movie franchise that fall. Peter S. Fischer served as Columbo’s story editor and became a longtime collaborator of Levinson and Link. “They were originally inspired by Crime and Punishment, patterning Columbo off Inspector Porphiry,” explains Fischer. People would think he was a stupid oaf and didn’t know what he was doing, and of course that was all a rouse. The original prototype for Columbo was

68

Crime Television

a guy named Thomas Mitchell, who played him onstage. Bert Freed also played him. But it wasn’t until they started casting for the TV show that they finally settled on Peter Falk, and he was nothing like what they originally envisioned. Peter was a perfectionist, and would spend hours and hours in his trailer worrying about two lines of dialogue. Once he got his teeth set into it you couldn’t stop him. So sometime you’d have guys sitting around playing gin rummy all day while Peter was in his trailer with me or the producer or someone. Other days, he was perfect. But Peter never acted out of malice; he was a perfectionist. If it didn’t sit right with him, he couldn’t do it.” Falk also had a deep creative interest in the show. He would not only work closely with Fischer honing each script, but would personally oversee certain elements of the character’s growth. For instance, he chose Columbo’s signature raincoat, worn by the detective even on the sunniest of days. When Columbo was given a sidekick, a droopy-eared basset hound named Dog, Falk had a hand in casting him, to ensure the animal would match Columbo’s disheveled look. When the decision was made to give the lieutenant a car, Falk stepped in again. “Peter also picked out the Peugeot that Columbo drove,” says Fischer. “They wanted Columbo to drive around in a car, but something a little unusual. Nobody could decide on the right vehicle, so Peter finally went to the transportation captain and said, ‘Do you have a graveyard around here for cars that you keep?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, its in the back.’ He said, ‘OK, let’s go.’ So Peter and the teamster chief were running around, and they had rows and rows of these cars, and Peter was going, ‘Nah, nah, I don’t want that. Oh, that’s no good.’ Then he finds the Peugeot, and said, ‘That’s it.’ It was this little, beat-up, gray Peugeot from the ’50s. So the car, the dog, the raincoat, these are all things that kind of added in, and were Peter’s idea.” Unlike McCloud, Columbo worked alone. Falk was the only regular character, a Los Angeles homicide detective who usually ended up working high-profile cases. When he was partnered up it was always with a different officer. He had an unnamed wife at home, too, but she was never actually seen on screen. Columbo followed an established format that caught on with viewers. The first act was always dedicated to the commission of a well-planned murder. Columbo would arrive at the scene of the crime early in the second act after the body had been discovered. He would then carefully begin his investigation, usually picking up on small clues that eluded everyone else. He would then encounter the killer, most likely the spouse or business associate of the victim. It seldom took Columbo long to recognize the guilty party. But that’s when the fun really began. The rest of the episode was dedicated to an intricate game of cat-and-mouse between

Crime Television—The 1970s

69

Columbo and his adversary, as Columbo tried to gather the evidence needed to arrest the murderer. He would fool the bad guys by initially coming across as incompetent, perhaps even a little slow, conning them into a false sense of security. He would always have “one more question for them” before leaving the room. By the time they caught on and realized that they were the detective’s prime suspect, they’d usually already said too much or provided Columbo with that missing piece of the puzzle. Columbo quickly became the most popular segment of The NBC Mystery Movie, not only with viewers but with celebrities as well, who would clamor to get a guest spot as the villain. In “Swan Song,” for instance, country-music superstar Johnny Cash guested as Tommy Brown, a country-music superstar (so it wasn’t much of a stretch) who murders his domineering wife (Ida Lupino) by drugging her and an assistant, then bailing out of the Cessna aircraft he is flying them in. After descending to earth with a parachute, he makes his way to the crash site and awaits the arrival of rescuers, who assume he is the sole survivor. A suspicious Columbo is eventually able to locate the parachute that Brown hid in the woods that night. Another popular episode is “Any Old Port in a Storm” (10/7/1973) with Donald Pleasance as a famous wine connoisseur who murders his younger brother (Gary Conway), who was planning to sell the family winery to bankroll his wild lifestyle. Pleasance gives such as a wonderfully reserved performance as a man with absolutely no passion in his life except for his small winery that by the end of the episode, viewers—and Columbo—feel for the man despite his crime. Actually, Columbo didn’t always “get his man.” In “Forgotten Lady” (9/14/1975), Janet Leigh played fading movie starlet Nora Chandler, who spends each evening sitting at home watching her old films, reliving her glory days and dreaming naively of recapturing her youth. When her wealthy husband (Sam Jaffe) refuses to finance a comeback show, she murders him and makes it look like a suicide. Columbo sees through the charade, but learns later that Nora is dying from a brain tumor. He eventually realizes that because of her condition, Nora doesn’t even remember killing her husband. In the end, he decides to leave the case sitting open for what little time she has left, enabling Nora to live out her final days contently watching reel after reel of her past accomplishments. Other big-name guests who appeared over the years include Leonard Nimoy, Jack Cassidy, William Shatner, Laurence Harvey, Ruth Gordon, and John Cassavetes. Not since Batman in the 1960s had playing a prime-time villain been so in vogue. The show attracted talent behind the scenes, too. Such notable writers as Bochco, Cannell, Peter S. Fischer, Dean Hargrove, and Jackson Gillis all contributed scripts. Top directors

70

Crime Television

including Boris Sagal, Leo Penn, Robert Butler, Nicholas Colasanto, and even a young Steven Spielberg helmed episodes. Falk’s portrayal of Columbo earned him a Golden Globe and three Emmys (amidst almost yearly nominations). Fischer feels that many people share in Columbo’s success, but none more than Peter Falk. “He was a terribly charming man. The show had a wonderful format where the audience didn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out clues and who the killer was, knowing from the very beginning, and could then just sit back and watch Peter give a bravura performance every time he did a show. And Peter was just marvelous at the humor. What you see on TV is Peter Falk. My wife came to the studio one day and we were going to have lunch, and Peter joined us. Peter was in a T-shirt and a pair of chinos and we had lunch in the commissary, and that night my wife said, ‘My God, he’s exactly like Columbo.’” As for Columbo’s wife, Fischer loved toying with the fact that she was never seen onscreen. “Twice I tried to fool the audience,” he laughs. “We did a cruise ship show where Robert Vaughn was the killer, and Columbo was on the ship with his wife, and I said, ‘Now we’re going to have a lot of fun tap dancing around why we never see her.’ So we did the entire show and you never see his wife, he’s always saying, ‘Honey, I can’t get to the buffet, but you start without me and I’ll be there in a few minutes, and that whole thing.’ At the end, Columbo has solved the mystery and there’s a woman with dark hair, very pretty, sitting in her cabin in front of the mirror, and the door flies open and Columbo comes in and says, ‘Honey, I’m sorry I’m late, this is terrible, but I was held up” and she turns around and he looks at her and says, ‘Oh geez, I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve got the wrong cabin.’ And that’s about as close as you ever got to seeing Mrs. Columbo.” At least, that is, as part of the original Columbo series. McCloud and Columbo got to take the occasional breather thanks to the third entry in The NBC Mystery Movie series—McMillan & Wife. Like the others, McMillan & Wife began its run as a TV-movie. Entitled “Once upon a Dead Man” (9/17/1971), the film introduced the characters of Stewart McMillan, San Francisco’s Police Commissioner, and his zany wife Sally. Rock Hudson was cast as the lead. After decades as one of the cinema’s top leading men (Giant, Pillow Talk), Hudson’s career had begun to cool off by the early 1970s, and he eagerly signed on for his first regular television gig. The role of Sally McMillan went to actress Susan Saint James, who was just coming off three seasons as a supporting player in the NBC crime drama The Name of the Game. The McMillans were television’s answer to Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy)—or at least a 1970s take on

Crime Television—The 1970s

71

the couple, as there had already been a television adaptation of The Thin Man in the late 1950s starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk. McMillan & Wife was actually filled with much more humor than even McCloud (at times they even crossed the line into outright comedy). Luckily, it was done right, and no wonder, considering the executive producer of McMillan & Wife was Leonard Stern, who had written for The Honeymooners and co-created Get Smart. McMillan was ostensibly the straight man, who had spent time in the Navy and later served as a district attorney in the Bay City. As police commissioner, whenever a crime couldn’t be solved the file would end up on his desk. Once that happened, he couldn’t let it go, and took it upon himself to do a little investigative work. Sally, too, couldn’t help but get involved in her husband’s work. Sometimes, it was Sally herself who got the McMillans into the action, which was the case with “Once upon a Dead Man,” in which she talked her husband into participating in a charity auction. Simple enough, especially considering that the McMillans are affluent members of the city’s high society. But along with the charity benefit comes an Egyptian sarcophagus, a dead body, a missing necklace, Mac in disguise as a giant bunny, and an outrageously slapstick-strewn chase scene. Like the other Mystery Movies, McMillan & Wife became a must-see part of NBC’s schedule. The producers did want Mac and Sally’s relationship taken seriously, though, so they were careful not to let Sally’s antics get too out of hand. They even brought in actor John Schuck to play Sgt. Charles Enright, who was Mac’s aide. He was there to share in the comic relief. At home, the McMillans also had a wisecracking housekeeper named Mildred (Nancy Walker) who often seemed more like a member of the family than the domestic help. The McMillan’s lives were never boring. In the first season episode, “’Til Death Do Us Part” (2/16/1972), they ended up trapped in their home by an assassin. The following season, in “Terror Times Two” (12/13/1972), Mac is kidnapped by the mob and replaced by a double who takes his place both at home and as police commissioner. An earthquake later revealed the remains of a human corpse hidden behind the brickwork in their home in “Aftershock” (11/9/1975). At the end of the first season, Sally learned she was expecting, but evidentially the idea of a pregnant woman running around dodging bullets and bad guys, putting not only herself but also the life of her unborn child in danger, didn’t sit well, and the storyline was inexplicably dropped when the series returned for a second year. Together, the three series that made up the NBC Mystery Movie became immensely popular—so popular that NBC was soon ready to expand the franchise. In the fall of 1972, McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan & Wife were

72

Crime Television

all uprooted from Wednesdays and moved to Sundays where, along with new addition Hec Ramsey, they collectively became known as The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. Hec Ramsey was a western (produced by Jack Webb) that starred Richard Boone as an aging gunfighter who had become enamored by “modern” crime-solving techniques. He took a job as deputy in the town of New Prospect, Oklahoma, and although he still carried a gun, he would use techniques like finger printing to solve crimes, to the amazement and scrutiny of the local townspeople. Meanwhile, three new series were created to air as The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie: Madigan (with Richard Widmark re-creating his 1968 feature film role as a New York City police detective), Cool Million (with James Farentino as an ex-CIA agent turned private investigator, who charged a million dollars for his services), and Banacek (with George Peppard as an insurance investigator who only took on high-stakes cases, and kept 15 percent of the value of whatever he recovered). NBC soon learned that more doesn’t necessarily mean better. Hec Ramsey proved popular enough to run two seasons on Sundays, and Banacek also performed very well and ran for two years. The latter might have gone on to greater success, but star George Peppard proved extremely difficult to work with, and NBC cut him loose in the spring of 1974 despite decent ratings. The others, Madigan and Cool Million, were flops. NBC persevered, however, and over the next four years introduced a number of new series hoping to duplicate the success of the original three. (In January 1974, the Wednesday movies were moved to Tuesdays in an effort to boost ratings, and the evening was accordingly retitled The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie.) Those programs included Tenafly (1973–74), Faraday & Company (1973–74), The Snoop Sisters (1973–74), Amy Prentiss (1974–75), McCoy (1975–76), and Lanigan’s Rabbi (1977). None lasted more than a single season in rotation. Only Glen Larson’s Quincy, M. E., with Jack Klugman as a medical examiner who played detective whenever he came across a suspicious death, would find any favor with viewers. After a few months as part of the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie in the fall of 1976, NBC cut Quincy, M. E. down from 90 minutes to an hour and gave it a regular weekly timeslot on Friday nights in early 1977. In the end, the only true successes (excluding Quincy, M. E., which ran as a regular scheduled series until 1983), were the three series that had kicked off the Mystery Movie franchise to begin with: McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan & Wife. By 1977, they were losing steam, too. Peter Falk’s feature film career was going strong and he had grown tired of doing Columbo. McMillan & Wife had undergone a drastic transformation the previous fall.

Crime Television—The 1970s

73

Susan Saint James had left the series in a contract dispute, and co-stars John Schuck and Nancy Walker had both departed to star in their own respective shows, Holmes & Yoyo and The Nancy Walker Show. The program’s title had been shortened to McMillan, and it was explained that Sally had been killed in a plane crash. Mac had a new assistant in Sgt. Steve DiMaggio (Richard Gilliland), while at home Mildred’s sister Agatha (Martha Raye) was now taking care of the house. NBC finally ended The NBC Mystery Movie franchise in the fall of 1977, although Columbo would return for three specials the next season. Unfortunately, NBC still wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. In February 1979, the network premiered Mrs. Columbo, a weekly one-hour whodunit centered around the wily detective’s wife, who’d never actually been seen on the parent series. NBC had wanted Richard Levinson and William Link, the creators and original producers of Columbo, to oversee the project. Recalls Peter S. Fischer, who served as a story editor on Columbo: “Richard Levinson hated that show. He told NBC, ‘This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. I think it stinks, you’re going to ruin the concept, you’re going to ruin the franchise of Columbo by putting this woman in there. Mrs. Columbo has nothing to do with solving mysteries.’ He was furious. They wanted him to do it, he said no. They said, ‘Well, we’re going to do it anyway, so why don’t you do it.’ And he said, ‘No, don’t you understand the English language?’” NBC was determined and moved forward anyway, and Mrs. Columbo was a disaster from the start. First, the producers cast a 23-year-old actress, Kate Mulgrew, to breathe life into Mrs. Columbo. Falk, by contrast, was 50 years old when Columbo ended. Certainly not an unheard of arrangement, but it did make buying into the character much more difficult than it needed to be. Mrs. Columbo, like her husband, was given no first name, which made the situation even more awkward. The mister never appeared on Mrs. Columbo just as she had never logged any screen time on his show, but was often referred to (he was usually working late or away on assignment). At home, the missus had a seven-year-old daughter, Jenny (Lili Haydn), and worked part-time for a community newspaper, The Valley Advocate, where her editor was grumpy old Josh Alden (Henry Jones). It was through her activities at the paper that Mrs. Columbo usually encountered trouble that led to that week’s adventure. Because Mrs. Columbo was not really a detective herself, just the wife of a detective, it was difficult from the beginning just getting her involved in crimes, let alone interesting ones. In the two-hour pilot, “Word Games” (2/26/1979), Mrs. Columbo overhears a neighbor (Robert Culp) plotting the

74

Crime Television

murder of his wife (Edie Adams). Besides keeping an eye on him, she also has to concern herself with getting Jenny to school, the dog to the vet, the car to the mechanic, and brushing up on her French. The debut telecast did well in the ratings, ranking number 18 for the week. The second episode, “Murder Is a Parlor Game” (3/1/1979) had our heroine taking a course in criminology from a former Scotland Yard detective (Donald Pleasance) who himself commits a murder and makes it appear a suicide. Ratings for this installment fell sharply and NBC wasted no time in acting. It immediately pulled Mrs. Columbo from the schedule. The additional three episodes that had been completed aired irregularly that spring, but the assumption was the series was dead. Yet NBC still didn’t know when to say when. When they announced their fall 1979 line-up, Mrs. Columbo was still there. The difference was, now she had a first name: Kate. And the series had a new title: Kate Loves a Mystery. (First season reruns had played that summer as Kate Columbo). The new season kicked off on October 18, 1979 with “Ladies of the Afternoon,” in which a group of housewives become daytime prostitutes to earn a little mad money. When one of the ladies ends up dead, her husband becomes the prime suspect. The next week, NBC changed the show’s title to Kate the Detective for the episode “It Goes with the Territory” (10/25/1979), in which Kate looks into a the murder of a journalist, who in turn was looking into the connection between organized crime and politics at a prestigious country club. Then again the next week, the title was switched back to Kate Loves a Mystery. The show itself was undergoing huge changes as well. That fall, all mention of Kate’s husband was dropped, and finally Kate’s last name was inexplicably changed from Columbo to Callahan, severing ties completely with the Columbo series. It all proved to no avail as NBC finally came to its senses and cancelled the show after its December 6, 1979 telecast (in all, 13 episodes had been produced under four different titles). That’s the last we’d hear of Mrs. Columbo, but the lieutenant would show up again a decade later in all-new episodes. Over at ABC Aaron Spelling was busy following up his first major success as a producer, The Mod Squad, which had premiered in 1968, with yet another crime series featuring a new generation of cops. By 1972, The Mod Squad was on the decline, about to enter its fifth and final season. Spelling, however, did not want to give up on the concept of young cops. That spring, he was able to sell ABC on a similar premise entitled The Rookies. Like The Mod Squad, The Rookies was about a group of twenty-something police officers who were opinionated, enthusiastic, and dedicated to making a difference, particularly to others their age who might be distrustful of anyone in uniform.

Crime Television—The 1970s

75

ABC first green-lighted a 90-minute pilot that aired on March 7, 1972. The episode brought together three young rookie cops in a major southern California city: Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown), Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean), and Mike Danko (Sam Melville). Jill Danko (Kate Jackson) was Mike’s wife, who worked as a nurse in a local hospital. Viewers got to watch as the three officers became acquainted while working their way through a grueling training program, after which they were given their first assignments. Police work initially wasn’t what the ambitious young officers had expected, particularly the large amount of paperwork. They were all anxious to get out on the streets, where all three were opposed to the use of firearms whenever possibly and were always looking for a peaceful resolution to the situations they encountered. This put them at odds with Lieutenant Eddie Ryker (Darren McGavin in the pilot; Gerald S. O’Loughlin thereafter), an oldtimer set in his ways. They had a somewhat rocky relationship, but Ryker was simply trying to make sure these rookies stayed alive. ABC was pleased with the ratings that The Rookies pilot attracted and placed it on its fall 1972 schedule, Monday nights from 8:00–9:00 P.M. The series premiered on September 11 and quickly became a hit. Of course there were the obvious comparisons drawn by critics calling The Rookies “The Mod Squad in uniforms.” It was hard to deny such criticism considering the obvious similarities, including Spelling, but it seemed both the producer and his stars were constantly on the defensive trying to deny the connection. One way in which the two programs did differ was in the amount of violence. Michael Ontkean left the series at the end of the second season over creative differences and was replaced by Bruce Fairbairn as Officer Chris Owens. Ratings continued to climb during the third season, moving the series for the first time into TV’s top-20. A year later, however, in the fall of 1975, ABC moved the show to Tuesday nights at 9:00 P.M., which proved a terrible miscalculation. Ratings began to fall in the new timeslot. Up against the hit series Switch (on CBS) and Police Story (on ABC), The Rookies couldn’t pull in viewers on its new night, and ABC cancelled it in the spring of 1976. In all, a 90-minute pilot and 92 one-hour episodes were produced. The Rookies was the first series from Aaron Spelling as part of a new, exclusive deal he had with ABC that would prove tremendously profitable for both parties. (In all, Spelling would produce 32 series for the alphabet network. Some, naturally, would fail, but a good percentage would become wildly popular.) Throughout his career, Spelling would conquer many genres. During the 1970s, his true conquest was in developing crime dramas (as we’ll see in this chapter).

76

Crime Television

By the end of the 1960s, Quinn Martin had already established himself as one of the most successful producers in Hollywood, and also had one of the most recognizable names in terms of appealing to viewers. The title card at the beginning of each of his series—a list that included The Fugitive, The FBI, 12 O’Clock High, and the short-lived Burt Reynolds drama Dan August— would feature the phrase “A Quinn Martin Production.” Eventually, it was no longer necessary to even spell out his moniker, and many of his series merely notified television audiences that the program they were about to view was a “Q.M. Production,” leaving little doubt about the mastermind behind the project. When the 1970s arrived, Martin wasted no time in expanding his resume. In the fall of 1971, he sold CBS on an unusual series titled Cannon. The lead character, Frank Cannon, was a private eye who didn’t come cheap. If you wanted his services, you had to be prepared to pay. The reason: Cannon enjoyed living the good life—the best cuisine, wine, and automobiles. He resided in a penthouse suite and tooled around in a large Lincoln Continental. He enjoyed cooking almost as much as eating and at 5-feet, 9½-inches, weighed in at 225 pounds. But on screen Cannon showed little sign of being out of shape as he jaunted through his weekly mysteries with quite a bit of gusto. True, he didn’t have much luck outrunning the bad guys, but that wasn’t his style anyway. Cannon had a habit of jumping in his car, racing up to the fleeing villains, and throwing open his car door, sending them tumbling head over heels. The man did not display a great deal of empathy toward those who crossed him. Martin had no trouble selling the public on a balding, overweight hero, overcoming that obstacle by casting well-known character actor, director, and voice artist William Conrad in the role. Conrad was the voice of Matt Dillon in the radio version of Gunsmoke and also served as the narrator who chronicled the odyssey of Richard Kimble each week on The Fugitive. Conrad was familiar to viewers and had a likable screen presence. His baritone vocal talents gave him an air of authority that strengthened the actor’s portrayal of Frank Cannon. The two-hour pilot for Cannon aired on March 26, 1976. Cannon had been a lieutenant in the Los Angeles police force who resigned after his wife and young son were killed in an automobile accident. He proceeded to go into business for himself helping people without the constraints his badge once placed on him. In the process, he was also making much more money than he ever saw on a police salary. In the pilot film, Cannon went after the wife (Lynda Day George) of a small-town deputy (J. D. Cannon), who was using her marriage as a cover for her life of crime, which involved murdering

Crime Television—The 1970s

77

her first husband and using his life insurance policy to finance a scam security company with her lover. But when one of her schemes leads to the death of Frank Cannon’s friend, she meets her match in the portly P.I. The series assumed its regular Tuesday night timeslot on September 14, 1971. Cannon always worked alone, no partners, no secretary, not even a regular contact in the police department. Conrad was the sole series regular. Cannon proved to be one of Quinn Martin’s more violent series. Cannon was not only a tough guy himself, but the writers saw to it that the rotund detective came into contact regularly with the biggest, baddest, and craziest of villains. In “The Seventh Grave” (2/28/1973), Cannon hunts down a mass murderer, but his investigation is hindered by a police lab technician who keeps altering evidence to throw Cannon off the trail. Another episode, “A Touch of Venom” (10/22/1975), finds Cannon kidnapped by a group of radicals who then inject him with snake venom, leaving him only 72 hours to live. To receive the antidote, he must locate a former member of the outlaw faction (Sondra Locke) and return her to them. With its hard-edged storylines, Cannon had broken into the Nielsen top20 by its second season, where it remained for the next three years. While Cannon became one of television’s most unlikely heroes, behind the scenes William Conrad was quite a character himself. Those who worked with him remember him as being very polite, affable, and professional. But like his screen persona, he had many indulgences: smoking cigars, drinking, cursing, and overeating. By the time Cannon entered its final season in 1975–76, Conrad’s weight had increased from 225 lbs. to nearly 300 lbs. Scheduled up against the new ABC hit Baretta, Cannon’s ratings fell sharply in its fifth season, and CBS dropped the show in the spring of 1976 after 127 hours. Conrad revisited the character in a November 1, 1980 TV-movie entitled The Return of Frank Cannon, in which the P.I. came out of retirement to investigate the death of an ex-girlfriend’s husband. After launching Cannon in September 1971, Quinn Martin immediately stepped up to bat again with three new projects for the 1972–73 season. By that time every network was after him to do a series—multiple series if possible—for them. Unfortunately, his first attempt didn’t quite click with viewers, and the NBC period drama Banyon, starring Robert Forster as a 1930s-era private eye in Los Angeles, ended quickly. Premiering on September 15, 1972, the series aired its 15th and final episode on January 12, 1973. But for Martin, Banyon was simply a misstep. Martin’s other new project that fall, ABC’s The Streets of San Francisco, was faring much better. (Another show, Barnaby Jones, was still on the drawing board as a possible mid-season entry).

78

Crime Television

Loosely based on the novel Poor, Poor Ophelia by Carolyn Weston and scripted by writers Edward Hume and Eugene Price, The Streets of San Francisco was an ambitious series about grizzled Bay area homicide detective Mike Stone, a 23-year veteran of the police department, who was teamed with a new 28-year-old partner, Steve Keller. Despite their considerable differences in age and philosophies, the street-hardened elder detective and his idealistic, college-educated associate formed a tightly knit bond. Veteran actor Karl Malden was chosen to play Mike Stone. Malden had a long and distinguished career in motion pictures as a strong supporting player before turning to television. His credits included such films as On the Waterfront, Baby Doll, and Patton. Michael Douglas, son of Hollywood leading man Kirk Douglas, had also appeared in films, both for television (When Michael Calls, 1972) and theater (Napoleon and Samantha, also 1972). Both Malden and Douglas were exceptional actors and on screen together they clicked. Adding that to the great scripts and scenery (Martin insisted on filming the series entirely on location), it’s little wonder The Streets of San Francisco became a hit. In the two-hour pilot, aired September 16, 1972, Stone and Keller fished a young woman’s body out of the San Francisco Bay and then proceeded to re-create her final days to track down who killed her and why. The series developed a loyal following and regularly ranked well in the ratings. Early on, a lot of emphasis was put on the characters’ personal lives, including the fact that Mike was a widower. Darlene Carr appeared during the first couple of seasons as his daughter Jeannie, who was away attending college. Steve dated quite a bit, and rose in rank from assistant inspector to inspector over the years. Carr’s appearances became less frequent as the stories began to center primarily on the detectives’ investigations. Among the many notable episodes from the series run is “Mask of Death” (10/3/1974) in which guest John Davidson received kudos for his versatile performance as a professional female impersonator whose preoccupation with a 1930s movie starlet causes him to develop a homicidal split personality. Such a character could not have been shown on television a few years earlier. Now in the 1970s, the censorship rules were beginning to loosen up, and society was taking a look at sexually aberrant behavior. But the old prejudices against homosexuality were still very much in play, so even in a series as dramatic as The Streets of San Francisco, such characters always seemed to come to a bad end. Michael Douglas decided to leave the series in the spring of 1976. He had just purchased the rights to a novel titled One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Crime Television—The 1970s

79

Nest, and wanted to produce it himself. On the series, it was explained that Steve Keller had left the police force to accept a teaching position. Mike Stone was then partnered with another young partner, Dan Robbins (played by Richard Hatch). Unfortunately, the teaming of Malden and Hatch didn’t work out—neither on screen or off. Early in the season, Malden tried to offer Hatch advice on how to approach a scene, but Hatch declined his gesture and as a result, their relationship grew cold and distant. Audiences, too, having grown accustomed to the rapport between Malden and Douglas, failed to accept Hatch. The series ended its run at the end of the season. One memorable episode did make it to air before the series folded, however. Director Michael Preece’s “Dead Lift” (5/5/1977) cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a body builder whose unpredictable behavior leads to murder. The final original episode aired on June 9, 1977, after 120 segments. Martin still had one more ratings winner up his sleeve. In direct contrast to Detectives Stone and Keller and their modern police techniques was Barnaby Jones, an old-fashioned hero who relied on his instincts. It would be the third new series from Q. M. Productions to premiere that season. With Cannon still on top, Martin decided to use it to introduce Barnaby Jones. The character first appeared in an episode titled “Requiem for a Son” (11/28/1973). Barnaby Jones (Buddy Ebsen) had retired after a long and distinguished career as a private eye. Continuing his legacy was his son Hal Jones (Robert Patten), whom Barnaby had trained. Hal is a gifted P.I. in his own right, but when he runs up against a tough case, he calls on friend Frank Cannon for a helping hand. When Hal ends up dead, Barnaby comes out of retirement and joins Cannon in tracking down Hal’s killer. Afterwards, Barnaby decides to continue practicing. The pilot went over well with viewers, and two months later, on January 28, 1973, Barnaby Jones was given his own timeslot on CBS’s Sunday night schedule. Joining him as his assistant was his daughter-in-law, Betty Jones (Lee Meriwether), who had been married to Hal. Although it started off as a segment of Cannon, Barnaby Jones was a vastly different series. Whereas Cannon would routinely run up against the most violent and crazed of offenders, Barnaby seemed to live by the creed that not all lawbreakers, even those suspected of the worst crimes, were necessarily animals. To solve his cases, he looked for the weakest link in each crime— that person who had a conscience, who had remorse for what they had done. For a pro like Barnaby, that individual usually stood out. He would then act more like a friend to the guilty party than an opponent, allowing him or her to feel secure enough to make a mistake. He could then apply just enough

80

Crime Television

pressure to get the suspect to crack. The show was considerably less violent than Cannon and most of the other crime dramas on the air at that time. Star Buddy Ebsen had insisted on the lighter premise. He had just come off nine years of playing family patriarch Jed Clampett on CBS’s wildly popular, family-friendly The Beverly Hillbillies. He felt strongly about that role and figured that many of his fans would tune in to Barnaby Jones, and he didn’t want to bombard them with grotesque violence. He wanted Barnaby to possess the same down-home charm as Jed Clampett while at the same time being a unique character he could sink his teeth into. He and Meriwether had great chemistry together whether their characters were providing moral support or getting on each other’s nerves. Vince Howard was Barnaby’s contact on the police force, Lt. Joe Taylor, in the earliest episodes. He was replaced in 1974 by Lt. John Biddle (played by John Carter). After scoring some decent numbers initially in the ratings, Barnaby Jones found a comfortable niche where it survived with consistently strong if not outstanding ratings. In the fall of 1976, the agency got a new associate. In staying with tradition, he turned out to be a relative. Mark Shera, whose previous series, S.W.A.T., had just been cancelled by ABC, was added to the cast as Barnaby’s young cousin, Jedediah Romano Jones, or J. R. for short. J. R. added some sex appeal to the show and allowed for a little more action. As for the stories, Barnaby Jones’s scripts often had unexpected twists. Even though the killer was usually seen committing the crime at the beginning of the episode, some of the actors playing the culprits were definitely cast against type. Villains on Barnaby Jones included former Brady Bunch lead Robert Reed as a journalist who’ll stop at nothing, including murder, to get a big scoop in “Death Beat,” or Family and Family Ties star Meredith BaxterBirney as a serial killer whose mentality came as the result of an abusive mother (Ida Lupino), (“The Deadly Jinx,” aired 1/13/1974). Barnaby Jones finally ended its run in the fall of 1980 after eight seasons and 174 episodes. Ebsen would turn up again as a private eye in the final season of ABC’s Matt Houston in 1984–85, playing lead Lee Horsley’s uncle. It would be his last recurring role. Ebsen, however, would make a cameo appearance in the 1993 big-budget studio film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, playing not Jed Clampett, but P.I. Barnaby Jones in an amusing plot twist. If you happened to have a compulsion to break the law during the 1970s, Barnaby Jones was probably the guy you’d want to be arrested by. He was most likely to take you in alive and still standing. On the other hand, Lt. Theo Kojak was as different as could be from old Barnaby. For starters,

Crime Television—The 1970s

81

Kojak wasn’t a private detective, but a rogue cop working out of New York. He got the job done but did it his way, often barely staying within the confines of the law to get his perp. But unlike other cops of the 1970s who did the same without serious repercussions, Kojak had paid for his belligerence. At one time, he had been partnered with Chief of Detectives Frank McNeil (Dan Frazer). Frank, who played by the book, had been promoted and was now Theo’s boss. Theo had been passed over for promotion, but he wasn’t bitter. As a matter of fact, he seemed to prefer his lot in life—he liked getting his hands dirty, being the guy who actually made the collar. As portrayed by Greek actor Telly Savalas, Theo was a tall, bald, and unconventionally handsome. He was also opinionated, loud, and critical—but his men loved him (and so did women, both on screen and off. Savalas became an unlikely sex symbol during the show’s run). The character of Kojak first appeared in a controversial 1973 TV-movie titled The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which was based on a 1968 book called Justice in the Back Room by Selwyn Raab (and adapted for the screen by Abby Mann). The film, aired March 8, 1973, was about a young black man (George Woodbury) accused of murdering two white women. Despite his conviction, Kojak still believes the youth, Lewis Humes, to be innocent and begins to suspect his colleagues in the department of setting him up. The critically acclaimed movie performed well, and Savalas’s performance didn’t go unnoticed. CBS green-lighted a series built around Kojak for that fall. The show was scheduled on Wednesday nights and premiered October 24, 1973. To give the series a genuine look, some location filming was done in New York City that season, although primary photography was shot at Universal Studios in California. The rest of Kojak’s inner circle included Lt. Bobby Crocker (Kevin Dobson), Det. Stavros (played by Savalas’s real-life brother, George Savalas, who initially went by the screen name Demosthenes), Det. Rizzo (Vince Conti), and Det. Saperstein (Mark Russell). Kojak loved to toy with his suspects. His trademarks became the line “who loves ya, baby” and his fondness for lollipops. Kojak ranked number seven its first season on the air, and Savalas, a well-known supporting actor in films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967) and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), finally became a leading man. If you were operating outside the law, Kojak was the last person you wanted on your trail. On the other hand, he did care for people in peril. In “Hush Now, Or You’ll Die” (9/22/1974), Kojak tries to find a college coed (Kathleen Quinlan) who was raped by two men. But she is terrified of coming forward after she witnesses one of her assailants turn on the other and kill him. Other episodes conveyed well-crafted storylines: “The Best Judge

82

Crime Television

Money Can Buy” (11/3/1974) centered around a judge (Walter Stocker) who is murdered because of his involvement in a corruption scheme. His father (John Randolph), also a judge, covers up his son’s crimes by making the murder look like a suicide. A murder suspect, Norman Kilty (Abe Vigoda), later comes before him who knows the truth and threatens to tell all unless the judge finds him not guilty. Kojak ran for five seasons, airing its final original episode on March 18, 1978. In all, 118 hours were produced in addition to The Marcus-Nelson Murders. In 1989, Kojak was revived as part of ABC’s attempt to create an ABC Mystery Movie wheel (as NBC had done in the 1970s). Savalas returned for five two-hour movies that season. Kojak had finally made Inspector and had a promising young assistant named Winston Blake (Andre Braugher). Kevin Dobson even showed up in one episode as Bobby Crocker, now an assistant D.A. The series was dropped after only a single season, but for fans it was a pleasure to see Theo back on the beat, albeit briefly. Fifteen years later, the Kojak premise was revised without Savalas. This time, African-American actor Ving Rhames starred as Theo. Rhames made the character his own, but still honored Savalas’s characterization with small traits such as always having a lollipop on hand. Chazz Palminteri co-starred as Captain Frank McNeil and Michael Kelly as Detective Bobby Crocker. In the two-hour pilot, aired March 25, 2005, Kojak scrambled to catch a serial killer whose M.O. was murdering prostitutes who had children at home. Nine episodes were produced in the spring of 2005 and aired on the USA cable network. Crime dramas were not the only genre dedicated to police and private eye work, particularly during the 1970s. Several series classified as sitcoms were set in the world of law enforcement. Some were played primarily for laughs, such as The Tony Randall Show (1976–78), with Randall playing Judge Walter Franklin, a judge in Philadelphia who faced bedlam both in his courtroom and personal life. One sitcom that successfully crossed the barrier and deserves honorable mention among the many crime series in this book was ABC’s Barney Miller. (The show began as a pilot titled “The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller” that aired on the 1974 ABC anthology series Just For Laughs.) The half-hour comedy was set in the squad room of a Greenwich Village police precinct. Hal Linden starred as Captain Miller, the weathered veteran cop who longed for a promotion that continually passed him by. In the earliest episodes, Barney’s home life was also featured, wife Elizabeth (Barbara Barrie) and children Rachael (Anne Wyndham) and David (Michael Tessier). The kids were dropped at the end

Crime Television—The 1970s

83

of the first season, Elizabeth during the second year, and the show began to focus solely on the police precinct, where the officers dealt daily with an odd assortment of jaywalkers, prostitutes, thieves, muggers, rapists, and even killers. The writers managed to work humor into almost every situation, while at the same time keeping the characters human and realistic, which made Barney Miller a hit, running eight seasons and 170 episodes. The series was regularly nominated for Best Comedy Series, taking home the Emmy in its final year, 1982. Whereas Theo Kojak and Barney Miller proved to be rather unique characters, in the early 1970s NBC experimented with the idea of introducing shows with no lead characters at all. In the fall of 1973, NBC decided to revive the prime-time anthology with Police Story, a one-hour series scheduled on Tuesdays that followed the life of officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. David Gerber produced the series while best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh created and served as technical advisor. Wambaugh himself had been a member of the L.A.P.D.; he wrote two best-selling novels about his experiences, The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, both of which made the best-seller list. The New Centurions became a motion picture in 1972 starring George C. Scott as a veteran officer on the verge of retirement and Stacy Keach as the young rookie he’s saddled with. The Blue Knight would be turned into an NBC mini-series in 1973 starring William Holden as Bumper Morgan, an old-fashioned cop who walked a beat and tried to connect with the people he encountered on a daily basis. CBS picked it up as regular series in 1975 with actor George Kennedy assuming the role of Morgan. The series folded after only 24 episodes. Police Story, however, made the grade with viewers. The show actually began with a two-hour movie that aired on March 20, 1973 about a hardedged veteran (James Farentino) recruited by a special task force set up to track down a killer known as “Slow Boy” (played by Chuck Connors). The series, regularly an hour but with occasional two-hour movie specials, premiered on October 2, 1973. The stories centered on all aspects of police work—from the exhilarating to the mundane. The featured character or characters any given week could be rookies their first day on the job or veterans, street cops or high-ranking officers, good cops or bad cops, and featured them both on-and-off duty. Subjects breeched included racism, ageism, corruption, community relations, and malfeasance on the job to name but a few. The series was moved around over the years, usually remaining in late timeslots. Police Story was really not a series for children. It’s not that it was terribly violent (which at times it could be), but rather

84

Crime Television

that the producers resisted using a lot of gunplay and car chases in favor of delving into deep psychological issues, which naturally appealed more to adult audiences. Although Police Story was an anthology, some of the characters appeared more than once. They included Tony LoBianco as Officer Tony Calabrese, Don Meredith as Officer Bert Jameson, and James Farentino as Officer Charlie Czonka. Another advantage that NBC had in airing Police Story as an anthology is that every episode was a potential pilot, and indeed three episodes did go on to become full-fledged series. The March 26, 1974 episode subtitled “The Gamble” featured Angie Dickinson as policewoman Lisa Beaumont. That fall she was spun off into her own show, Police Woman. The name of her character was changed to Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson. Pepper was a part of an undercover team of vice cops that included Officers Styles (Ed Bernard) and Royster (Charles Dierkip) and was headed by Lt. Bill Crowley (Earl Holliman). In the earliest episodes, Pepper also had an autistic younger sister, Cheryl (Nichole Kallis). Police Woman was most notable as being the first successful crime drama starring a woman. It ran for four seasons, from 1974–78, for a total of 92 episodes. The May 6, 1975 episode of Police Story was subtitled “The Return of Joe Forrester” and starred Lloyd Bridges as a beat cop who (like Bumper Morgan) had walked the same neighborhood for many years and felt protective of “his” people. The highlight of the show was the performances of the always exceptional Bridges. Unfortunately, the writing rarely rose to a level above mediocrity, and the series folded after a single season. The third (and least successful) of the series introduced on Police Story was based on the episode “A Chance to Live” (5/28/1978), in which David Cassidy played an officer, Dan Shay, whose youthful appearance landed him an assignment requiring him to go back to high school posing as a student. That fall, Cassidy reprised the character in the series David Cassidy—Man Undercover, in which Shay continued his undercover work posing as a youthful offender. One week he’d join a youth street gang and the next enroll in college. At home, Shay (who was actually in his late twenties) had a wife Joanne (Wendy Rastatter) and little daughter Cindy (Elizabeth Reddin). Shay’s superior was cranky, loudmouthed Sgt. Walt Abrams (Simon Oakland). Only 10 episodes aired. Police Story, however, continued to play on NBC for four seasons, finally concluding its run in 1977 after 89 hours. NBC continued to air occasional two-hour Police Story movies after the series ended weekly production. Nine films aired between 1977 and 1980. An additional six movies were produced, one in 1987 and five in 1988 to fill a programming gap caused by

Crime Television—The 1970s

85

the writers’ strike that year, using scripts first filmed back in the 1970s. The final Police Story aired in December 1988. Despite the popularity of Police Story, a majority of audiences still seemed to prefer visiting regular characters each week whose lives could be explored in more depth over a longer period. Two such characters, both private investigators, made their mark on viewers during the 1974–75 season, although only one would receive the recognition he truly deserved. Harry O remains one of the most underrated private detective series of the 1970s. The program had many assets, first and foremost being series star David Janssen. Janssen remained a familiar and popular actor almost a decade after the running finally stopped for his Fugitive character in 1967. Despite the failure of his early 1970s effort O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, he was still a sought-after leading man. His performance in this hour-long ABC drama confirmed his stature as one of the finest dramatic actors on TV. His Harry Orwell character was first introduced in a 1973 movie-of-theweek titled Harry O: Such Dust As Dreams Are Made Of. Broadcast March 11, the film filled viewers in on how Harry was once a dedicated San Diego police officer whose career ended abruptly when he was shot in the back. He spent months confined to a hospital bed, a bullet permanently lodged near his spine. He eventually healed enough to leave the hospital and resume his life, but was discharged from the force and put on disability. That could have been the end of Orwell’s story. He had a nice little house on the beach, and spent his days fixing up an old boat he had christened The Answer. But his experiences had left him bitter—he was in both considerable physical pain and mental anguish. He was angry, withdrawn, and restless. He solved the latter by hanging out a private eye shingle and returning to the work he loved. He had many friends in the police department, including Det. Lt. Manny Quinlan (Henry Darrow), who despite being an old pal of Harry’s still resented his poking his nose in to open police investigations. Harry, now working from outside the system, sometimes found the work frustrating. When Harry would complain about police red tape, Manny would remind him, “These are the same rules you played by when you were a cop, my friend.” Harry O: Such Dust As Dreams Are Made Of featured an all-star cast and an intriguing story. Four years after the 1969 liquor store robbery in which Harry was shot, during which time Harry has tried to put the incident behind him the best he can, his shooter, who was never apprehended, reappears. It turns out after the holdup, the assailant, Harlan Garrison (Martin Sheen), joined the army and spent two tours of duty in Vietnam. Now a civilian again, he is being hunted by the other man who masterminded the

86

Crime Television

robbery, Walter Scherer (Sal Mineo), who is now involved in the heroin trade. Garrison wants Harry’s protection, for which he’ll pay handsomely, and throw in Scherer as well. Harry agrees, but his motive is to take down not only Scherer and his drug operation, but Garrison as well. The movie failed to generate much buzz when it aired, and it seemed viewers had seen the last of Harry Orwell. Then on February 3, 1974, ABC broadcast a second pilot movie, titled Smile, Jenny, You’re Dead. In this outing, Harry investigates murder attempts on the life of a model, Jenny English (Andrea Marcovicci), a case that puts him at odds with the police department, who are also looking into the allegations. Harry’s prime suspect turns out to be a macabre photographer (played by future director Zalman King). There’s also a B-storyline about a young girl (Jodie Foster) who latches onto Harry while waiting for her mother, arrested for shoplifting, to be released from jail. She and Janssen are wonderful together, conveying characters that are both hard-edged yet deeply vulnerable underneath. This second pilot, although not as good as the first one, nonetheless did the trick and ABC picked up Harry O for its fall 1976 schedule. Harry Orwell’s weekly adventures opened on Thursday, September 12, 1974, at 10:00 P.M. (The premiere episode, “Gertrude,” written by series creator Howard Rodman, was awarded an Edgar Award for Best Episode in a Television Series by the Mystery Writers of America.) Julie Sommars guest stars as a somewhat loony but likable young lady who recruits Harry to help find her brother (Les Lannom), who went missing from the Navy. Harry remained as crusty and intense as ever. He owned a car, but it spent a lot of time in the shop, forcing Harry to either use the bus or bum rides off passing police cruisers (he still had a lot of friends in uniform). Stories usually opened with Harry on the beach working on The Answer, hoping it would someday be seaworthy, but in no hurry. Working on it seemed therapeutic. Harry narrated each episode in the first-person, a nice added touch thanks to the generally well-written speeches given Janssen to convey to viewers. Then a case would drop into his lap. In “The Eyewitness” (10/17/1974), Harry is visited by Shirley Drew (Rosalind Cash), the nurse who saw him through his many months laid up in the hospital after he was shot. Her son James (Ty Henderson) has been implicated in a murder and she needs Harry’s help. Of course, as far as Manny is concerned, it’s an opened-and-closed case and he isn’t happy that Harry is stirring things up. During his investigation, Harry becomes acquainted with a prostitute, Ginnie (Margaret Avery), and her blind brother, Benjie (Ed Cambridge), who as it turns out may be the only “witness” to the crime. The episode contains all the small gestures that together

Crime Television—The 1970s

87

make it—and the series overall—work so well. After speaking with Benjie, as Harry is about to exit the room, he hesitates, almost painfully, at the idea of hitting the light switch, and leaving the young man, already lost and vulnerable, sitting alone in the dark, despite his blindness. When he later visits Ginnie in the hospital after she is badly beaten, Avery’s performance is all about the pain her character is endearing. A series strongpoint is in conveying raw emotions. In another early two-part episode, “Forty Reasons to Kill” (12/5/1974 and 12/12/1974), Harry looks into the murder of a young friend, George Silver, who was found brutally beaten with drugs in his possession. Harry believes the drugs were planted and that the killing may have something to do with the 40 acres of prime land that George was about to buy in the country. Harry travels to a small town where his friend was about to relocate and makes the acquaintance of wealthy landowner Glenna Nielson (Joanna Pettet) who Harry comes to believe may have something to do with George’s murder. But Harry finds himself falling for the woman, and they soon end up in a romantic relationship. Harry (who does have an ex-wife somewhere) is having strong feelings for someone for the first time in a long time, something he has to risk losing if it turns out that Glenna had something to do with George’s murder. Despite the quality of Harry O, the ratings for its early months on the air were only mediocre, and production costs were high, especially considering the series was filmed on location in San Diego. A decision was made to cut costs by relocating production and the program’s setting, to Santa Monica. So in January 1975, to establish the change of venue, Harry took a case up the coast, then learned his home was being torn down to make way for a beachfront high rise, and decided to stay. Henry Darrow was also dropped from the cast, and actor Anthony Zerbe became Harry’s new police nemesis, Lt. K. C. Trench. Harry moved into an apartment on the beach, where he could still look out at the ocean and still work on his boat. As it turned out, the view was even better than before. Harry’s new neighbors turned out to be three sexy stewardesses (played by Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Loni Anderson, and Barbara Leigh). Harry even ended up dating Sue (FawcettMajors). So much for the program’s total dedication to reality. Fortunately, the writing stayed on par. Although Henry Darrow had left the show as a regular, he did show up again for a one-shot guest appearance in what is perhaps the series’s best episode. In “Elegy for a Cop” (2/27/1975), Manny Quinlan travels to Los Angeles to help his runaway, drug-addicted niece, but ends up being shot and killed (on screen). At first the circumstances of his death are

88

Crime Television

considered questionable, being a police officer found dead in another city with a large sum of money on his person (he had called in sick for the day and told no one where he was going). Harry steps in and does his old friend one last favor by proving that Manny was not a cop on the take; in the process, he rescues his niece. Then, in a very touching and heartfelt final scene, Harry walks into a bar, purchases a bottle of tequila, writes Manny Quinlan’s name on it, and tells him to place it on a shelf where everyone can see it. He then instructs the bartender: “Every once in a while somebody will come in here and you’ll see that you like ’em right away, ‘cause they’re decent, and just good people. So give ’em a drink out of this bottle. It doesn’t matter whether they have money or not, tell ’em the drink’s on Manny Quinlan. Maybe they’ll remember him. If you feel like it, tell ’em he was a friend of mine.” “What’ll I do when the bottle runs out?” “Nothin’. Nobody lives forever.” The changes to Harry O were enough to give the series a ratings boost and earn it a second season. The program continued to thrive dramatically during the 1975–76 season with episodes such as “APB Harry Orwell” (11/6/1975), in which Harry is framed for murder and put in jail, leaving it up to Trench to track down someone who can alibi him. The chemistry between Janssen and Zerbe was terrific. Zerbe would end up winning an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor that season. Although ratings did begin to improve, Fred Silverman, the new head of the network, decided to take ABC in a different direction the next season with escapist entertainment like Charlie’s Angels (at least Fawcett-Majors wasn’t out of a job). He cancelled Harry O unceremoniously in the spring of 1976, leaving viewers to wonder whether Harry ever found the answers he was looking for in life (or if he ever even got his boat back in the water). Harry O aired its final original segment on April 29, 1976. In all, 2 two-hour pilot movies and 44 one-hour episodes were produced. Although the two pilot movies continued to get airplay, the series had limited play in syndication. But Janssen still succeeded in taking the private eye genre in a new direction. Former cops becoming private eyes certainly were nothing new, but Janssen’s thoroughly three-dimensional performance was. Fortunately, although Harry O failed to catch on with viewers, the genre was not lost. Over at NBC, another private eye was having better luck than old Harry. Jim Rockford had a lot in common with Harry Orwell. Both, for instance, lived on the beach. Of course, Harry lived in a cottage; Jim lived in a mobile

Crime Television—The 1970s

89

home, which he could hitch up to his car and drive off with. He also used it as an office, so he could claim it as a deduction on his income tax. Both were good at their jobs, but whereas Harry felt compelled to help people in need in order to find a little inner peace for himself (he could afford to, as he had a steady income from his police disability), Jim was more concerned with his own needs. Up front, he made his clients aware that he charged $200 a day plus expenses, quite a fee for a P.I. working out of a run-down trailer. Just for extra security, Jim would sometimes run credit checks before accepting someone’s case, and might ask for collateral such as the pink slip to their automobile. Jim Rockford truly challenged the image of what viewers expected in a leading man. But evidently TV audiences in the 1970s liked what they saw, as The Rockford Files became one of the decade’s most commercially and critically praised crime dramas. The Rockford Files came about after producers Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell ran into production problems with a series they were doing at Universal titled Toma (which was based on the life of real-life New Jersey Detective David Toma). Toma had premiered on ABC on October 4, 1973, and starred actor Tony Musante in the title role of a dedicated undercover detective who accomplished his assignments by highly unusual and creative means. The show also dealt with how the husband and father of two handled the pressure of his job and the effects it had on his home life. The series performed very well, but was plagued by star Musante’s reluctance to work in television. Musante had resisted from the moment he was first approached about the role. He was primarily a stage actor and wasn’t keen on the idea of doing TV. ABC and Universal felt he had the makings of a true star and continued to pursue him. They eventually won him over with a highly unusual offer—if he agreed to do Toma, a clause would be included in his contract giving him the option of bowing out after a year if he wasn’t happy. Evidently, ABC figured that if the show became a hit and Musante was being recognized on the streets, was asked for his autograph, and was making a lot of money, he would change his tune. They guessed wrong. Even though the series did become a hit and Musante did become famous and a bit wealthier, he opted out at the end of one season. The initial problems with Toma began early on. A writers’ strike that summer meant there were no new scripts readily available so producers could start churning out new episodes for the fall 1973 season. After only a few segments had been filmed, Huggins and Cannell looked at their schedule and realized that it would be impossible for them to meet the series’s fifth scheduled airdate. At the time, it was taking six days to shoot each

90

Crime Television

Toma, and the crew was working a five-day workweek, which meant they were losing a day on every show on their production schedule. Accordingly, by the time the program’s fifth airdate arrived, the film for that segment would still be in the lab. Cannell remembers his and Huggins’s attempts to resolve the problem. “We went to ABC and said, ‘You have to preempt us because we can’t get the fifth Toma on the air,’” he explained. “They said, ‘Well, we’re not going to preempt you because we’ve used all the preemptions during the strike and we don’t have anything to preempt you with, and so you have to get the episode on the air. So we went to Universal and we said, ‘You’ve got to get ABC to back off, there’s no way we can do this.’ And they said, ‘We’ve got this same problem with three other shows on ABC, and you’ve got to get the show on the air.’ So we’re walking across the lot from the Black Tower, and I’m sort of galloping behind Roy. I’m 29 years old and I’m going ‘What do we do, what do we do?’ I’m all panicked, it’s my first producing job, and I think my career is all over. So Roy says, ‘Why don’t we just create our own preemption?’ I said, ‘Can we do that?’ And he said, “I don’t know why not.’” The two then returned to Huggins’s office, where the elder producer pulled the Universal Studios phone directory out of his desk and began to run his finger down the page. After a few moments, he stopped and looked up at a bewildered Cannell. “Tom Rockford, do you like that name?” “Yeah, sure,” answered Cannell. “OK, this guy’s name is Rockford, and he only handles closed cases. We’ll call it The Rockford Files.” Tom Rockford was actually a grip at the studio. Cannell would write his first draft of The Rockford Files using the name Tom before eventually changing the heroes name to Jim. The decision was also made to develop a tie-in between Toma and The Rockford Files. The scenario Cannell scripted called for Toma to lose a case at the beginning of the episode even though the suspect is guilty. Toma wants to keep after the guy, but his superior, convinced the victim committed suicide, orders Toma to close the case. So Toma calls upon his old buddy Rockford, who of course only handles closed cases because he doesn’t want to upset the police by butting in on their active investigations. Then Rockford does the hour and solves the case, and in the end Musante comes back in and says “Thanks Jim, I knew I could count on you.” The idea was to shoot the episode’s teaser and tag involving Musante simultaneously with the fourth Toma, while Rockford was being shot independently. Then they’d slip The Rockford Files on ahead of the fifth Toma as a pre-emption.

Crime Television—The 1970s

91

Cannell remembers having a great time working on the script. “Roy gave me six days to write this thing, because we have to get it out immediately and start prepping it, casting it, and shooting it,” recalls Cannell. “I thought that Rockford was just going to be one of the contract players at Universal, that it was just going to be an hour of filler. Nobody cared what it was or what I was doing. Nobody asked me who Rockford was. I didn’t even get notes on the story. The world was in turmoil because of the strike. So I thought, as long as nobody cares who this guy is I’m going to break every cliché I can think of in private eye fiction.” Cannell had viewed an episode of Mannix the evening before he began writing the Rockford pilot in which the P.I. is visited by a little girl who tells him a heartbreaking story about how her mother has failed to return home. After listening dutifully, Mannix says “I’d like to help you.” “How much do you cost, Mr. Mannix?” “Well, how much do you have?” At which point the girl opens her small plastic purse and dumps out a few quarters and a handful of candy. The detective then thumbs through the items carefully before turning back to the girl with a smile. “You know what, that’s just the right amount.” Cannell found the exchange totally ludicrous. Jim Rockford, he envisioned, would look at the girl and say, “’Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve got overhead, I’ve got lights, I can’t work for candy and quarters.’” “That’s what tripped me onto this whole idea that he was going to be like the Jack Benny of private eyes,” laughs Cannell. “Private eyes never have family, so I gave him Joseph Rockford, his dad, who was a real blue collar guy who drove a truck and was really embarrassed telling his buddies at the truck stop what Jimmy did for a living. And I basically wrote my relationship with my father, who was my greatest hero and my best friend, but who thought I was literally out of my mind trying to be a Hollywood writer. I’d walked away from his multimillion-dollar businesses to go scuffle around in the dirt of Hollywood. I wrote our relationship and his embarrassment at what I was doing for a living. Then I had Rockford run every time he was threatened, he’d just bunk out and quit. He’d run credit checks on the poor clients and would take their pink slips as collateral.” Cannell was having so much fun working on the script that instead of writing the typical 60 pages that constitute a one-hour episode, he wound up with 90 pages. He finished it in five days and turned it in to Huggins. Huggins worked mostly in the evenings and at night, usually getting into the office around 4 P.M. After reading The Rockford Files, he called Cannell at 3 A.M., said

92

Crime Television

it was the funniest script he’d read in ten years, and not to worry about the length. ABC was not as receptive, however. They absolutely hated it. They sent it back with instructions for Cannell to cut out all those character traits that Cannell and Huggins were so fond of. Cannell was crushed but wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Huggins was. He wielded a lot of power and stood up to ABC, told them to take it as it was or they’d go somewhere else. ABC passed. Huggins decided to take it to NBC, but wanted to add a little leverage to the proposal. Huggins felt strongly that the script was a contemporary version of Maverick, the classic western he’d created in the 1950s. So he sent it over to actor James Garner, who was then in the final stages of negotiating a deal for another project. Garner read the script and loved it. He walked away from the other deal and within 72 hours had signed to play Jim Rockford. Huggins then called over to NBC and pitched the idea; he said they had a 90-minute movie with James Garner. They asked to see the script, but Huggins refused, fearing the same reaction they’d received from ABC. He then put the pressure on them, saying, “Look, we’ve got this great script, we’ve got James Garner. I’ll give you until the end of business today, then it goes to CBS.” NBC called back an hour later saying they’d take it. The Rockford Files pilot movie aired on March 27, 1974. The plot revolved around Jim being hired by young Sara Butler (future Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner) to find the person who killed her father, whose body had been discovered beneath a pier months earlier. The police had been unable to come up with any leads and the case had grown cold. Based on strong ratings and positive critical reaction, NBC ordered a series for fall. The show debuted on September 13, 1974, following the same basic premise from the pilot. Character actor Noah Beery replaced Robert Donley, who had appeared as Jim’s father, Rocky, in the pilot. The rest of the cast included Joe Santos as Jim’s friend in the police department, Det. Dennis Becker; Gretchen Corbett as attorney Beth Davenport, a friend who often sought out Jim’s help; and Stuart Margolin, who provided the series with a little comic relief as Jim’s flaky pal Evelyn “Angel” Martin, whom Jim had to bail out of trouble on more than one occasion. Their relationship was genuine, however, and provided for some great character moments. The Rockford Files was ranked twelfth its first season on the air. Those numbers dropped the following year, but the series managed to attract a loyal following that prompted NBC to keep it on the air throughout the remainder of the decade. Along the way, The Rockford Files inspired a spinoff titled Richie Brockelman, Private Eye. Richie (Dennis Dugan) was a college educated 23-year-old with a private investigators license. His only problem

Crime Television—The 1970s

93

was that he looked 15 years old and nobody would take him seriously. He, too, had a police contact in Sgt. Ted Coopersmith (Robert Hogan). Sharon Deterson (Barbara Bosson) was his secretary. Cannell co-created the series with Steven Bochco, who would become one of Hollywood’s top talents behind the camera beginning in the early 1980s. The show actually began as a TV-movie titled Richie Brockelman: The Missing 24 Hours (10/27/1976). Cannell then used Richie in an episode of The Rockford Files before the character finally got his own series in the spring of 1978. The show premiered March 17, 1978, and was given a five-episode trial run in The Rockford Files timeslot on Friday nights at 9:00 P.M. After NBC failed to pick up the series that fall, Cannell brought Richie back to Rockford for a two-part episode in early 1979. Cannell also added another recurring character to The Rockford Files that season: Lance White, a tall, dark, and handsome fellow private investigator. Jim was constantly befuddled and aggravated at the way everything always fell into place for the guy. Lance White was played by a young, primarily unknown actor named Tom Selleck, who, in a couple of years, landed his own breakthrough role as Thomas Magnum. The Rockford Files was still going strong in the fall of 1979, its sixth season, when Garner began experiencing health problems associated with the stress of doing the show (which required his presence in just about every scene). Huggins and Cannell informed NBC that they were halting production so that Garner could get the rest he needed, and Jim Rockford closed his last case on January 10, 1980 after 123 episodes had been produced (in addition to the pilot). Fourteen years after The Rockford Files left the air, Jim returned in a series of TV-movies, seven in all, the first of which aired in 1994. While The Rockford Files solidified Cannell’s standing in the entertainment industry, the producer also kept busy with several other projects during the 1970s. After getting the Rockford pilot made back in 1973, Cannell still faced the issue of dealing with actor Tony Musante’s dislike of working in television. Musante, star of Toma, decided to indeed exercise his escape clause at the end of the series’s first season. ABC was determined to keep the popular show going, however, and signed actor Robert Blake to star in a revamped second season. A deal was almost reached with Musante that would have kept him on for another year, alternating with Blake, who would play a different character. Each actor would star in half that year’s episodes. But the deal eventually fell apart and Musante walked. Blake had actually been NBC’s first choice to play Jim Rockford, but Cannell and Huggins objected.

94

Crime Television

Blake was only 5’4” and Cannell didn’t believe that viewers would find it amusing when a man of that height turned tail and ran. It would be humorous to see a man of Garner’s 6’3” stature running in the face of danger, Cannell reasoned. Although Blake was short, he was solid and tough; he had left home at 16 and joined the Merchant Marines, even earned a Purple Heart after being wounded during the Korean War. Blake was just right for the role of a scruffy undercover cop capable of seeming at home on the streets. ABC was eventually persuaded and gave Cannell the okay to do Baretta as a separate series. Baretta was a streetwise cop who worked undercover infiltrating organized crime rings, whether it involved protection rackets, drugs, prostitution, or murder. Baretta was good at his job because he had grown up on the streets. He was first-generation Italian-American (his parents had immigrated to the United States), and had spent his youth getting into trouble with the law. When it came to doing his job, Baretta wasn’t interested in busting the low-level criminals who worked in his neighborhood (many of them were old friends of his). Instead, he preferred to follow the flow of money up the ladder so that he could take down those at the top. Baretta lived in a small one-room apartment in a run-down inner-city hotel called the King Edward. His companion was a pet cockatoo named Fred. Billy Truman (Tom Ewell) was a retired cop who ran the hotel, Inspector Schiller (Dana Elcar) was Tony’s superior, and Rooster (Michael D. Roberts) was one of Tony’s informants. Schiller was gone after the first season, after which Tony began reporting to Lt. Hal Brubaker (Edward Grover). Baretta hit the airwaves on January 17, 1975, with the episode “He’ll Never See Daylight Again.” It begins with a police raid on an apartment being used as a numbers bank. The raid occurs unbeknownst to Baretta, who had been casing the operation for weeks. But when the head of the gambling operation, Frank Cassell (Joseph Mascolo), hears about the bust, he orders retaliation on Baretta. The next evening, as Baretta takes his longtime girlfriend Sharon (Madlyn Rhue) out for an anniversary dinner complete with talk of marriage, a hit team moves in and opens fire on them outside the restaurant. In the aftermath, Baretta lays critically wounded over Sharon’s lifeless body. After recovering, Tony decides to go after Cassell the only way he can. Determined not to let him get away with Sharon’s murder and realizing they don’t have enough evidence to take him down, Baretta embarks on his own vendetta, threatening to kill Cassell. Eventually even police are left with no choice but to put an APB out for Baretta’s arrest, forcing him to go underground. But Baretta assures Cassell that it’s only a

Crime Television—The 1970s

95

matter of time before he gets him. Eventually, Baretta is able to use Cassell’s own paranoia against him. The series climbed in popularity, eventually peaking at number eight during the 1976–77 season, when it aired on Wednesday nights at 9:00 P.M. It served as a lead-in to ABC’s new hit Charlie’s Angels, which ranked number five. The next season ABC switched their timeslots, moving Charlie’s Angels back an hour to 9:00 P.M., with Baretta following at 10:00 P.M. For some reason, Baretta’s fanbase didn’t take to the move and ratings plummeted. ABC, which at that time was dominating prime time with 12 of television’s top-20 programs, had little tolerance for shows that fell short of being outright hits. The network cancelled Baretta at the conclusion of its fourth season in the spring of 1978 after 82 episodes. Stephen J. Cannell created and produced several other series for Universal during the 1970s, the most notable being the World War II drama Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976–78), starring Robert Conrad as real-life flying ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. (Cannell hired Donald P. Bellisario, giving the future Magnum, P.I. and JAG creator his first producing job.) Cannell’s credits also include a couple of short-lived private eye series: the period-drama City of Angels (in 1976, executive produced by Roy Huggins) with Wayne Rogers, and The Duke (1979), with Robert Conrad starring, this time as a former boxer turned private investigator. (Cannell decided to take a risk and leave Universal at the end of the decade to form his own independent production company.) The fall of 1975 marked the return to television of a legendary crime solver. Best-selling mystery novelist and amateur criminologist Ellery Queen is considered one of the literary world’s most popular fictional crime solvers. Real-life cousins Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay created Ellery Queen in 1929 for their novel The Roman Hat Mystery. They followed that up with some 33 additional books and an assortment of short stories, followed in 1941 by the start up of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (still being published as of 2006). Ellery made his way to the big screen as early as 1936 in The Mandarin Mystery starring Eddie Quillan in the title role. This led to a series of films in the late 1930s and early 1940s featuring a number of actors in the lead—Donald Cook, Ralph Bellamy, and William Gargan. The character made his way to television in a number of incarnations. He first appeared on the Dumont network in a live series, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, which ran from October 1950 to December 1951. Richard Hart played Ellery. Shortly after the premiere, on January 2, 1951, 35-year-old Hart died of a heart attack and was replaced by Lee Bowman. In December 1951, the

96

Crime Television

series moved to ABC where it played for another year. In 1954, a syndicated, filmed version appeared starring Hugh Marlow that ran for 32 episodes. Yet a third version, titled The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen, appeared in 1958, this time on NBC, starring George Nader. In 1959, production of the series was relocated from New York, where it was being broadcast live, to California, where it would be filmed. Nader didn’t want to leave the Big Apple and resigned the role. In Los Angeles, Lee Phillips stepped into the role for the few remaining months that it stayed on the air. None of the previous Ellery Queen efforts for television were particularly memorable. It wasn’t until 1975 that Universal put out a version that truly captured the essence of the character. Jim Hutton was cast as Ellery this time around. The show, developed by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link, was presented as a period piece set in 1940s New York City. David Wayne played Ellery’s father, Inspector Richard Queen, who turned to his son for help with certain cases. Ellery was still a famous mystery author, but was all–too willing to get involved in the real thing when an opportunity arose. Tom Reese co-starred as Inspector Queen’s assistant, Sgt. Velie; John Hillerman played Simon Brimmer, a rival detective who had his own radio show; and Ken Swofford was newspaper reporter Frank Flannigan, who was always trying to get the scoop on Ellery’s investigations. The 1970s version was well done on all levels. The series premiered on NBC on September 11, 1975, airing on Thursday nights at 9:00 P.M. The scripts, by Levinson, Link, Peter S. Fischer, and other talented writers, were above average. The set decoration and costumes were authentic for the post-World War II era, and composer Elmer Bernstein wrote an entertaining score that added to the feel of the period. The series kicked off with a 90-minute pilot movie on March 23, 1975 subtitled “Fourth Side of the Triangle” (based on a 1965 novel by Avram Davidson, who worked from an original story by Lee and Dannay). In the episode, Ellery becomes involved in the murder investigation of fashion designer Monica Grey (Nancy Kovak, credited as Nancy Mehta). Suspects included Grey’s lover, Carson McKell (Ray Milland); Carson’s wife Marion (Kim Hunter), who’d learned of the affair; and their son Tom (Monte Markham), who himself had fallen in love with his father’s mistress. While investigating the crime scene, Ellery notices that Grey, before dying, pulled the electrical chords to her clock and TV set from the wall outlet. Ellery believes that in doing so she was trying to leave a message identifying her killer, if he can just figure out what she was trying to say. This was the typical style in which these new Ellery Queen mysteries would play out. Unlike Columbo, viewers never saw who the killer was. Instead,

Crime Television—The 1970s

97

they walked through the investigation along with Ellery, trying to decipher the clues. Then, at the end of the third act, after he had carefully examined the crime scene and interrogated the suspects, Jim Hutton would step out of character by turning to the audience and saying, “Well, have you figured it out? Do you know who the killer is?” He would then give them a couple of hints. When the fourth act resumed, Inspector Queen would have all the suspects sequestered in the same room. Ellery would then slowly assemble each piece of the puzzle until all the evidence pointed toward one person. Speaking to the audience proved to be an ordeal for Hutton, recalls producer Peter Fischer. “That terrified him,” reveals Fischer. “Actors are told, Don’t look at the camera, whatever you do don’t let them look into your eyes. Of course, in every show Tim had to look the camera right in the eye as a character and it really flustered him a lot. But he was a very nice man and toward the end I think he got a little more comfortable with it.” Guests who appeared on the show included Walter Pidgeon, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Godfrey, George Burns, Eve Arden, Don Ameche, Donald O’Connor, Kip Niven, bandleader Guy Lombardo, and Sal Mineo (just a month before his murder in February 1976). In one episode, Ellery became a suspect himself. The episode, subtitled “The Adventures of the Comic Book Crusader” (10/2/1975) began with Ellery angrily confronting an unscrupulous publisher (Tom Bosley) who is about to put out an unflattering Ellery Queen comic book. When the man later ends up dead, Ellery becomes the most likely suspect. The series became very popular with die-hard Ellery Queen fans, but just didn’t seem to click with mainstream viewers, who may have objected to the show’s unusual style of not presenting the killer upfront. NBC cancelled the show after a single season. The programs 22nd and final one-hour episode aired on April 4, 1976. Perhaps Ellery Queen would have been a better fit for the NBC Movie Mystery wheel than it was for a weekly timeslot. (An unused script, “The Adventure of the Grand Old Lady,” was later used for an episode of Murder, She Wrote, a flashback episode set in 1947.) Fischer feels that part of the series’s inability to hold onto its audience had to do with its interactive approach with viewers. “On Ellery Queen we used a lot of guest stars, as many as we could, to confuse the audience,” explains Fischer. “Up until that time if you did a mystery show and you had one guest star, you could bet the family mortgage that they were the killer. So I said the only way we can do this is to either use no names at all, which is tough, or we could put a lot of television names and old movie stars in and then you can’t tell the killer because you’ve got all these different people in the show. So we tried that and it seemed to work out pretty

98

Crime Television

well. One thing that we did have a problem with was that Dick Levinson was a brilliant guy and he loved puzzles and he loved games, and so when we were doing clues he would come up with some really great ones, but they were so obscure and so difficult that nobody could ever figure them out. So at the end when we got to the explanation, a lot of people said, ‘Well, it was a fun show but what was all that about?’ Even though we had put the clues in front of them, they could never really tell from the clues what had happened. Later, when [Fischer, Levinson, and Link] did Murder, She Wrote, I said, ‘We’re not going to make the same mistake this time. This is going to be a little simplistic, but we’re going to let the audience play along and not try to outsmart them.’ And of course we had a much different level of success with Murder, She Wrote than we did with Ellery.” Ellery Queen may have been critically recognized, but another modernday crime drama on the air that year instead raised the ire of critics and viewers alike. The show, considering its almost universal condemnation, came from unexpected quarters. The show did prove topical, however. S.W.A.T. stood for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such teams began popping up in many of the major cities in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s to combat both the rise in urban violence and because of the increasing accessibility of assault weapons to criminals on the streets. Although S.W.A.T. units were actually a part of their local police departments, they more closely resembled military strike teams. They dressed in dark-blue, unmarked uniforms complete with body armor and were heavily armed. They went through intense training to be prepared for any situation: they were expert marksmen, could repel from the rooftops of tall buildings or down elevator shafts, could operate in the sky or under water, and when the situation called for it they excelled at hand-to-hand combat. They would be called to the scene when the street cops found themselves outgunned, facing unusually hazardous situations or terrain, or when hostages had been taken. In 1975, the concept was brought to television courtesy of producer Aaron Spelling. He actually introduced S.W.A.T. in a special two-hour episode of The Rookies that aired on February 17, 1975. The episode introduced Lt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson (played by Steve Forrest), the head of Los Angeles’s newly formed S.W.A.T. unit, the notion of which doesn’t sit well with Rookies character Terry Webster (George Stanford Brown). A week later, on February 24, 1975, S.W.A.T. debuted at 9:00 P.M. in its own Monday nighttime slot. That episode, titled “The Killing Field,” followed Hondo as he interviewed candidates and assembled his team, amidst controversy, after the shooting deaths of several L.A.P.D. officers. One of the

Crime Television—The 1970s

99

cops that had been killed was the partner of Officer Jim Street (Robert Urich), who became one of Hondo’s first recruits. Rounding out the unit were Rod Perry as Sgt. David “Deacon” Kay, whose job it was to oversee communications in the field, Mark Shera as Officer Dominic Luca, the impulsive young sharpshooter, and James Coleman as T. J., who provided support. They were all Vietnam veterans who had joined the L.A.P.D. after being discharged, and therefore were well versed in military protocol. They had their own office, and whenever trouble arose, they would spring to action, weapon in hand, and run to the specially equipped van in which they traveled. S.W.A.T. was an immediate hit with viewers and would finish its first season ranked number 16. Those associated with the show had to make due with the adulation of its primarily young audience, however, as every other circle—including critics and television advocacy groups—were extremely harsh to the program, proclaiming it perhaps the most violent series ever to air on television. Even its producer Aaron Spelling would later admit that of the 50-some series on his resume, S.W.A.T. was his least favorite because of the excessive violence. But once the program was on the air, there was little that could be done to fix the premise—the idea behind S.W.A.T. was to tackle the most violent cases. So ABC was torn between the rising controversy that was S.W.A.T. and the high ratings the program was attracting. Even the theme song, composed by Barry DeVorzon, hit number one on the Billboard pop charts. Most episodes of S.W.A.T. followed a fairly similar recipe that called for a villain who was portrayed as being psychotic to some degree. Rarely did Hondo and his unit encounter your everyday criminal driven simply by greed. In “Death Carrier” (3/10/1975), model Janet Warren (Ronne Troup) had a love life that was in true turmoil. Within the span of one year, three of her suitors had been gunned down by a sniper, who seemed to be observing every aspect of her life. Street then goes undercover as the young woman’s new boyfriend to get the killer to come out of hiding and make his next move, so the team could nail him. “Sole Survivor” (5/26/1975) cast popular character actor Simon Oakland as an ex-parole officer who, in order to both emulate and outplay S.W.A.T., forms his own team of uniquely trained individuals—all ex-cons—to pull off a gold coin heist. Taking down Hondo and his men even became a family affair in “Kill S.W.A.T.” (9/20/1975), in which recently widowed Joanna Bishop (Diana Hyland) recruits her two brothers-in-law (Ben Frank and David Nash) to go after S.W.A.T., who she believes killed her husband unnecessarily. By the time S.W.A.T. was well into its second year, the controversy over its violent content was still raging. At the start of the season, ABC had

100

Crime Television

moved the series from its comfortable Monday night timeslot to Saturdays at 9:00 P.M., where it went up against established hits Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. The network was probably hoping that the new timeslot would prove fatal for S.W.A.T. and their problems would be solved. But S.W.A.T. held its own. Ratings softened a bit, but the program still made a respectable showing. ABC held on until the end of the season, but when time came to put together their schedule for the 1976–77 season, S.W.A.T. was absent from the list. The series aired for the last time on June 29, 1976 after 37 episodes (excluding the two-hour Rookies excursion). Steve Forrest, who’d been a successful film and television star (The Bad and the Beautiful, The Longest Day) before S.W.A.T., continued to work regularly in both mediums after the demise of the series. Robert Urich went on to star in a number of television vehicles, most notably Vega$ (1978–81) and Spencer: For Hire (1985–88), and Mark Shera began a four-year stint on Barnaby Jones beginning in the fall of 1976. Aaron Spelling was hardly fazed by the cancellation of S.W.A.T. (The Rookies also ended its four-year run that summer.) Eager to put the controversy behind him, Spelling was already back in the game with two more series that were destined for greater success. By that time, he (and partner Leonard Goldberg) had Starsky & Hutch on the air and Charlie’s Angels in production (not to mention his critically acclaimed drama Family that had debuted in spring, 1976). Spelling and Goldberg were still embroiled in controversy over the amount of violence in S.W.A.T. when they introduced Starsky & Hutch that same year. Starsky & Hutch was not as violent as S.W.A.T., but it was a gritty detective drama with its share of gunplay, fisticuffs, and car chases. As a matter of fact, Starsky & Hutch was one of the earliest examples of a series in which a car could arguably be considered a character (excluding My Mother, The Car)—usually a sure sign that you can expect a certain amount of rampant road play. Starsky & Hutch was also an early example of the buddy cop show genre. Although many crime shows during the early decades of television featured officers on the job together, most of their relationships could be best described as simply being “partners.” Starting with Adam-12 to a certain extent and evolving more deeply in the reality-strewn inner-city police shows of the early-to-mid 1970s, cops were now becoming friends, in many cases, best friends. Starsky and Hutch were perfect examples. When, in an early episode, the two realize that they were sold out by bad cops, Starsky asks: “Who in the hell are we supposed to trust?” Hutch replies, “Same people we always trust: us.” Starsky & Hutch was first seen in a 90-minute pilot film that aired on Wednesday, April 30, 1975, directed by Barry Shear and written by series

Crime Television—The 1970s

101

creator William Blinn. (Blinn had also created Spelling’s 1972–76 cop show The Rookies.) Actors Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul were cast as the leads, undercover detectives Dave Starsky and Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson. Their beat was the streets of an unidentified large city that looked a lot like Los Angeles. Richard Ward (pilot only) and Bernie Hamilton were seen as their superior, Captain Harold Dobey, a bear of a man who regularly read them the riot act, but deeply respected them. Antonio Fargas played “Huggy Bear,” the duo’s black street source, who provided the both dramatic back-up and comic relief, depending on the situation. Starsky drove a red-and-white 1974 Ford Torino that became very popular with viewers (so much so that the Ford Motor Company, in 1976, put out a limited edition Torino that was painted to closely resemble the car used on the series). The car actually played an important role in the pilot when a couple is gunned down while making out in an almost identical vehicle. That, combined with the fact that word hits the street immediately that Starsky and Hutch are dead, leads the detectives to believe that somebody is out to kill them. The detectives try to stay ahead of two hitmen (guest stars Richard Lynch and Michael Conrad) while trying to figure out who hired them. Their prime suspects are a drug kingpin they’re about to put away with their testimony and an unidentified member of their own department. This episode clearly defines both the characters and their relationship: Starsky is the more aggressive, angry member of the team, who enjoys fast food, fast cars, and fast women; Hutch is laid back, enjoys reading, a good restaurant, and strolling on the beach. Yet when the heat is on, they’re both equally adept at tackling the villains. The pilot scored well in the ratings and Starsky & Hutch was added to ABC’s fall 1975 roster. The series premiered on September 3, 1975, scheduled on Wednesday evenings at 10:00 P.M. It immediately jumped into the Nielsen top-20. The show’s popularity had a lot to do with its across-the-board appeal: younger viewers were attracted to the action and Starsky’s car; slightly older male viewers could relate to the buddy-relationship between the characters; and many females tuned in for a look at Glaser and Soul, who became instant sex symbols. Both actors had limited resumes before beginning work on Starsky & Hutch. Glaser had appeared on a couple of soaps and in the films Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Butterflies Are Free (1972). Soul was best known for a couple of series’ roles in Here Come the Brides (1968–70) and the final season of Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law (1974). They were suddenly thrust into the limelight. Soul managed to keep a low profile, but Glaser proved to be difficult, complaining about the demands of his newfound stardom and the quality of the scripts.

102

Crime Television

Despite being categorized as an action-adventure, Starsky & Hutch was usually very well written. One controversial early outing was titled “The Fix” (10/8/1975), in which a mobster (Robert Loggia) kidnaps Hutch and begins injecting him with heroine, until he gets the officer hooked. Starsky first works desperately to locate his missing partner, then once he does, goes after those responsible. Meanwhile, Hutch must battle withdrawal from the drug. The episode was actually banned from airing in England back in the 1970s because of its content, finally airing there in 1999. In “Shootout” (12/17/1975, directed by Fernando Lamas), the guys decide to cap off a hectic day by dining at an Italian restaurant that is subsequently taken over by hitmen, who shoot and critically wound Starsky, leaving Hutch to negotiate their way out of the situation in a bid to save his partner’s life. (Knowledgeable viewers may recognize that the script for this episode was recycled 11 years later as the final episode of The A-Team, subtitled “Without Reservations”). After a successful first season, ABC began to toy with Starsky & Hutch’s timeslot, moving it to a number of different nights and times over the next three seasons. This seemed to take its toll on viewership as ratings began to fall. Also, as the series progressed and the characters became more popular, the writers began to lean more heavily on the humorous elements of the detectives’ relationship. By the start of the 1978–79 season, the program was beginning to wear thin, and efforts were made to shift direction and recapture those elements that had worked so well the first year. This led to some interesting scenarios that year, including such gems as “The Game” (9/19/1978), in which the partners blow an arrest and allow a big-time felon to escape. Pointing fingers, they then enter into a game to see which is the more skilled tactician. The idea is for Hutch to hide out on the streets in an effort to evade detection by Starsky for an entire weekend. But as soon as Hutch goes underground, Starsky learns that his friend has eaten a can of contaminated soup and could die from botulism unless he can track him down immediately. Despite some good episodes during its fourth year, Starsky & Hutch was cancelled at the end of that season. Starsky & Hutch was definitely a product of its era, which is reflected in the heroes’ clothing styles, lingo, and sexist attitudes, which explains why although the program ended with 94 hours available for syndication, the show didn’t prosper in reruns as well as hoped. In 2004, Warner Bros. commissioned a feature film send-up of the series, starring actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as Starsky and Hutch. Rapper Snoop Dogg played Huggy Bear and Fred Williamson was Captain Dobey. The comedy, directed affectionately by Todd Phillips, grossed nearly $90 million at the domestic box-office. Glaser and Soul even made cameo appearances.

Crime Television—The 1970s

103

Aaron Spelling was the busiest producer in television during the 1970s, and ABC was counting its blessings all the way to the bank. Not only did the super producer give the ABC network crime projects such as The Rookies, S.W.A.T., and Starsky & Hutch, but he was also responsible for Family, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island. But Spelling still wasn’t done. He still had not one, not two, but three more escapist crime pilots to bring to the small screen, each of which would go on to become huge hits. The first and most successful was Charlie’s Angels, which took the nation by storm when it premiered in 1976. The series actually began life as a script by writers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (Mannix) titled The Alley Cats, about three incredibly beautiful former police recruits who are whisked away from their mundane duties and go to work as private investigators for a reclusive millionaire, whom they never meet in person. Instead, Charlie simply calls in their assignments over a speaker-box in their plush Beverly Hills office and his Angels go to work. New ABC head of programming Fred Silverman pushed Alley Cats into production in early 1976. But even after a name change to Charlie’s Angels, the pilot tested so poorly that Silverman passed on it as a series. These Angels were blessed, however, and the network found itself in need of programming to plug a two-hour hole in the schedule early that spring, and Charlie’s Angels was pulled off the shelf to fill it. It aired on the evening of March 21, 1976, and astonished everyone by pulling in an incredible 59 share. The next day, it was on the fall roster. Casting had a lot to do with the success of Charlie’s Angels. Experience, though, was not the lead actresses’ greatest assets. Kate Jackson had appeared as a regular in Spelling’s The Rookies and was the first one cast. Jaclyn Smith had only a few minor film and TV credits on her resume, but had worked as a Breck shampoo model. Farrah Fawcett-Majors was also a virtual unknown, having made only a few scattered guest appearances on series such as Mayberry R.F.D., The Flying Nun, The Partridge Family, and Harry-O. She had married actor Lee Majors in 1973 and had also guested on his show, The Six Million Dollar Man. Another important role to fill was that of Charlie Townsend, who would be heard each week but not seen. Still, his voice had to make an impression on viewers. Otherwise, why would the gifted women want to work for him sight unseen. Spelling made the right choice in turning to actor John Forsythe, an old friend who had appeared in the producer’s TV-movie, The Letters, in 1973. But what these young women lacked in professional experience, they made up for in physical attributes (the term political correctness had not yet been coined). The “girls”—Sabrina Duncan (Jackson), Kelly Garrett (Smith),

104

Crime Television

and Jill Munroe (Fawcett-Majors)—went places and did things men could not do, and running around braless was the ticket that got them through doors. Most of their cases took the Angels to locales where they could best put their lovely features to use—in spas, clubs, on luxury yachts. But occasionally the Angels would get to show they were more than just stunningly beautiful—they were also skilled in the martial arts, and could skydive, scuba dive, and high dive. Rarely did they use guns. Charlie’s Angels premiered on September 22, 1976, playing on Wednesday nights at 10:00 P.M., well after the family viewing hour (8:00–9:00 P.M.), when its strong sexual content would not create too much of a stir. (As the seasons progressed and the series thrived, however, the show’s timeslot was slowly rolled back, first to 9:00 P.M. in 1977 and eventually to 8:00 P.M. by 1980.) Sabrina, Kelly, and Jill became America’s newest sweethearts. In real life, the actresses, too, became overnight sensations. Men obviously tuned in for the jiggle, but young woman of the time also curiously found them to be role models. Fawcett in particular became a megastar. A swimsuit poster she put out in 1976 sold 8 million copies. On screen (aided by actor David Doyle as John Bosley, the guy who oversaw the Angels’ daily activities for Charlie), the woman appeared unified and united in their tasks. Off screen, however, there was immediate dissention in the ranks. Although the series had zoomed to number four in only its first year on the air, Fawcett made clear her dissatisfaction and desire to leave the show. After threats of lawsuits were volleyed back and forth between FawcettMajors’s camp and the Spelling people, a settlement was reached in which Farrah was allowed to leave the show but agreed to make a number of guest appearances in upcoming episodes. Her absence the next season could have potentially meant disaster for the show. Fortunately, the producers found another virtual unknown, Cheryl Ladd (wife of actor David Ladd), to fill the void. Ladd played Kris Munroe, younger sister of Farrah’s character, Jill. Viewers mourning the loss of Farrah were soon placated by Ladd’s blond bombshell presence, and the Angels continued their investigations. They finished their second season still ranked impressively in the Nielsens at number 12. The cast stayed intact for another year after that, but in the spring of 1979, Kate Jackson, too, announced she was leaving the series. This time the move was more amicable. Shelley Hack was hired as the newest Angel, Tiffany Welles, but she failed to catch on with viewers as Ladd had done during the previous transition. Hack was replaced after one season, in the fall of 1980, with Tanya Roberts as Julie Rogers. That season the production headed to Hawaii for a brief period, in hopes that the new scenery—both

Crime Television—The 1970s

105

Roberts and the Islands—might improve ratings, which had dropped to number 20. But the slide was irreversible, and ABC sent the Angels to their eternal rest in February, 1981 (although a few original episodes aired that summer). A total of 109 segments would go on to play successfully in the global syndication market. With the success of Charlie’s Angels, Aaron Spelling’s list of 1970s hits had made him the most successful television producer in history. ABC had managed to wrangle him into an exclusive contract that also guaranteed Spelling a majority ownership in most of his programs. Spelling was churning out hundreds of hours of programming and showed no sign of slowing down. By the end of the decade, he would add two more series to prime time TV—Vega$ and Hart to Hart. Vega$ premiered on September 20, 1978, and starred Robert Urich as Las Vegas private investigator Dan Tanna. After giving viewers those beautiful Angels to watch each week, Spelling must have felt the need to offer up a little beefcake as well, and Urich fit the bill. Tall, dark, and handsome, he represented the ideal leading man. His character, Dan Tanna, was on retainer to Philip Roth (Tony Curtis), a multimillionaire who owned several of Vegas’s most elaborate casinos, guaranteeing Tanna would come into contact with the rich and famous in the course of his work. Tanna worked out of a combination apartment and office located near the Desert Inn hotel and casino. He was easy to spot, zipping along the strip in his bright red Thunderbird, the epitome of 1970s cool. He had two assistants, Bobby “Binzer” Borso (Bart Braverman)—who was dedicated but somewhat inept, providing the show with comic relief—and Angie Turner (Judy Landers)—the sexpot receptionist. Beatrice Travis (Phyllis Davis) was Dan’s gal Friday, who appeared to be there primarily so that Dan would have someone around who he could carry on an intelligent conversation with. Again, this show, like Charlie’s Angels, was escapist fun, so such a scenario not only worked but also proved to be highly entertaining. Tanna’s clients could be anyone from a wealthy philanthropist to a hooker with a heart of gold. The first season, Dan had a rarity. Like most private investigators, he had a contact in the police department—only Tanna’s was female, in the person of Sgt. Bella Archer (Naomi Stevens). She didn’t last long, though. The second season former Mission: Impossible costar Greg Morris was brought in as Lt. David Nelson. When he wasn’t on the job, Tanna was usually on the arm of a beautiful woman. Vega$’s appeal proved to be fleeting as Tanna solved his 68th and final case on June 10, 1981, leaving the air after only three seasons.

106

Crime Television

In 1979, a year after the premiere of Vega$, Spelling closed out the decade with one last hurrah. Hart to Hart starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as wealthy socialites Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, whose hobby, according to their trusted major domo Max (Lionel Stander) in the opening titles, “was murder.” They, like Stewart and Sally McMillan and Nick and Nora Charles before them, were husband and wife sleuths. Jonathan was a self-made millionaire who oversaw a huge conglomerate, and Jennifer was a freelance journalist. They lived in a modest home (considering their vast fortune) where their needs were attended to by trusty manservant Max. They had no children, but managed to pamper their treasured dog Freeway. Best-selling author Sidney Sheldon created the series, which kicked off with a two-hour movie preview on August 25, 1979. Hart to Hart came about as the result of a deal between Spelling and Wagner dating back to 1973. In exchange for Wagner and his wife Natalie Wood appearing together in the Spelling TV-movie The Affair, it was agreed that the producer would develop a series for the couple, which they would then coown. By 1976, with their contract about to expire and Wagner tied up with his CBS series Switch, he agreed to allow Spelling to use the deal to get Charlie’s Angels on the air. Wagner then became a silent partner in that venture. Then after Switch left the air in 1978, Spelling and Wagner decided to further their successful relationship by developing a series for Wagner to star in. A running theme on the show seemed to have the Harts, either jointly or individually, being hunted by a killer. The couple also did a lot of traveling, to Paris, England, and Scotland, to name but a few of their many destinations. Each locale, of course, was fraught with danger for the adventurous twosome. The Harts’ adventures were no more plausible than those featured in most of Spelling’s late-1970s crime programs, but once again the casting was so superb that viewers—particularly women who enjoyed a good romance novel—could not resist tuning in. Wagner and Powers were so engaging that many fans actually believed they were married in real life. Unfortunately, events in real life don’t always end happily. On November 29, 1981, Wagner’s wife Natalie Wood drowned in a tragic accident, leaving Wagner inconsolable. His work on Hart to Hart proved therapeutic in managing his grief. He spent the next decade raising his and Wood’s three daughters alone. (He would explore his role as a single parent in his next TV series, the short-lived Lime Street, which ended sadly when the young girl playing his daughter, Samantha Smith, 13, died in a plane crash). Wood’s death occurred only 13 days after the death of Powers’s longtime romantic companion William Holden. She, too, found solace on the set of Hart to Hart and in her friendship with Wagner.

Crime Television—The 1970s

107

Hart to Hart ran well into the 1980s, and was still delivering decent ratings when ABC abruptly cancelled it in the spring of 1984. The series’s 112 hours played so well in syndication that Wagner and Powers reunited for eight Hart to Hart TV-movies between 1993 and 1996. Lionel Stander returned for the first five films, but died on November 30, 1994, from lung cancer just weeks after finishing Hart to Hart: Secrets of the Hart. A tribute to him was carried at the end of the film when it aired on March 6, 1995. ABC didn’t have a monopoly on escapist entertainment. When CHiPs first premiered in the fall of 1977, it was like nothing else on television. Crime dramas in the early 1970s had been geared toward reality. (Sitcoms, too, such as Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, and M*A*S*H had taken a more serious turn.) By the middle of the decade, however, the rest of television had taken a turn toward lighthearted escapist fare. Fantasy Island and The Love Boat were ratings winners, and even the top sitcoms such as Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley were growing more outrageous in nature. So NBC decided to mix the genres into a new hybrid: an hour-long crime show where officers didn’t use their guns, where there were plenty of attractive bodies but no body count, and where people walked away from even the most breathtaking car crashes. There was no question that it was a winning formula, at least in theaters, where Smokey and the Bandit was raking in huge sums of money. So why not give it a try on TV? NBC wanted a program that not only was viewer friendly, but one that was so tame it could be scheduled in the prime time “family hour,” between the hours of 8 and 9 P.M., when children would most likely be tuned in. CHiPs premiered on Thursday, September 15, 1977. The premise of the series was simple: Officers Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox) and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Erik Estrada) were two young motorcycle officers working for the California Highway Patrol (CHPs or CHiPs for short). The partners spent their days patrolling the southern California highways, looking for speeders, stranded motorists, reckless drivers, drug smugglers, and other lawbreakers. The program could easily be compared to another crime show that played earlier in the decade, Adam-12, only the leads rode motorcycles instead of cruising in a squad car. Although Jon and Ponch had to frequently resort to high-speed chases to apprehend their suspects, rarely did they ever fire their guns. And although real life CHP officers are often called to the scenes of fatal car crashes, the partners were saved such graphic duties. The bad guys in CHiPs were more likely to be criminally inept than they were dangerous. The show was designed from the get-go to be nonthreatening fun.

108

Crime Television

Besides being partners, Jon and Ponch were also best friends off-duty. They were both handsome bachelors who could be found in the company of beautiful women. Although both enjoyed having fun, Jon was the more levelheaded, responsible member of the team, whereas Ponch tended to be impulsive and at times a little reckless. Both were dedicated police officers, however, and were good at their jobs. Robert Pine played their superior, Sgt. Joe Getraer, who, refreshingly, was not constantly at odds with his officers. Although he sometimes had to lay down the law to keep his people in line, Getraer was an amiable supervisor. CHiPs got off to a slow start in the ratings, and NBC was close to canceling it after its initial order of 13 episodes. But the network had few hit shows at the time and decided to hang on and give the series a chance to find its audience. Their decision paid off, and by the end of the first season, CHiPs was on its way to becoming a major-league hit. One change NBC made was to hire a more experienced show runner to take the reins from Rosner. Cy Chermak, who had run Ironside for eight winning seasons (1967–75), came in with a slightly different philosophy than Rosner. Chermak saw Jon and Ponch as “strong men who didn’t need to use guns.” “CHiPs was a fantasy,” confesses Chermak. “Our target audience was, of course, young adults. We never made the show for kids, even though they loved it, as did older teens and teenage girls. There was always a great concern at the network about how we would find enough stories about the kinds of things that happened to motor cops. I decided to include recreational activities, so we did shows that revolved around water skis, jet skis, parachute jumping, bungee jumping, motorcycle racing, and any other sport that I thought I could get the guys involved with.” Over the years, the villains on CHiPs made their escapes on just about anything with wheels: cars, semi-trucks, go-carts, roller skates, and bicycles. Occasionally they even made due with horses, hot air balloons, or speedboats. The actors were often asked to do some of their own stunts early in the series, but that changed when Estrada was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident during shooting. The Chippies had their share of adventures. In “Dog Gone” (9/29/1977), a couple of men seeking revenge against the CHP officers sabotage Jon’s motorcycle by loosening the bolts on his front tire. Throughout the episode as the officers responded to different calls, the front tire on Jon’s bike continued to become increasingly loose. In another episode, “Baby Food” (10/27/1977) a truck carrying tainted baby food crashes on the freeway. Before all the infected items can be collected, a transient couple makes off with a couple of boxes, unaware of the danger, leaving the CHP scrambling to locate them before they inadvertently poison their infant.

Crime Television—The 1970s

109

Chermak received the blessing and cooperation of the California Highway Patrol in producing the series. “I always felt a responsibility toward the positive portrayal of officers,” says Chermak. “Our show had a great deal to do with changing the image of cops from enemies to friends. The CHP recognized this early on as little kids began waving at them on the road. The technical advisor would come to me and say, ‘This action is outside of policy, you can’t do it.’ I would ask as many questions as necessary to ascertain that it could happen under certain specific conditions. Then we tailored the script to those conditions.” Chermak continued to have his writers develop stories that were true to the spirit of the decade, whether they were comic in nature or veered more toward the dramatic. “The Volunteers” (9/23/1978) had Jon and Ponch agreeing to act as escorts for a truck carrying unstable liquid chlorine on a 14-mile trek that brings them in contact with a variety of hazardous obstacles including bad weather and a hostile town determined not to let them pass through the community. “Dead Man’s Riddle” (5/10/1981) had the CHP team recreating a serious car accident to determine the cause. The show’s third season kicked off on a lighter note with a special two-hour episode titled “Roller Disco” (9/22/1979) in which the officers pursued two agendas: organizing the annual CHP roller disco fundraiser while simultaneously trailing two thieves who wore roller skates while committing their burglaries. Although CHiPs was generally thought of as a huge hit in its day, it only breached the top-20 Nielsen’s once, during its third season in 1979–80. The real-life California Highway Patrol weren’t the only ones benefiting from the exposure of a hit television series. Stars Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada, virtual unknowns before the program began, became household names overnight. Estrada in particular, perhaps because he was playing the bad-boy role on screen, became a superstar. As is usually the case under such circumstances, this led to problems behind-the-scenes. Backstage dissent and details of the actors’ private lives become front-page fodder for both the tabloids and legitimate press. Recalls Chermak: “Private lives? There is no such thing,” he laughs. “We all lived in a fishbowl. I tried to tell both Erik and Larry that the best course for both would be if they were to become best friends, but they were young, they got too much too fast, and they wouldn’t listen. Eventually, the jealousy and the infighting destroyed the cast and the ratings.” In the fall of 1981, Estrada missed several episodes as a result of a contract dispute with producers. Former Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner did temporary duty as Officer Steve McLeish. But, “it wasn’t all Erik’s fault,” Chermak insists. “Larry was as much to blame. I had the audience believing they were buddies, and they destroyed that.”

110

Crime Television

By the spring of 1982, the situation finally reached a critical point. Ratings had begun to drop. NBC decided something to had to be done, which when translated meant one of the leads had to go. “The problem was that the network perceived, wrongly, that Erik was the star,” says Chermak. “I tried to tell them that the ensemble was the star, but they wouldn’t listen. So Erik got Larry fired, over my strong objections. When that happened I saw that I no longer had as much influence over the show as Erik had, and so I lost interest, and that was when it all started to fall apart.” CHiPs opened its sixth season on October 10, 1982 with “Meet the New Guy,” in which it was explained that Jon Baker had left the CHP to work on his father’s farm in Wyoming. Ponch, who’d spent the previous five seasons testing his limits, was suddenly a training officer assigned a young rookie partner, Bobby “Hot Dog” Nelson (Tom Reilly). Ponch was now on the receiving end of all the mischief he’d been dishing out to Jon for so long. But the audience just wasn’t buying it, nor was Reilly cutting it on screen. As a matter of fact, he was generating more press for his real life run-ins with the law (including a December 1982 bust for marijuana possession) than for his acting on the show. By mid-season, the focus had shifted from Bobby Nelson to his kid brother Bruce (real-life championship motorcycle racer Bruce Penhall) who was a new trainee in the CHP program. Toward the end of the season, Bruce became Ponch’s new partner. But by then, it was too little too late. “You can push an audience just so far,” says Chermak, “and when they realize that it is all play acting and the guys really don’t like each other, it’s all over. There are three factors that will spell doom to any show: too much money, too much ego, and too much cocaine.” Ratings continued to fall during the season, and it was no surprise when NBC cancelled the series in the spring of 1983. A total of 139 episodes were produced during the series’s six years on the air. The show played well in syndication after it left the network. Sixteen years after CHiPs ended, the TNT cable network financed a reunion movie titled CHiPs ‘99 (aired, strangely enough, on 10/27/1998). The movie reunited Wilcox and Estrada along with the rest of the original cast, as Jon and Ponch got back into uniform to take down a car-theft ring. The reunion ranked number five among cable programs that week, drawing a 3.5 rating, or approximately 3.5 million viewers, who tuned in for one more adventure with their favorite CHPs. Plans were announced in late 2005 for a feature film based on the series. The 1970s was an amazing decade for crime shows. Many memorable series were created that would change the direction of television. The

Crime Television—The 1970s

111

decade that lay ahead, however, would be tougher. Although some amazing programs were to premiere that would take the country by storm, the overall shift would move away from crime shows. Sitcoms would soon rule the airwaves, causing many to declare that the one-hour drama was dead. For those producing police and private investigator shows, the 1980s would become a decade to be reckoned with. Getting their shows on the air and keeping them on would be tougher than ever before.

Dragnet’s Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) is on the case. Courtesy of Photofest.

Private investigator Peter Gunn (Craig Stevens) shares a moment with his steady girl, singer Edie Hart (Lola Albright). Courtesy of Photofest.

Director Blake Edwards works behind the scenes on his series, Peter Gunn. Courtesy of Photofest.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Inspector Lewis Erskine on the set of The F.B.I. Courtesy of Photofest.

Chief Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr) and his team. Also pictured (left to right): Don Galloway, Elizabeth Baur, Don Mitchell. Courtesy of Photofest.

LAPD Patrol Officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord) prepare to hit the streets in Adam-12. Courtesy of Photofest.

Undercover officers Linc Hayes (Clarence Williams III), Pete Cochran (Michael Cole), and Julie Barnes (Peggy Lipton) represented a new generation of cops in The Mod Squad. Also pictured, right, is their handler, Capt. Adam Greer (Tige Andrews). Courtesy of Photofest.

Rumpled police detective Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) working the scene of a homicide. Courtesy of Photofest.

P.I. Jim Rockford (James Garner) and his dad, Rocky (Noah Beery, Jr.). Two hundred dollars a day plus expenses was Jim’s going rate in The Rockford Files. Courtesy of Photofest.

Prolific writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell, creator of The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Wiseguy, and many other memorable TV projects, takes a turn at directing. Courtesy of The Cannell Studios.

Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Jill Monroe (Farrah FawcettMajors), and Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) are Charlie’s Angles. Courtesy of Photofest.

Officers Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Erik Estrada) and Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox) patrolled the highways of Southern California in CHiPs. Courtesy of Photofest.

The cast of the hard-biting urban police drama, Hill Street Blues. Pictured, clockwise: Veronica Hamel, Taurean Blacque, Rene Enriquez, Kiel Martin, Michael Conrad, Michael Warren, and Daniel J. Travanti. Courtesy of Photofest.

Female private investigator Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) and the mysterious man in her life, fellow gumshoe Remington Steele (Pierce Brosnan). Courtesy of Photofest.

Vice detectives James “Sonny” Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) of Miami Vice. Courtesy of Photofest.

David Addison (Bruce Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) shared both romance and a quick-tongued wit on Moonlighting. Courtesy of Photofest.

The men and women of New York’s legal system maintain Law and Order. Pictured, left to right: Jesse L. Martin, Jerry Orbach, Elisabeth Rohm, and Sam Waterston. Courtesy of Photofest.

N.Y.P.D. Blue detectives John Kelly (David Caruso) and Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) on the beat. Courtesy of Photofest.

The forensic investigators of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Pictured, clockwise from top left, Paul Guilfoyle, Jorja Fox, Gary Dourdan, George Fads, William Petersen, and Mary Helgenberge. Courtesy of Photofest.

These FBI agents hit the streets whenever someone disappears in Without a Trace. Pictured, left to right: Poppy Montgomery, Anthony LaPaglia, Enrique Murciano, Eric Close, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Courtesy of Photofest.

Los Angeles undercover cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) plays a deadly game of good cop/bad cop on the FX network’s hit The Shield. Courtesy of Photofest.

Allison DuBois, husband Joe, and their three daughters, Ariel, Bridget, and Maria, share a bizarre secret in Medium. Pictured, from left: Sofia Vassilieva, Maria Lark, [no credit for youngest daughter/actress], Jake Weber and Patricia Arquette. Courtesy of Photofest.

Glenn Gordon Caron, creator and executive producer of Moonlighting, Now and Again, and Medium, takes a turn in the director’s chair. Courtesy of Picture Maker Productions.

CHAPTER 4

Crime Television—The 1980s

he first crime series of the 1980s to become a major hit was Magnum, P.I. The series premiered with a two-hour special on the evening of November 11, 1980, after a rocky development process. The original concept was created by Glen A. Larson, who was one of the leading writerproducers in the business during the 1970s (with credits including McCloud, Switch, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and BJ and the Bear). Larson at the time was exclusive to Universal Studios. A young actor named Tom Selleck was also under contract to Universal and had starred in a number of failed pilots. The studio still had a lot of faith in Selleck and felt Larson’s Magnum, P.I. might be the perfect fit for him. The script was about Thomas Magnum, a small-time private investigator hired to test security at the Hawaiian estate of a reclusive and wealthy author, Robin Masters (who was never seen on screen). After Magnum was able to breech the properties security, Masters rewarded him by offering him free lodging in the guesthouse and use of a bright-red Ferrari. CBS had just cancelled Hawaii Five-O after 12 years on the air, and they were looking for a new show to set in the islands, where they had production facilities that would otherwise sit idle. Everyone seemed excited about Magnum, P.I.’s chances of making it to the air. Everyone, it seems, except Selleck, who took one look at Larson’s script and threw it at the wall. He refused to shoot it. Larson had envisioned the character as an extremely macho hero whose apprehension of the bad guys would involve shootouts

T

114

Crime Television

and screeching tires. His personal life would include an unending stream of beautiful woman. But Selleck wanted Magnum to be more a thinking man’s hero. It’s a testament to how Universal felt about Selleck that it didn’t just find another actor for the role. Instead, they turned to Donald P. Bellisario, a talented but less-experienced writer-producer than Larson, to take another crack at developing the script. Bellisario then went to work on a rewrite that would eventually win Selleck over. In Bellisario’s typewriter, Magnum was given an added dimension. He became a former Navy intelligence officer who’d served in Vietnam and witnessed many horrific things. Now he wanted to leave that all behind and find a little joy in life. Magnum made the Masters estate the basis of operations for his investigations, much to the chagrin of Master’s major domo, Jonathan Quayle Higgins III. Masters always seemed to be away, leaving Magnum and Higgins to squabble regularly. (Magnum also had to deal with Higgins’s two Doberman pinschers, Zeus and Apollo, who weren’t any happier than their master to be sharing their domain with a stranger.) Higgins had a military background, too, but had carried that discipline with him back into civilian life. The men’s differing philosophies lead to much of the tension in their relationship. Selleck was finally won over, and CBS gave the thumbs up for production to begin. Bellisario was hired to executive producer Magnum, P.I. Glen Larson’s contract with Universal was so strong that he still received a shared creator credit and a fee of $50,000 an episode. Thomas Magnum had no partner, but he did have a close circle of friends he could count on when in need. John Hillerman was cast as Higgins, who, despite his outwardly hostile attitude toward Magnum (which softened in subsequent seasons), was really fond of him. Two of Magnum’s war buddies also appeared regularly. Roger E. Mosley played T.C., a chopper pilot who now ran a charter service between the islands, and occasionally offered Magnum air support. Larry Manetti appeared as Orville “Rick” Wright, who ran a Casablanca-style restaurant, but was never more than a phone call away when Magnum needed back-up. Although Robin Masters was never seen on screen, he would often call in; Orson Welles provided Masters’ voice during the series’s early seasons. Despite being a crime drama, some of Magnum P.I.’s best moments came when Magnum, Higgins, T. C., and Rick were simply exchanging banter. A particularly memorable episode is subtitled “Operation: Silent Night” (12/15/1983) in which T. C.’s helicopter crashes onto a deserted island while ferrying the others to their Christmas Eve destinations. The guys are unaware, as they anxiously look for a way

Crime Television—The 1980S

115

to continue their journey in time for the holiday, that the island is about to be used by the Navy for a little shelling practice. Tom Selleck lived up to Universal’s expectations by quickly becoming a TV superstar. (He was offered the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s 1981 hit feature Raiders of the Lost Ark but couldn’t accept because of scheduling conflicts with the series. He did go on to headline several feature films, the most successful being Three Men and a Baby, but his career continued to revolve around the small screen.) Its first season, Magnum, P.I. ranked number 14. Two years later, for the 1982–83 season, the program tied with another CBS series, M*A*S*H, for the number three spot. One of the questions raised on the series as it continued, particularly after Orson Welles passed away in 1985 and was no longer heard as Robin Masters’s voice, was whether Robin was even a real person. Magnum began to suspect that Higgins was actually the man who’d written all those best sellers, simply using Robin Masters as a pen name. He was never able to prove it, however, and the question was never resolved. Ratings had begun to soften by the fall of 1987, so the producers filmed a final episode in which Magnum is shot and killed by a hitman and goes to heaven (“Limbo,” 4/15/1987). CBS ignored the fact that the series had wrapped up not only the series’s plotlines but the life of Thomas Magnum as well, and they renewed Magnum, P.I. for an eighth season. The writers scrambled to resolve the issue of Magnum’s untimely passing, eventually explaining (in “Infinity and Jelly Donuts,” 10/7/1987) that he hadn’t actually died, only dreamed he’d gone to heaven while unconscious after being shot. He then fully recovered and things went on as usual for another season. In the spring of 1988, the series aired another two-hour finale, subtitled “Resolutions” (5/1/1988). This time Magnum, in a tearjerker, was reunited with his young daughter Lily (Kristen Carreira), who he’d feared was dead. Magnum gave up being a private eye and reenlisted with the Navy. Magnum felt sure, well almost sure, that he’d finally established that Higgins was indeed Robin Masters, but some doubt still lingered. Actually, Universal did consider a spin-off titled Robin Masters, but the idea (developed by Bob Shayne) never got off the ground because of the huge licensing fees that Universal would have needed to pay Larson and Bellisario. If it had gone to series, however, it would have been proven that Higgins was not Robin. But since the project never materialized, that call is up to the individual fans to decide for themselves. The decade’s second major triumph would be drastically different—and consequently would take much longer to attract an audience. Hill Street Blues, the first successful project from producer Steven Bochco (who co-created with

116

Crime Television

Michael Kozoll), was as gritty as perhaps any series on television had ever been. The program was set in a dilapidated police precinct in an unnamed major city in the eastern United States (establishing shots featured in the opening titles were filmed in seedy, run-down areas of Chicago). The characters were equally broken and damaged, and there were plenty of them. Hill Street Blues had a large ensemble cast, with as many as a dozen characters sharing screen time in a single hour-long episode. The program was also filmed using one roving camera that itself would seemingly wander through the squad room, picking up conversations already in progress and characters speaking over one another, capturing the pandemonium of working in such an atmosphere. At times, the series resembled more of a documentary than a scripted drama (at one point, there was talk of filming the show in black and white, but NBC resisted). Hill Street Blues made it to the air in early 1981 thanks to the efforts of Fred Silverman, who put it into development during his tenor at NBC, and Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s new head of programming, who ushered the show onto the air after Silverman’s departure. The Yale-educated Tartikoff first went to work at NBC as a programming executive in 1977, and just three short years later, at age 30, he succeeded Fred Silverman at the head of the table. The network at that time was ranked a distant third in ratings behind ABC and CBS. Tartikoff realized if he wanted to keep his job, he needed to turns things around in a hurry. He knew that NBC Chairman Grant Tinker favored upscale programming to the type the network was then running, titles like BJ and the Bear and Diff’rent Strokes, and proceeded accordingly. Even though Hill Street Blues was first proposed during Silverman’s watch, Tartikoff continued to nurture it along. (The series was actually produced by Tinker’s production company, MTM Enterprises.) Critics were immediately impressed by the unusual effort; viewers at home needed a little more time to make sense of it all. The pilot episode, broadcast January 15, 1981, ended with two street cops, partners Bobby Hill (Michael Warren) and Andy Renko (Charles Haid), being gunned down in an abandoned apartment building by drug dealers. The episode faded out on a shot of their seemingly lifeless bodies as a dispatcher repeatedly called for them on the radio. It was a truly shocking scene—one that TV audiences in 1981 were unaccustomed to. Another reason viewers had for tuning in was the talented cast, which consisted primarily of total and near unknowns just waiting for their chance to shine. Daniel J. Travanti starred as Captain Frank Furillo, an eventempered man trying to hold his command together while simultaneously trying to salvage his personal life, which was in ruins. He’d been recently

Crime Television—The 1980S

117

divorced and his ex-wife Fay (Barbara Bosson, Bochco’s real-life wife) was constantly badgering him for increased alimony and child support. Furillo’s only comfort came in the arms of his lover, public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel). Professionally, he often found himself at odds even with her. Some of the precinct’s more colorful characters were Detective Mick Belker (Bruce Weitz), a grungy, hot-tempered undercover cop who would growl when angered as a sign he was ready to strike, and Lt. Henry Hunter (James B. Sikking), an overzealous SWAT commander eager to get his hands on an urban assault vehicle. Officer Lucille Bates (Betty Thomas) wanted desperately to prove she was as good a cop as any of her male co-workers, a mission hampered by the fact that she was partnered with macho Officer Joe Coffey (Ed Marinaro). Each episode of Hill Street Blues would take place in a single day “on the hill,” beginning with the 7 A.M. roll call in which Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) would brief the men before they hit the streets. He would then send them off with his popular catch phrase: “Let’s be careful out there.” Conrad died from cancer on November 22, 1983. On screen it was explained he died of a heart attack while making love to his woman friend Grace Gardner (Barbara Babcock). Sgt. Stanislaus Jablonski (Robert Prosky) then took over the morning roll calls in early 1984. He even had his own catch phrase: “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us.” The show never ranked as highly as Magnum, P.I. in the Nielsens, but it slowly built up a respectable viewership. The series would eventually run for seven seasons, during which time it would be the recipient of 70 Emmy nominations and 26 trophies, including four consecutive wins as Best Dramatic Series (1981 through 1984). Composer Mike Post’s instrumental theme song became very popular, even ranking on the pop charts in 1981. Once the program became a hit, NBC wisely allowed it to remain in one timeslot for much of its run. From October 1981 until November 1986, Hill Street Blues aired on Thursday evenings at 10:00 p.m. NBC scheduled The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court as lead-ins. Together, these programs represented the strongest night of television throughout much of the decade. Over the years, the series dealt with many tough issues, the same issues that most big-city police forces were battling in real life—escalating incidents of violent crime, budget cuts, officer burnout, and public relations nightmares. Bochco and the other producers tackled the subjects head-on and rarely flinched. There were many unforgettable moments during the series’s long run including Furillo and Davenport’s marriage (“Eugene’s Comedy Empire Strikes Back,” 3/3/1983); second-in-command

118

Crime Television

Ray Calletano’s (Rene Enriquez) acceptance speech as 1982’s Hispanic Officer of the Year, in which he points out that the only other Hispanics in the room are waiting the tables (“Officer of the Year,” 10/28/1982); and Joe Coffey being gunned down during a robbery attempt (“Iced Coffey,” 3/6/1986). Hill Street Blues’s final original telecast aired on May 12, 1987 after 146 episodes. The show proved a turning point for television. More producers would follow in Bochco’s wake, striving to push the envelope and thus achieve greater realism. The show also established Steven Bochco as one of television’s most creative and controversial producers, paving the way for such future hits as L.A. Law and NYPD Blue. The 1981–82 season would provide viewers with two more longrunning hits. The first came on ABC in the form of The Fall Guy from producer Glen Larson. Colt Seavers (played by former Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors) was a well-known Hollywood stuntman who supplemented his income by tracking down bail jumpers and collecting the bounties. Douglas Barr co-starred as Seavers’s protégé in both occupations, Howie Munson. Heather Thomas was stuntwoman Jody Banks, who also helped Seavers on his cases, usually by strutting around in some sexy outfit. Colt had a number of female employers over the series’s five-year run: Jo Ann Pflug (1981–82) as Samantha “Big Jack” Jack; Markie Post (1982–85) as Terri Shannon; and Nedra Volz (1985–86) as spunky Pearl Sperling. Episodes usually began with Colt doubling for some famous actor on the set of a movie or television show. (An early episode took him to Hawaii to stand in for Tom Selleck on Magnum, P.I., another show Larson had cocreated.) The series featured a great number of stunt sequences, although most of these scenes were lifted from actual feature films. The opening titles featured Majors singing the series theme song, “The Unknown Stuntman,” over a montage of famous stunts from various motion pictures, all of which had been theoretically performed by Colt Seavers. Later, after he had successfully apprehended his quarry, episodes usually ended with Colt soaking in the tub, nursing his wounds, back at his small home in the Hollywood hills. The show ended its popular run in 1986 after 113 hours had been produced. CBS was also able to launch another hit detective show that fall. Simon & Simon got off to a slow start, and even after it rebounded and became a hit, it remained one of the most underrated series of the decade. A. J. and Rick Simon were brothers who were about as opposite as two people could be. A. J. (Jameson Parker) fit perfectly into the decade: clean-cut, relatively conservative and responsible, hard working, and well dressed. He was the definition of a yuppie personified. On the other hand, Rick was a throwback to the late 1960s, even early 1970s. He was easy going, laid back, wore blue

Crime Television—The 1980S

119

jeans and a surplus army jacket, drove a beat-up pick up truck, and preferred not to work any harder than necessary, or at all if he could help it. Together, the boys were partners in a struggling private detective agency in San Diego. Each one was constantly trying to get the other to come around to his way of thinking: A. J. wanted Rick to grow up and take responsibility, and Rick tried to convince A. J. to relax and get a little enjoyment out of life. Truth be told, despite all their fussing and fighting, they needed one another, and so did the business. Both of the guys were devoted to their mother, Cecilia (Mary Carver), who wasn’t crazy about their line of work—both because of the danger and the low pay. The Simons had a rival agency next door run by Myron Fowler (Eddie Barth) and his beautiful daughter Janet (Jeannie Wilson), and both sides got satisfaction from stealing cases from each other. Simon & Simon premiered on November 24, 1981, airing on Tuesday nights from 8:00 to 9:00 P.M. The series played out its first 13 episodes without drawing much attention, and in April CBS pulled it off the schedule. It wasn’t until that summer, when the network placed the series on Thursday nights after Magnum, P.I., that its ratings went through the roof. By the end of its second season, Simon & Simon, a show that barely survived its freshman year, was suddenly the seventh most watched series on TV. By then, Myron had retired and was doing occasional legwork for the Simons, and Janet had graduated law school and had become an assistant district attorney who often found herself prosecuting the detectives’ clients. Both Myron and Janet were dropped at the end of the second season and Tim Reid (best known as D. J. Venus Flytrap on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati) was added as police detective Marcel “Downtown” Brown, A. J. and Rick’s new police contact. The series’s ratings continued to rise that season, landing at number five, outranking even its powerful Magnum, P.I. lead-in. Simon & Simon was created by producer Philip DeGuere after CBS asked him for something in the style of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. DeGuere then remembered a freelance pilot script he’d read by a writer named Bob Shayne about a divorced couple who operated a private detective agency that had been community property. DeGuere drew inspiration from the two ideas and then shot two pilots before CBS picked it up. Despite its large viewership, Shayne feels that Simon & Simon never got the recognition it deserved within the industry. “Nobody in Hollywood ever gave it its due,” says Shayne, “because it followed Magnum and they thought that was the only reason anybody ever watched it. So basically we never got the kind of respect that Magnum had.” Shayne and DeGuere wrote a special two-part crossover episode (aired October 7, 1982) that began on Magnum, P.I. at 8:00 P.M. then concluded on Simon & Simon at 9:00 P.M.

120

Crime Television

Shayne felt audiences took to the show because of the relationship between A. J. and Rick. “Television was a little more playful with characters in the early ’80s than it had been in the ’70s,” he explains. “These characters were suddenly free to laugh at themselves and the ironies of the world. We loved the fact that we had two leads who loved each other but didn’t particularly get along. They bickered about everything. Good drama requires conflict, whether it’s having somebody pointing a gun at your head or forgetting to put gas in the tank. As a matter of fact, Rick ran out of gas twice in one show and it drove A. J. crazy.” Shayne also feels the show would not have been as interesting had the Simons not been brothers. “You can quit your partner a lot more easily than you can quit your brother, so I think that also brought a lot of conflict, and charm, to it. There were times when they acted like little boys, and their mother, who was a regular character, treated them that way sometimes. That was part of the fun of it.” Ratings eventually began to slip and CBS dropped the series from its schedule in 1987. The network decided to keep the program in production as a mid-season replacement, however, and in December 1987, it was recalled to duty in its old timeslot, Thursdays at 9:00 P.M. (replacing Wiseguy, which CBS was relocating to Monday nights). Joan McMurtrey was added to the roll as Lt. Abigail Marsh, a by-the-book police officer who’d replaced Downtown Brown (in real life, Tim Reid had left the series to headline his own CBS effort, Frank’s Place). The series did well enough to earn yet another pick-up the next year. Simon & Simon finally ended its run on March 2, 1989, after eight seasons and 156 hours. The brothers showed up again in a made-for-TV movie titled Simon & Simon: In Trouble Again (2/23/1995). A. J. was now a lawyer, and Rick was the skipper of a million-dollar yacht that ended up getting hijacked with Cecilia trapped on board. Whereas CBS would eventually have reason to celebrate the launch of Simon & Simon in the fall of 1981, ABC was struggling with several failures. Despite the success of The Fall Guy, other titles such as Code Red, Today’s FBI, and Strike Force were floundering. It wasn’t until midseason that ABC would come up with another winner. T. J. Hooker had a lot of things going for it. First, it came from producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. Second, it starred William Shatner. Of course, Shatner is certainly no master thespian, but at the time he was riding a wave of success brought on by the big-screen Star Trek revival films. T. J. Hooker was the perfect role for him. Hooker was a plainclothes detective for the L.C.P.D., a fictional big city on the West Coast that was never identified in more detail. Hooker was a dedicated cop, so dedicated as a matter of fact that it had cost him his marriage. The job also cost him his

Crime Television—The 1980S

121

partner, who was killed in the line of duty. After which, Hooker decided he wanted to get back into a uniform and start making a real difference again. He ended up back in his blues teaching classes at the police academy, preparing anxious young rookies for their first assignments. The show kicked off with a special 90-minute preview on March 13, 1982, subtitled “The Protectors.” As the episode began, the city was caught in the grip of a major crime wave. The police department was severely understaffed and new recruits could not be trained quickly enough. To solve the problem, a new program was put into play that accelerates the amount of time spent preparing trainees to hit the streets. The probationers were given a minimal amount of instruction then teamed with veteran officers to complete their edification on the job. The premiere telecast then followed several of Hooker’s students as they progressed through their training. One particular young rookie, Vincent Ramono (Adrian Zmed), would go on to become Hooker’s partner. Zmed landed the role to add a little beefcake to the series. Paramount Pictures, the studio behind T. J. Hooker, was pushing Zmed because he had just completed work on their feature musical Grease 2, expected to be one of the big hits of the summer of 1982. (The film would become a resounding flop.) But Zmed did have a lot of screen charisma and became a valuable asset to the program. Richard Herd was seen as Hooker’s superior, Capt. Dennis Sheridan. During the series’s spring 1982 tryout, April Clough was featured as Vicki Taylor, who was stuck doing administrative work. When the show resumed in the fall, Heather Locklear (already appearing in Spelling’s soap Dynasty) began doing double-duty as Sheridan’s daughter Stacy. By the end of that season, she finally got out from behind the desk, having been paired with senior officer Jim Corrigan (new regular James Darren). In the earliest episodes, Hooker was seen as a man on a mission while also dealing with domestic issues: he had financial problems brought on by his divorce. He was also still in love with his ex-wife, Fran (Lee Bryant), and she with him. But together they just couldn’t seem to make it work. Hooker also missed his three kids, daughters Cathy and Chrissie and son Tommy. They appeared, albeit rarely, throughout the series run. Hooker, Ramono, Sheridan, and Corrigan were also friends off duty and spent time together. Romano spent as much time trying to get Hooker to lighten up socially as Hooker spent trying to mold him into a model cop. T. J. Hooker was a throwback to the type of cop shows that were so popular in the 1970s. The cases were all neatly resolved at the end of each episode, prostitutes always seemed to have hearts of gold, and cars would erupt into flames after even the mildest of collisions. Shatner also seemed

122

Crime Television

to take the material a bit too seriously. He tried to portray Hooker as being tough-as-nails, delivering each line of dialogue with the utmost of urgency. But the drama in this series was belied by the use of Zmed and Locklear as eye candy. On the streets, Romano would wear uniforms so tight-fitting it’s a wonder he could breathe; in the locker room or at home he was usually seen without a shirt. When Sheridan went undercover, it was usually at a strip club or massage parlor, any excuse to display Locklear in scanty attire. The storylines on T. J. Hooker were mostly run-of-the-mill action fare, with the officers going after drug pushers, murderers, and rapists—crimes common to the streets. The show occasionally resorted to stunt casting to improve ratings. In “Vengeance Is Mine” (2/5/1983), Shatner’s former Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy played Lt. Paul McGuire, a fellow officer and friend of Hooker’s. After McGuire’s daughter Valarie (Michele Tobin) is raped, her attacker walks out of court thanks to a little legal maneuvering by his lawyer, which pushes McGuire over the edge. Hooker must then not only try to bring in the offender legally, but prevent his friend from taking matters into his own hands. The series was never a great threat ratings-wise, but managed to stay on the air for three seasons at ABC. After being dropped by the network in the spring of 1985, CBS picked it up, scheduling it as part of their CBS Late Night programming schedule (airing Wednesday nights from 11:30 P.M. to 12:40 A.M.). Eighteen additional episodes aired that year, minus Zmed, who elected not to make the move. Hooker worked alone during that time, or teamed with Sheridan and Corrigan. CBS dropped the show after a single year, in the spring of 1986, although it aired reruns the next season. A total of 91 episodes were filmed. T. J. Hooker was a very macho series, more so than most detective dramas, a majority of which were centered around male characters. Back in the 1970s, programs such as Police Woman and Charlie’s Angels, each using their own distinctive styles, were considered a huge step forward for women on television. By the early 1980s, few other crime dramas featuring women in lead roles were making it onto the networks’ schedules. Only one new entry in the fall of 1981 came even close: CBS’s Jessica Novak, with Helen Shaver as a TV news reporter who defied her bosses, who wished to relegate her to small fluff pieces, and went after the big stories (the show had made it to the air courtesy of the 1979 blockbuster The China Syndrome). The series premiered in November 1981 and lasted less than a month. Then on October 8, CBS aired a made-for-TV movie titled Cagney & Lacey, about two New York policewomen trying to hold their own within the predominantly male-oriented force. The film was written by Barbara Avedon

Crime Television—The 1980S

123

and Barbara Corday, both of whom had previously written for Maude and Wonder Woman. TV producer Barney Rosenzweig, who’d worked on Charlie’s Angels, had also co-created it and shepherded it along. The script had been completed in 1974, but the networks all passed, feeling there was no place on television for a realistic portrayal of female police officers. Years later, when CBS finally gave it a home, it built up a strong and loyal audience. Cagney & Lacey starred Loretta Swit as Detective Christine Cagney and Tyne Daly as Detective Mary Beth Lacey, who were both partners and friends, just like Starsky & Hutch and Jon & Ponch. Cagney was single and sassy, and Lacey was married and the mother of three children. Director Ted Post shot the movie with a dark, gritty style reminiscent of Hill Street Blues. The main storyline, about a killer stalking the city, basically took backseat to Cagney and Lacey’s struggle to be taken seriously by their male counterparts. Despite earning promotions and becoming detectives, both end up stuck on hooker detail, and both have to practically beg just to get a chance at tackling a real investigation. When the strong Nielsen numbers came in, CBS immediately wanted more. Their primary hurdle was the role of Cagney. Loretta Swit was then co-starring in the network’s hit dramedy M*A*S*H and unavailable to continue in the role. With CBS pushing to launch the series in the spring of 1982, the producers needed to move quickly. Actress Meg Foster was chosen to assume the character of Chris Cagney. John Karlen replaced another actor from the movie to play Harvey Lacey, Mary Beth’s husband, a construction worker. Al Waxman appeared as Det. Bert Samuels, the watch commander. Six episodes were quickly shot and the series debuted on March 25, 1982, airing Thursday nights at 9:00 p.m. CBS and executive producer Rosenzweig had high expectations based on the performance of the movie the previous fall. But when the new figures arrived, they were dismal. CBS’s reasoning for the series’s poor showing set off a firestorm. A CBS executive who remained anonymous stated in an interview with TV Guide that viewers were put off by Cagney & Lacey’s decidedly feminist stance. He went on to say that the women were being perceived as “dykes.” CBS was immediately hit with a barrage of protests from gay activist groups. At that point, many expected CBS to cancel the show, to bury it and put an end to the controversy. Surprisingly, they ordered another season and then hired a new Cagney. Meg Foster was replaced by beautiful Sharon Gless, whose portrayal was much more feminine in nature, a trait CBS felt would make Cagney more engaging to mainstream viewers. The casting change went against the very message the show was trying to put across, but despite the outcry by advocacy groups, CBS refused to back down.

124

Crime Television

When the show returned that fall, it had been moved to Monday nights at 10:00 P.M., a timeslot that offered two tactical advantages. First, it was on late, well after the family-viewing hour, where it was less likely to draw fire for its content. Second, it proved to be good counterprogramming, offering female audiences an alternative to ABC’s Monday Night Football, which dominated the evening from 9:00 P.M. on. All their efforts seemed for naught, however, as Cagney & Lacey failed to capture much attention during its second season. In the spring of 1983, CBS announced it was canceling the series. But the network soon found itself besieged by viewers once again, this time in favor of keeping Cagney & Lacey on the air. Ratings over the summer had increased, as people who hadn’t watched the show during the regular season decided to tune in and give it a try. The “Save Cagney & Lacey” campaign worked, and CBS was persuaded to give the program another shot. They ordered seven new episodes that were broadcast in the spring of 1984 in the series’s old Monday night timeslot, replacing the recently cancelled Dennis Weaver military drama, Emerald Point, N.A.S. The show finally seemed to catch on, finishing its abbreviated season ranked number 10. This time CBS needed no help from irate viewers to renew the series. Cagney & Lacey then remained a solid performer on the network’s schedule for the next four seasons. The show tended to walk the line between genres, often focusing more on the characters’ personal lives than their professional careers. Lacey found a lump in one of her breasts in the two-part episode “Who Says It’s Fair” (2/11/1985 and 2/18/1985), and the next spring gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Alice (“Family Connections,” 2/10/1986). Meanwhile, Cagney learned her father Charlie (Dick O’Neill) was an alcoholic (“Filial Duty,” 12/2/1985) and finally accepted that she, too, had a drinking problem (“D.W.I.”, 1/20/1986). Chris got help, but Charlie eventually died as a result of the disease (“Turn, Turn, Turn,” 3/30/1987). She also faced date rape in an emotionally charged segment subtitled “Do I Know You?” (1/5/1988). Cagney & Lacey ended its run on August 25, 1988, after 125 episodes. The actors reprised their roles in four TV-movie reunions, the first titled Cagney & Lacey: The Return (11/6/1994). Additional titles included Cagney & Lacey: Together Again (5/2/1995), Cagney & Lacey: The View Through The Glass Ceiling (10/25/1995), and Cagney & Lacey: True Convictions (1/29/1996). Another strong female character would arrive in the fall of 1982 in a series that was aimed at fans of dime store detective novels and old Humphrey Bogart film noirs. Remington Steele would prove to be one of the great treasures

Crime Television—The 1980S

125

of 1980s television. It addressed the issues of feminism and chauvinism both in the workplace and on TV in a much more direct and honest fashion than programs such as Charlie’s Angels. The premise of this crime drama/ romantic comedy was explained each week in the show’s opening titles. Accompanied by composer Henry Mancini’s theme music, star Stephanie Zimbalist (daughter of FBI lead Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) would, in the most sultry and sexiest of accents, relate the story of her character, private investigator Laura Holt: “Try this for a deep dark secret … The great detective, Remington Steele—he doesn’t exist. I invented him. Follow … I always loved excitement, so I studied and apprenticed, and put my name on an office. But absolutely nobody knocked down my door. A female private investigator seemed so … feminine. So I invented a superior—a decidedly masculine supervisor. It was working like a charm until the day he walked in.” He was … well, a mysterious, nameless stranger who took advantage of Laura’s need for a male figurehead and assumed the identity of Remington Steele. Laura wasn’t sure what to make of the fellow, but he certainly fit the bill … he was classically tall, dark, handsome, and cultured and extremely charming to boot. He spoke with an unmistakable British accent, but beyond that Laura knew nothing of his background. The man (Pierce Brosnan) had showed up unexpectedly in the series premiere episode, “License to Steele” (10/1/1982), in which Laura and her team, assistant Murphy Michaels (James Read) and secretary Bernice Roxe (Janet DeMay), had landed a gig protecting more than $2 million in gems for a designer, Joseph Hunter (Gordon Hacker), who was using them as part of a publicity stunt to help introduce his newly designed high-tech automobile to investors. It turned out that the gems were part of a South African collection that is being sought by an assortment of thieves and conmen who are perfectly willing to kill to get their hands on them. Before any of the villains can succeed, however, Hunter tries to make off with the items himself after his car fails to impress the investors and he faces bankruptcy. The future Mr. Steele helps Laura recover the gems, but she still isn’t sure whether he originally intended to steal them or protect them from the real crooks. Laura reluctantly agrees to allow him to stick around at the end and assume Steele’s identity, still not sure if she can trust him or not. But, as the opening narration continued, “Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm. Now I do the work, and he takes the bows.” Remington Steele was created by Michael Gleason and Robert Butler, both of whom also served as executive producers. Gleason recalls Butler and himself developing the concept: “The original idea came from Robert. His idea was that this female detective invented this male superior. His take

126

Crime Television

on it was that you never see the guy, he remains a figment of her creation. When I arrived at MTM, a breakfast meeting was arranged for Robert and myself in which he told the idea and I really liked it. I thought it was very cute but I said, ‘What if he shows up and makes her crazy?’ At first Robert was like, ‘Well, I don’t know … ’ I said, ‘I think that gives it an added dynamic, if the phony Remington Steele shows up and she’s stuck with the guy.’ That’s what we proceeded to do, and it became a duet, and that’s what made the show work.” In the series, as Remington Steele’s reputation grew in the private detective industry, Laura did tend to grow a bit jealous of the attention lavished on the imposter. But she learned to live with it, not that they didn’t have their share of arguments. But those were the moments that made Remington Steele most memorable. The chemistry between Zimbalist and Brosnan was undeniable and irresistible. Zimbalist had a handful of acting credits before landing her role on this series, but the role of Laura Holt proved to be her breakthrough effort. Besides being beautiful, on screen she appeared confident, relaxed, and perfectly capable of carrying a series. Brosnan had only a few minor roles on his resume before being plucked from obscurity for his first starring role. He, like Zimbalist, commanded the screen every time the camera focused on him. Gleason remembers the casting process that led to the hiring of Zimbalist, although initially he was barred from any involvement. “When MTM was looking for the female lead, the Writers Guild was on strike so I was forbidden from talking to anybody,” he laughs. “The studio talked to several actresses, and when I came back from the strike, Stephanie’s agent had sent me a TV-movie she had done about Elvis Presley. Don Johnson had played Elvis Presley and she played his girlfriend, and she was just terrific. I said, ‘That’s the girl we should go with.’” For the role of Remington, Gleason and the studio initially had a British actor in mind. That is, until the day the man walked into Gleason’s office with an unusual inquiry regarding the pilot. “Now if this sells, what do we do next?’ he asked. “Well, if we get on the schedule, we go til we drop, hopefully we’ll get five years out of it,” Gleason responded. “Five years? Here?” “That’s right.” “Couldn’t possibly. I’m going back to England. Bye.” So Gleason and the studio folks found themselves sifting once again through piles of resumes and headshots. Then Geri Windsor, the executive in charge of talent at MTM, recalled a young Irish actor, Pierce Brosnan,

Crime Television—The 1980S

127

who had recently come in to test, but was passed over because they thought they had their man. Brosnan had just appeared in a mini-series titled The Manions of America, prompting Brosnan and his wife Cassie to make the journey to the United States in hopes of landing work in Hollywood. Windsor thought, “Hey, good looking guy, good actor,” and sent him over to meet with Gleason and Stuart Irwin, a vice-president at MTM who was guiding Remington Steele through the development process. “We loved Pierce, took him to the network,” recalls Gleason. “But the network guys thought we should keep looking. So we all started filing out, but Stuart parked his behind on the window sill in the guy’s office and said, ‘Now let’s talk about this.’ And he started talking about how good Pierce was and how he was exactly what we needed, had this great sense of comedy. Well everybody started drifting back into the office, and by the time Stuart was done, the network guy said, ‘OK, you can have him.’” Remington Steele was a light and airy romp in an era when shows like Hill Street Blues were prompting networks to move in darker, more dramatic directions. Fortunately, there was still a place on the networks’ schedules for shows like this, at least for a few more years. There was very little gunplay on the series. In the pilot, for example, Remington and Laura chased the bad guy down in a golf cart. When the need for a weapon did arise, the agency had one gun, which was kept unloaded in a lock box, and even then the bullets could sometimes be hard to locate. “We did toy deaths, you never saw the blood or a great deal of violence,” explains Gleason. Regarding those ingredients that made the show successful, Gleason continues, “We tried to do three things in each episode: we tried to do a great mystery, we tried to do comedy, and we tried to do romance, not necessarily in that order. Sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we didn’t, but a good episode had all three of those things. And we tried to combine them. In one early episode, a guy was dying, and he looks up at Remington and says, ‘Toodle-Loo,’ and he dies. And Remington says, ‘By God, what grace. I hope that I can be this wonderful when my turn comes.’ Very funny. Then later on they find it was a clue, that ‘Toodle-Loo’ was the name of a boat, which was part of the mystery. And the romance, that was part of the reason Laura kept Remington around, and the reason that he hung around. On the surface, she was stuck with him because he was publicly identified as Remington Steele. And he had no interest in being a private detective; he stuck around because he had a limousine, the best tables in the best restaurants and a great wardrobe. But on an underlying level he was attracted immensely to Laura, and she was attracted to him, and that’s what continued building throughout the series.”

128

Crime Television

Remington had a fondness for old detective movies, and would often quote memorable lines from classic films. Much of the credit for the witty banter between him and Laura should be credited to Gleason and Butler. “We were trying to do The Thin Man and not making any apologies or excuses for it,” confesses Gleason. “Someone asked whether using those movie quotes was one step too much. And I said I’d never seen that before, so let’s try it and if it doesn’t work we’ll take them out. Then the few times we weren’t able to work a quote in, we’d get letters from the audience asking, ‘Where’s the movie quote?’ That was one of the signature things about Remington Steele, and it also gave us an area for great fun. You could pattern the mystery after a movie, then have Remington name the movie, and sometimes he was right and sometimes the real case would go off in a different direction. We did And Then There Were None, DOA, The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest. If we didn’t do the whole story, we’d pull some pieces out of it, very deliberately.” Some casting changes occurred at the beginning of the second year. Co-star James Read was unhappy that he wasn’t getting more screen time, and asked to be released from his contract. Gleason agreed and in the fall of 1983, Murphy left to start his own agency. DeMay was dropped from the cast, too, and it was explained that Bernice had run off with a saxophone player. In the second season premiere, “Steele Away with Me” (9/20/1983), Laura and Remington are themselves investigated by a determined IRS agent named Mildred Krebs (Doris Roberts) who is close to discovering their secret arrangement. When, in the end, she looks the other way to Remington’s failure to pay taxes, she loses her job and ends up filling Bernice’s old position. Although technically a secretary, Mildred began to spend a lot of time in the field. Although it had a loyal following, Remington Steele never placed better than number 25 in the seasonal Nielsens. Eventually, in the spring of 1986, after four seasons, NBC cancelled the series (after 88 hours). Soon afterwards, it was announced that Brosnan had been chosen to succeed Roger Moore as James Bond. Suddenly, NBC reversed itself and ordered more Remington Steele, and MTM Productions, which supplied the series, refused to release the actor from his contract. Consequently, Timothy Dalton wound up playing Bond in 1987’s The Living Daylights. After Brosnan lost out on doing Bond, NBC’s commitment to Remington Steele quickly waned, and the series’s entire fifth season consisted of only six hours. Zimbalist, too, had to walk away from a lead role in the 1987 sci-fi flick Robocop. Fortunately, Brosnan would later replace Dalton as James Bond beginning with 1995’s Goldeneye.

Crime Television—The 1980S

129

Gleason partially attributes the situation to a scheduling conflict at NBC that occurred in the spring of 1986. “Stephen Cannell had done so much to resurrect NBC with The A-Team and Riptide and several other shows that, to reward him, NBC agreed to pick up Hunter for an entire 22-episode third season (even though ratings were a bit low) way before they set their schedule; then when it came time to set the schedule, what they saw was the only place Remington Steele would fit in was the Hunter spot, but Hunter was already on for 22 episodes, so there was no room for us. And it was really the audience, the fans, that got them to at least say, ‘OK, lets try at least six hours. If it works, we’ll find a place for you.’ Unfortunately, I think the momentum had died, and we just did the six hours and we were just through. And I think a lot of it also had to do with Pierce and James Bond and that whole thing.” Back in the fall of 1983, however, producer Stephen J. Cannell was reaching back to the genre where he got his start. After leaving the employ of Universal Studios in the late 1970s and becoming an independent producer, Cannell achieved success with the 1981 superhero series The Greatest American Hero, which he followed up with such titles as The Quest (1982), a short-lived fantasy about four Americans competing for the throne of a small European country, and The A-Team (1983–87), his mega-hit about a team of former Green Berets who sell their services as mercenaries. But it wasn’t until 1983 that the Rockford Files creator/producer returned to his roots. Hardcastle & McCormick is perhaps one of the best examples (along with The A-Team) of why producer Stephen J. Cannell became so successful in the 1980s. The plot was pure escapism: Judge Milton C. Hardcastle was a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who was about to retire after 30 years on the bench. Hardcastle was dedicated to the letter of the law. His by-thebook approach worked both for and against those criminal defendants who came up before him. If the evidence was there, “Hardcase,” as the Judge was often referred to behind his back, would not hesitate to put them away. On the other hand, he would not tolerate misconduct, and if he felt a suspect’s rights had been violated, he would just as quickly set him or her free. But Hardcastle really hated when that happened, so he decided that instead of spending his retirement on the golf course, he was going to track down all of those lawbreakers whom he’d been forced to release on legal technicalities and bring them to justice. Of course, the statute of limitations had run out on most of their original crimes, but Hardcastle figured they’d still be up to their old tricks.

130

Crime Television

Hardcastle realized he couldn’t go it alone and would need a “Tonto.” He found his trusty sidekick in “Skid” Mark McCormick—a 29-year-old former racecar driver whose career ended when he was sent to prison for grand theft auto. McCormick had been innocent of course. Sensing possibilities in the young man, Hardcastle presented McCormick with a choice: either join him on his crusade or he’d throw the book at him. McCormick reluctantly agreed and was soon living in the guesthouse at Hardcastle’s seaside estate, Gulls Way, the home base of their new crime-fighting enterprise. From that point on, viewers were treated to a weekly dose of high-octane car chases and shootouts (the show even came complete with a thriving, hard-rock theme song, “Drive,” composed by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer). The primary fault with Hardcastle & McCormick was that it was a crime drama, and the crime element of the series was fairly pedestrian. This was a problem with many cop shows in the 1980s: there were just so many of them that original storylines were becoming increasingly difficult to come by. What made Hardcastle & McCormick work, however, was the drama. Milton Hardcastle was one of the most enjoyable characters ever to come from Cannell’s TV factory. Together, Harcastle and McCormick complemented each other wonderfully. Credit for their chemistry can be split between creator-writers Patrick Hasburgh and Cannell and the two players cast in the primary roles. Actor Brian Keith, a versatile and prolific TV and motion picture actor (most recognized for his starring role in the sitcom Family Affair), was lured out of semiretirement in Hawaii to portray Hardcastle. He proved to be the perfect casting choice. At 62, Keith was remarkably fit and robust, and his enthusiasm transferred to the screen. Daniel Hugh-Kelly, an actor with just a handful of TV and film credits on his resume, was chosen to play McCormick. Together, he and Keith made quite a pair—constantly squabbling but always there to watch the other’s back. Their relationship stopped just short of being father and son. In one early episode subtitled “Man in a Glass House” (9/25/1983), Hardcastle is approached by retired mobster Joe Cadillac (John Marley), whose son, a Catholic priest, has been kidnapped by some old associates after the old man writes a tell-all book. Cadillac agrees to turn over evidence that will not only put him away but many of his associates as well if Hardcastle will just save his son’s life. McCormick then learns that Hardcastle, too, had a son who died in Vietnam. Reading his mind, Hardcastle quickly assures McCormick that he’s not using him as a substitute son. In “Goin’ Nowhere Fast” (10/9/1983), we learn that McCormick is not the first parolee Hardcastle had lassoed in as a partner. The first guy, J. J. Beal (Robert Desiderio), betrayed the Judge’s trust

Crime Television—The 1980S

131

and was sent back to prison, and he has now escaped and is gunning for Hardcastle. Patrick Hasburgh, who developed the show with Cannell and served as co-executive producer, remembers the series fondly. “This was back when I was just starting out,” he recalls. “I had spent three seasons writing for The Greatest American Hero and then helped to develop The A-Team, which I produced during its first season. Steve Cannell was gracious and generous enough to let me create a show with him. I had an idea about a car thief who wanted to go straight and Steve added the judge element. Brian Keith was a slam-dunk from the beginning, a gifted and wonderful actor. Daniel Hugh Kelly replaced David Carradine. Danny was everything we envisioned in the part of the young car thief who was placed into Judge Hardcastle’s care, but he was a handful on the set.” When it came to writing the pilot, subtitled “Rolling Thunder,” Hasburgh and Cannell basically adapted the identities of the characters they created. “The relationship between Hardcastle and McCormick very much reflected my relationship with Steve Cannell at the time,” explains Hasburgh. “Steve was my mentor. I was the smart-ass, blue-collar, working class punk and he was the rich kid, blue blood, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, which is still the case for both of us! I am far to the left politically; Steve is very conservative and Republican. We could not be more different, which is probably why we are such good friends and why, when we wrote that pilot together, our writing had such energy.” Actress Mary Jackson appeared in the series’s initial batch of episodes as Sarah Wicks, Hardcastle’s housekeeper (the Judge had actually inherited the home from his late wife). John Hancock (1984–85) and Joe Santos (1985–86) appeared as Hardcastle’s police contacts, Lt. Michael Delaney and Lt. Frank Harper, respectively. But primarily it was just Hardcastle and McCormick and their agenda. In the early second-season episode “Ties My Father Sold Me” (9/30/1984), McCormick learned the identity of his father, who deserted him as a young child. Hardcastle then accompanies him to Atlantic City, where the man, Sonny Daye (played by Steve Lawrence), works as a small-time lounge singer. At first, Sonny seems happy to see Mark and genuinely eager to develop a close relationship. Hardcastle is leery, concerned about McCormick getting hurt, especially after it turns out that Sonny is a former safecracker in trouble with the mob. Even after Sonny’s ties to the underworld nearly get his son killed, McCormick is still thrilled at finally knowing his father. In the end, however, Sonny skips town, leaving a note that explains he’s not up to being a dad. Of course, Hardcastle is there to support his devastated colleague.

132

Crime Television

Hardcastle & McCormick ran for three seasons and 66 episodes. In the finale, “A Chip Off the ‘Ol Milt” (5/5/1986), Mark reveals that he has been attending law school in order to follow in Hardcastle’s footsteps. The series ends with the two playing basketball out by the garage, which they did regularly. Only this time, the bet is that if McCormick wins, Hardcastle will pay his law school tuition—a bet McCormick wins before the series fades out one last time. Cannell would continue to use the buddy concept and his skill at developing such relationships to distinguish his shows from the myriad other crime series on TV. Just months after Hardcastle & McCormick premiered on ABC, another Cannell series premiered on NBC. Cannell already had a hit there with The A-Team, his 1983–87 action series about a rogue team of former Green Berets falsely accused of a war crime in Vietnam, who now operate as soldiers of fortune. In January 1984, Cannell premiered a much more conventional crime series on NBC. Riptide, though, was not without its idiosyncrasies. The show was about three army buddies who operate the Riptide Detective Agency. They all live and work on the Riptide, a boat moored at Pier 56 in King Harbor, California. Cody Allen (Perry King) and Nick Ryder (Joe Penny) are a couple of middle-age beach bums, while Murray “Boz” Bozinsky (Thom Bray) is a socially maladjusted computer wizard who provides Cody and Nick with the new technology they need to remain competitive with other high-tech agencies. The tools of their trade include a speedboat, the Ebbtide; an only marginally airworthy helicopter dubbed the Screaming Mimi; and the Roboz, a small robot developed by Boz. Jack Ging was Lt. Ted Quinlan, a cop who sometimes aided the guys if they were following a solid lead, but would have preferred they close up shop completely or at least sail into somebody else’s jurisdiction. Kirk “The Dool” Dooley (Ken Olandt) did occasional legwork for the agency. Anne Francis appeared in the spring 1984 episodes as Mama Jo, captain of a neighboring charter boat, The Barefoot Contessa, which consisted of an all-female crew. Riptide was a light-and-breezy hour of action, fun, and girls. Like Hardcastle & McCormick, it was a buddy show. The relationship between the leads was usually more satisfying than the crimes the P.I.s tried to solve each week. In the second episode, “Conflict of Interest” (1/10/1984), the guys reluctantly risk their lives to save Lt. Quinlan, only to have him slap them with charges for illegal use of firearms in the process. The second season episode subtitled “Boz Busters” (2/5/1985) uses flashbacks to show how Cody and Nick first met Boz. In a take-off on the 1973 film The Last Detail, the men are assigned to escort Captain Bozinsky to prison for striking a superior officer. Along the way they end up in New Orleans, where,

Crime Television—The 1980S

133

among other exploits, they set up Boz with his first woman. Later, realizing that Boz could never survive inside prison, Cody and Nick get him off the hook by calling in a favor from a general who owes them. Outside of the flashback, the officer whom Boz hit, Colonel Litvak, returns in present time for revenge against Boz. Riptide proved to be an immediate hit, ranking number 18 its first season. The next year it moved up to number 14. In the fall of 1985, the detectives of Pier 56 found a foe they couldn’t defeat in the new ABC hit Moonlighting, and the bottom fell out on their ratings bonanza. (Too bad Lt. Quinlan wasn’t around to gloat, but Lt. Joanna Parisi [June Chadwick] had replaced him that year.) By the end of the season, realizing the end was near, the producers shot an episode subtitled “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em” (4/18/1986) in which the detectives are hired as technical consultants for a new TV series about two detectives who bore uncanny resemblances to Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. To clue the two actors in on how to behave like true detectives, the guys invite them to participate in their latest case involving the attempted murder of a sleazy attorney. NBC cancelled Riptide shortly after the episode aired. In all, 58 hours were shot between 1984 and 1986. By then Cannell already had another hit on NBC. In the fall of 1984, after Riptide had been successfully launched and The A-Team was still riding high, Cannell’s company added another show to the networks stable of crime shows. This time, Cannell handed over the creative reins to long-time collaborator Frank Lupo, with whom he’d co-created The A-Team. The series that Lupo came up with was Hunter, an extremely violent and gritty program very much in the vein of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films. Hunter was an L.A.P.D. detective very much akin to the big screen’s Harry Callahan. He was tall and imposing, carried a large gun (which he nicknamed “Simon”), and even had his own catchphrase: “Works for me.” Hunter never seemed to have much concern for a suspect’s rights and could have been the poster boy for police brutality. He was also tough on the automobiles he drove, regularly smashing them up during high-speed chases. Eventually, the only cars his superiors would assign him from the motor pool were the ones already earmarked for the junk heap. One of the reasons Hunter was such a bad ass could have been that he had quite the legacy to live down. His father had been a crime boss, and most of his family members were still mobsters. Somehow, Rick ended up on the other side of the law. Long-time Los Angeles Rams defensive end Fred Dryer was cast as the lead, Detective Rick Hunter. After retiring from football and a short-lived stint as a sportscaster, Dryer took up acting. He was second choice to play Sam Malone in the sitcom Cheers, losing the role to Ted Danson. In the fall of 1983,

134

Crime Television

he played the villain in Stephen Cannell’s 90-minute pilot for The Rousters series. He impressed Cannell, which led to his casting a year later in Hunter. When it came to Hunter’s investigations, it wasn’t only the suspects who usually wound up battered and bruised. Hunter’s aggressive approach to volatile situations often led to a hospital stay for his partners. Eventually, no one wanted to work with him, which was fine with Hunter. But as regulations required him to have a partner, Hunter managed to work out a deal with Detective Dee Dee McCall, nicknamed “The Brass Cupcake.” She, too, preferred to work alone. And her methods, like Hunter’s, although unorthodox, usually led to good busts and safer streets (except for the bad guys of course). Their arrangement was to act as partners, attend role call together, sign each other’s reports at the end of the day, but to otherwise go their separate ways and work their own investigations. But as their admiration grew for one another, they wound up working together as a team. Stepfanie Kramer, who’d co-starred in two short-run series, Married: The First Year and We Got It Made, played McCall as sexy but stern, an able police woman capable of taking care of herself on the streets. Hunter and McCall’s protocol was evidently nerve wracking for their superiors as well, as early on there seemed to be a revolving door through which captains came and went: Captain Lester Cain (Michael Cavanaugh) oversaw their first case in the show’s two-hour pilot, telecast on September 18, 1984, in which the newly ordained partners went after a serial killer (Brian Dennehy) who preferred murdering only blondes whom he seemed to be following home from the same country bar. Arthur Rosenberg assumed the role when the series was picked up. He lasted just a few episodes before being replaced by John Amos as Captain Dolan. Bruce Davison would hold office the second season as Captain Wyler before being promoted for the third season (he continued to appear on occasion), after which Charles Hallahan became the new watch commander, Captain Charlie Devane. Devane finally took, remaining in the captain’s office for the rest of the series’s run. James Whitmore, Jr. was Hunter and McCall’s nemesis, Sgt. Bernie Terwilliger. During its first season, Hunter followed the tough cop formula to the hilt. In “Dead or Alive” (11/30/1984), the detectives tracked a vicious bounty hunter named Jimmy Jo Walker (Wings Hauser) who preferred taking his fugitives in dead. In “The Shooter,” McCall took a personal interest in the case of a motorcycle cop shot and killed by a special armor-penetrating bullet, the same way her late husband died. Originally scheduled on Friday nights at 9:00 P.M. against CBS powerhouse Dallas, Hunter was plagued by low ratings. The series went through its compliment of 13 episodes and was pulled from the NBC schedule in January. Brandon Tartikoff allowed the show

Crime Television—The 1980S

135

to remain in production, however, and was impressed enough with changes he saw in the show’s content that he agreed to give it another chance. Hunter returned in March on Saturday nights at 10:00 P.M. with a special two-part episode subtitled “The Snow Queen” (3/23/1985 and 3/30/1985), in which a big-time New York female cocaine dealer known as the Snow Queen (Lycia Naff) escapes from her escort in Los Angeles. Hunter then teams with the New York officer, Sgt. Jackie Molinas (Dennis Franz), in recapturing her. McCall, meanwhile, goes undercover in search of the woman, but her cover and her life are later threatened. Viewers were impressed, too, and Hunter finally began to attract an audience in its new timeslot. Beginning with the second season, all references to Hunter’s family and their connections to the mob were gone. Instead of spending all their time on the streets dealing with punks and thugs, Hunter and McCall began to spend more time investigating high-end crimes in which the suspects wore three-piece suits and drove expensive cars. Hunter not only drew the respect of TV (breaking into the top-20 in 1988–89), but also earned the approval of the L.A.P.D. (Then Chief-of-Police Daryl Gates even appeared as himself in one episode.) One of the series’s most controversial episodes came in the second season. Subtitled “Rape and Revenge” (11/2/1985 and 11/9/1985), it began with McCall being savagely raped and beaten by a foreign diplomat named Raul Mariano (Richard Yniguez) who shows no remorse and claims immunity when police try to arrest him. Even his father, General Mariano (Michael Ansara), seems indifferent to the horrible crimes his son has committed. Shortly afterward, the younger Mariano leaves the United States and returns to his native country, San Pablo. The scenes between Hunter and the devastated McCall in Part One are very touching. In Part Two, Hunter travels to San Pablo to get revenge. When McCall finds out, she goes after Hunter to stop him, but Hunter confronts the rapist and kills him in a shootout. Then Hunter and McCall must escape from the country by outmaneuvering General Mariano’s troops. Hunter, on the brink of cancellation only halfway through its first season, went on to become one of NBC’s longest-running crime dramas. Stepfanie Kramer elected to leave the series after six seasons. On screen, McCall remarried and left the force. Hunter was then partnered with Officer Joanne Molenski (Darlene Fluegel). Molenski was killed off mid-season in a special two-hour episode, “Fatal Obsession” (1/9/1991), and Hunter was then teamed with Officer Chris Novak (Lauren Lane) for the remainder of the series’s seventh and final season. Hunter aired its final original telecast on April 26, 1991.

136

Crime Television

Hunter’s 153 hours played well in syndication, leading Fred Dryer to resurrect the character in a 1995 made-for-TV movie, The Return of Hunter. The movie was not terribly successful. So when NBC offered the producers another chance to revive the character in 2002, they also recalled Stepfanie Kramer to active duty as well. Viewers seemed more receptive to Hunter and McCall returning to the screen together, and Hunter: Return to Justice (11/16/2002) was a hit. That film was followed up with Hunter: Back in Force on April 12, 2003. NBC was so pleased that it decided to put Hunter back into production as a series 12 years after the original show left the air. Dryer and Kramer were a little older, but both slipped right back into their characters. Unfortunately, they never really got a chance to click with viewers. NBC dropped the new show into a Saturday night timeslot at 8:00 P.M. with little promotion. Not surprisingly, it was cancelled (again) after only three episodes had been broadcast (two additional segments remained unaired). Two other hit series also premiered in the fall of 1984, both taking decidedly different paths: Miami Vice and Murder, She Wrote. Miami Vice was a television hybrid. A tremendous cultural success if not a big ratings winner, it attracted viewers for many different reasons. On one level, it was realistic and gritty, like some of the more successful shows of the 1980s (Hill Street Blues, for example). But Miami Vice came to viewers gift wrapped in brightly colored paper. NBC-TV President Brandon Tartikoff had wanted to do a series called MTV Cops, and producer Michael Mann obliged him (except for the title). The series was filmed on location in sun-drenched Miami and featured plenty of sexy women, fast cars, and cold-blooded killers—all presented using innovative cinematography, stylish editing, and a blaring soundtrack featuring many of the era’s most popular musicians. The series’s two-hour pilot, subtitled “Brother’s Keeper,” aired on September 16, 1984 and set up the show’s scenario. In New York City, Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas), a Bronx street cop, witnesses the shooting death of his brother Raphael at the hands of drug kingpin Orlando Calderone (Miguel Pinero). When he fears that the department’s homicide bureau is getting nowhere in trying to apprehend the killer, Tubbs assumes his late sibling’s identity and tracks Calderone to Miami, where he teams with vice detective James “Sonny” Crockett (Don Johnson), who just lost his partner Eddie (Jimmy Smits) to Calderone as well. Their investigation is threatened when Crockett learns that Tubbs is lying about his identity and may be more interested in revenging his brother’s death than bringing his killer to justice.

Crime Television—The 1980S

137

Besides the series’s unique visual style, Miami Vice benefited greatly from having fully realized lead characters. Sonny Crockett’s background, for example, is revealed in the pilot: he was an All-American wide receiver for the University of Florida Gators who instead of turning pro ended up doing a tour of duty in Vietnam. His job with the vice squad later led to the slow disintegration of his marriage. His ex-wife Caroline (Belinda Montgomery) and six-year-old son Billy (Ryan St. Leon) were rarely seen. When all was said and done, Sonny wound up sharing digs on a sailboat with his pet alligator, Elvis, who had once been the mascot for the University of Florida. Less was known about Tubbs, except that he was also a good cop. After he and Crockett captured Calderone in the pilot, Tubbs stayed on in Miami and became Crockett’s full-time partner. Before the pilot faded to black, however, Calderone managed to find a friendly judge who arranged for bail in the middle of the night, and immediately boarded a seaplane for destinations unknown. They’d all run into each other again before the end of the first season. The series also had a strong supporting cast. Gregory Sierra was originally cast as Crockett and Tubbs’s superior officer, Lt. Lou Rodriguez. Once the series got picked up, however, Sierra decided he didn’t want to relocate to Miami to film the series, so in the fourth episode, “The Hit List” (10/19/1984), Rodriguez was killed by an assassin hired by Calderone to get revenge on Crockett and his family. Edward James Olmos then stepped in as Lt. Martin Castillo. Olmos was excellent as the new team leader, a man who valued an economy of words, but when he did speak he expected his orders to be followed to the letter. Other small, but interesting, character traits included keeping his desk totally free of paperwork, insisting that anyone wishing to enter his office knock first, and grooming himself pristinely. In the chaos that usually enveloped the squad room, even these small vices truly set Castillo apart from the others. The other cast members included Saundra Santiago and Olivia Brown as partners Gina Navarro Calabrese and Trudy Joplin, and Michael Talbott and John Diehl as undercover agents Stan Switek and Larry Zito. Zito was killed in an emotionally charged two-part episode that aired mid-way through the third season. Subtitled “Down for the Count” (1/9/1987 and 1/16/1987), the segment involved Zito going undercover in the world of boxing to take down a bookmaker. When the assignment goes sour and Zito is killed, Switek wants the man responsible. Guest stars included Don King and Randall “Tex” Cobb. The series quickly became the hippest hour of television in prime time, attracting a number of big-name guests including G. Gordon Liddy, Lee Iacocca, Willie Nelson (as a retired Texas Ranger), and

138

Crime Television

even Tartikoff in a cameo. During the series’s fourth season, Sheena Easton played Caitlin Davies, a singer who was placed into Crockett’s protective custody. They fell in love and were married, but she was gunned down and died in his arms after only a handful of episodes. The series also attracted viewers with its strong musical selections. Each episode was seasoned with top pop-hits of the early 1980s from musicians such as Phil Collins, Gloria Esteban, Glenn Frey, Peter Gabriel, Cyndi Lauper, and Tina Turner. Jan Hammer composed the program’s weekly background score, which also proved enormously popular. Hammer put out two albums of music from the series. The first, titled simply Miami Vice, hit number one on the Billboard pop charts in November 1985 (selling 7 million copies internationally), the first TV soundtrack to do so since Henry Mancini’s Music from Peter Gunn in 1959. Hammer’s main title theme for the series also became a number one single. Hammer later put out another album, Miami Vice II, which also sold well. He picked up two Grammies in 1986 for his work. In the two-hour, second-season premiere, “The Prodigal Son” (9/27/1985), Crockett and Tubbs travel to New York to help Manhattan authorities with their investigation into a ring of international cocaine traffickers. Several federal agents working on the case had already fallen victim to ritualistic murders. Crockett and Tubbs set out to locate the Revillas brothers (Luis Guzman and Miguel Pinero), the two Columbians suspected of running the outfit. But the two detectives are stunned to discover later that the real kingpin is none other than Calderone. It was a nice follow-up to the series pilot of a year before. The only problem with the episode is the failure to use being in New York as an excuse to delve more into Tubbs’s past. Although at its core Miami Vice was an innovative drama about two partners, Johnson’s Sonny Crockett did seem to get more attention than Thomas’s Ricardo Tubbs. Johnson would go on to greater success after Miami Vice’s run, appearing in feature films and starring in another longrunning hit series, CBS’s Nash Bridges (1996–2001). Miami Vice ran for five seasons, ending its run in 1989 after 114 hours, reaching the height of its popularity during the 1985–86 season when it ranked number nine for the year. The series did have a special two-hour finale, subtitled “Freefall” (5/21/1989) in which Crockett and Tubbs head to a small Latin American country called Costa Morada to escort its dictator, General Manuel Borbon (Ian McShane), back to the United States, where Borbon has agreed to testify against prominent members of a South American drug cartel. The detectives are barely able to get Borbon out of the country after a revolution breaks out. When they do get him back to the United States, instead

Crime Television—The 1980S

139

of thanks they encounter incensed federal authorities who accuse Crockett and Tubbs of interfering with their operations in Costa Morada. Rather than being forced out of their jobs, Crockett and Tubbs hand in their badges. The same month that Miami Vice premiered, CBS rolled out the red carpet for what turned out to be not only one of the season’s biggest hits, but one of the most successful crime series of all time, the classy whodunit Murder, She Wrote, starring acclaimed film and stage actress Angela Lansbury. The series debuted in the fall of 1984 and ran for an astounding 12 seasons. Richard Levinson and William Link, who created Columbo, and Peter S. Fischer, who served as that series’ story editor, created Murder, She Wrote (the title was lifted from the 1961 Miss Marple mystery Mystery, She Said). Lansbury portrayed Jessica Fletcher, a former substitute teacher who, after the death of her husband Frank, followed her dream and became a best-selling mystery novelist. Jessica lived on the coast of Maine in the picturesque ocean-side community of Cabot Cove. Jessica’s fame and fortune allowed her to indulge in her favorite hobby: being an amateur sleuth. Whether at home in the seemingly peaceful surroundings of Cabot Cove or traveling the world, Jessica had a habit of stumbling into murder plots. Peter Fischer recalls selling the series: “Dick [Levinson], Bill [Link], and I went to CBS and we pitched them an idea about a magician who solved mysteries, which later turned out to be a show on NBC with Hal Linden called Blacke’s Magic (1986). CBS said, ‘Well, that’s a really interesting concept but we were really hoping for something with a female lead.’ So Dick and I and Bill looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we can probably figure something out.’ They said, ‘We want to schedule it on the weekend where we think we can get the right audience.’ They weren’t sure what show they wanted, only that it have this female lead. So we went off and got started. The Love Boat was a big hit back then, with all the guest stars and that stuff. I said, ‘Why don’t we try to out-Love Boat the Love Boat. We’ll use a lot of guest stars. We’ll take Miss Marple and Agatha Christie and combine them into one, and we’ll have a mystery writer who solves mysteries.’ Dick and Bill both liked that idea. We didn’t want to set it in England, for practical reasons, so we set it in New England, which gave it that kind of old-fashioned, down-home Yankee quality. We then went back and pitched it and CBS loved it.” The next hurdle was casting the lead role. The producers’ first choice was actress Jean Stapleton, who was just coming off nine seasons of playing Edith Bunker on All in the Family (1971–79). The role had earned her three Emmys. “CBS was very specific that they didn’t want a young actress; they wanted someone with a little maturity, and there were only a handful of

140

Crime Television

actresses that age who had real credentials,” says Fischer. “The one who came to mind right away was Jean. I felt if we could get her to play this part it would help us a lot. So we had a meeting with Jean over at the Bel Air Hotel, and we told her the story. She liked the idea but said she’d have to see the script first. So when we finished the script we sent it over to Jean and didn’t hear from her for two or three days. Finally, she came back and said, ‘You know, this is just not something that I want to do.’ I don’t know if she didn’t like the material or if she didn’t want to get involved in something as laborious as this show was going to be, or whether, having had nine years of great success, she was afraid of failing coming off a big hit, but she said no. After that we were putting a list together of women who might be available when suddenly Harvey Shepherd, the head of CBS, called and said, ‘What do you think of Angela Lansbury?’ My first thought was of The Manchurian Candidate, but Harvey assured us she was nothing like that. She had been offered a half-hour sitcom from ABC at the same time, but they sent her our script, too, and after she read them both she decided on us. Meeting her was one of the happiest days of my life. Just like with Peter Falk, when you look at the screen, what you see is what you get.” Shepherd was so excited by the project that he gave it a green light without a pilot being shot. The downside to that approach came when advertisers prepared to buy time for the upcoming season wanted to get a look at the show before any film had actually been shot. Murder, She Wrote had been late rolling into production, and therefore there was nothing to show. CBS went to the producers in a panic. “We have to have something to show to the advertisers. Can we show them a demo, anything?” “You can show them a demo, the problem is, it’s not going to be the show,” Fischer explained. “The charm of the show is going to be the guest stars, and if we do the demo with Joe Dokes and Jane Smith, that isn’t going to sell the show.” “Well what do you want to do?” “I’ve got an idea,” Fischer replied. At the time, he and the others were in the midst of casting, and already had guest stars signed on for the pilot movie including Arthur Hill, Brian Keith, Ned Beatty, Herb Edelman, and Anne Francis. Although they were under contract to appear in the pilot, they were not obligated to shoot a demo. Therefore the producers reordered the shooting schedule so that four or five scenes involving each of the guests would be shot first. He then explained to the network: “Why don’t we do this: We’ll film Angela in her home set, in her kitchen at Cabot Cove, and she’ll talk to the camera, saying

Crime Television—The 1980S

141

she’s doing a new show and she’ll be playing Jessica Fletcher … and let her explain a little about the adventure that starts off the series. Then we can take the five scenes that involved all our guest stars and put them together with Angela narrating in-between.” CBS quickly agreed to the idea, and it turned out very well. When they showed the 20-minute demo to the advertisers they liked what they saw, but were skeptical. “What’s wrong with this movie?” they kept asking. “There’s nothing wrong with this movie,” replied Fischer. “Oh yeah, then how come you’re not showing us the whole thing? Why are you just showing us 20 minutes?’ It took the producers some time to explain to the ad buyers that they were still in the middle of shooting the pilot. Producers Levinson, Link, and Fischer borrowed the basic premise of the series from their mid-1970s effort Ellery Queen, in which the identity of the killer was not revealed until the end of the episode. Instead, viewers had to follow the clues just like Jessica and identify which one of several possible suspects was the real culprit. Unlike Ellery Queen, Jessica Fletcher never actually turned to the camera to address viewers, but she did, in the final act, carefully go back and assemble each piece of the puzzle before finally pointing out the offender. The series was an immediate smash hit, leaping right into the number eight position for its first season on the air. Certainly part of the success of Murder, She Wrote was its timeslot on Sunday nights at 8:00 P.M. following 60 Minutes, which proved the perfect fit for the more mature viewers the series tended to attract. Jessica was the series only regular character, which meant Lansbury often had to appear in just about every scene, keeping the actress, then in her early sixties, extremely busy. Robert Swanson served as the series’s story editor and later supervising producer. He remembers Lansbury’s great resolve despite her hectic schedule: “She had enormous energy and talent. She was a Tony-winning Broadway star, and that is very physically demanding. And she wasn’t a kid when she was doing the show. She had just enormous professional ethics and she believed in knowing her lines, being on time, she never made anybody wait. She never went and hid in her trailer because she was upset about something. She was a real pro.” About as close as Murder, She Wrote ever came to having a supporting character was Tom Bosley’s recurring portrayal of Cabot Cove Sheriff Amos Tupper. When Bosley got his own mystery series, The Father Dowling Mysteries, Amos retired and moved away to be near his family. William Windom also showed up from time to time as Dr. Seth Hazlitt, who advised Jessica on her cases and challenged her at chess.

142

Crime Television

During the series’s later seasons, attempts were made to free up a little of Lansbury’s time. “We used to try and protect her in so far as we’d write the scripts so she wouldn’t have to be in every scene,” explains Swanson. “Then there was a period about halfway through where we did bookend shows, where Jessica Fletcher would come on and talk about a mystery that she had heard about or was involved with and then somebody else would carry the script. There would then be another little connection scene at the end. That would give Angela a little time off. We would do maybe three or four bookend shows during a season. It was interesting because we could do little mini-pilots that way and introduce characters and situations that might spin out into another series.” Guest stars who filled in for Lansbury included Keith Mitchell, Wayne Rogers, Len Cariou, and Herb Edelman. Only one successful series was sired from the original, however. In 1987, actor Jerry Orbach, who had made several appearances on Murder, She Wrote as irascible, disheveled private eye Harry McGraw, was granted his own shortlived spin-off, The Law and Harry McGraw (1987–88). By the summer of 1995, with Murder, She Wrote gearing up for its twelfth season, CBS decided to move it from Sunday nights, where it had played since the fall of 1984, and relocate it to Thursdays. (Replacing it on Sundays in the fall of 1995 were two sitcoms, Cybill and Almost Perfect. A year later, the popular religious-themed drama Touched by an Angel would inherit the timeslot, where it would remain for the next eight seasons, proving how golden the timeslot could be for the right show.) Many believed CBS’s decision to switch Murder, She Wrote to Thursdays was an attempt to bury the series. Still ranked number eight during the 1994–95 season, the show tumbled off the radar when it began airing on its new night, and it was unceremoniously dumped the next summer. In all, 264 episodes were produced. Lansbury did reprise the role in a number of made-for-TV movie specials in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ratings aside, without a doubt, the decade’s most bizarre detective drama was ABC’s Moonlighting. That is, if you want to consider it a detective drama. Most people, including critics and even the network’s own executives, weren’t sure what it was. One thing millions of viewers did agree on though is that whatever genre this odd hour-long gem belonged to, it was brilliantly crafted. The series told the tale—and a tall one it was—of Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd), a former high-fashion model who woke up one morning and discovered that her business manager had embezzled her fortune. Maddie was left with nothing more than a few stray assets that she immediately began to liquidate to raise badly needed cash. One

Crime Television—The 1980S

143

of those holdings turned out to be The Blue Moon Detective Agency in Los Angeles, a money pit that had been set up to act as a tax shelter. Maddie ran into one obstacle while attempting to close its doors—wisecracking lead detective David Addison (Bruce Willis), who’d done a fine job of spending her money but had yet to prove himself a capable private eye. David explained to Maddie that his job had been to operate the agency at a perpetual loss, but need be, he could turn the business into a profitable venture. Financially strapped, Maddie was eventually won over, but decided to settle into an office at Blue Moon and carefully monitor the agency’s turnaround. She then began integrating herself into the actual investigations, to David’s initial dismay but eventual delight. Sounds like an interesting premise for a credible crime drama, which was ABC’s intention from day one. Unfortunately, series creator and executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron never shared this view. “Crime was a genre that I had very little interest in,” explains Caron, who had an arrangement with ABC to write and produce three two-hour movies that would also serve as potential series’ pilots. The first two, in Caron’s words, were “too arty for the room. You have to put things in context and remember that this was the time when Aaron Spelling dominated programming at ABC, so much so that the joke was [that] ABC stood for Aaron’s Broadcasting Company.” The network didn’t pick up either pilot, so when time rolled around to begin developing the third pilot in their deal, ABC approached Caron and made some rather strong suggestions. “We’re going to tell you what to do,” the network brass announced. “We want you to do a boy-girl detective show like Hart to Hart.” “Oh my God, I hate those,” Caron responded. “Well that’s what you’re going to do, and we’re going to get somebody like Cheryl Ladd, somebody blonde and really pretty, and we’ll get some guy who looks good in a tux, and you’re going to do this boy-girl detective show.” “I don’t want to do that. I have no interest in doing that.” “You can do what you want with it, but that’s what you’re going to do.” With little recourse, Caron focused only on the words, “You can do what you want with it.” He was familiar with the genre. At one point, because he needed to work, he had helped to write and produce the first 10 episodes of Remington Steele. So the creation of Moonlighting, one of ABC’s few major hits of the 1980s, was “really born out of someone putting a gun to my head and saying ‘You need to do this thing that’s been done a hundred other times’ and me just being very young and snobbish about it and convinced that I was the wrong guy being asked to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

144

Crime Television

Films such as The Thin Man did not inspire the series, as many had imagined. “I had not seen The Thin Man,” says Caron. “Cybill obviously was a student of old films because she spent so much time with Peter Bogdanovich. And Bruce actually turned me on to a number of old films, Palm Beach Story and Sullivan’s Travels, a lot of Preston Sturges. I was really into Capra, the Marx Brothers, and those kinds of things. In fact, when I was doing Remington Steele, [co-creator and executive producer] Michael Gleason was a huge fan of old detective films and B-movies, and more often than not I was not familiar with them. But people looked at Moonlighting and said, ‘Well, it’s sort of like an old movie, this guy must really know his old movies.’ I was much more interested in the films of the 1970s, because those were the films I was weaned on—Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, and those sorts of people. I was always flattered when people would reference older films, but it wasn’t by design, although we did have everybody look at His Girl Friday, an old Howard Hawks picture, because I wanted to show people just how quickly you could talk, that you could be lightning fast and yet still comprehensible.” Moonlighting premiered on ABC on Sunday, March 3, 1985, then moved to Tuesday nights for a five-week trial run. The network promoted it as the detective series it had originally contracted for, with hints of romance between the leads. The show performed well, if not outstanding, and attracted a very vocal core audience that deluged ABC with phone calls and letters pleading with them to renew the program for fall. ABC obliged, surprised by the series’s popularity, and cautiously ordered seven new episodes. On screen, Moonlighting broke all the rules. Imitating His Girl Friday, the characters delivered rapid-fire dialogue that was peppered with puns and double entendres. Behind the scenes, ABC grew increasingly concerned. Recalls Caron: “When we were shooting the pilot, the scene where Bruce and Cybill first meet, Bruce was in his office playing Wiffle basketball, with a wastebasket propped up above the door, and Cybill was brought in by Ms. Dipesto (the agency’s rhyming office manager, played by Allyce Beasley). As the door opens the wastebasket falls and lands on Ms. Dipesto’s head, and she goes ahead and introduces Cybill anyway, but her dialogue is all muffled because the basket is over her head. Then Bruce walks over and says, ‘Hello, Ms. Dipesto, you’re looking a little pale today.’ And I remember everybody going ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop! You can’t be serious!’ They said ‘You can’t do that,’ and I said, ‘No, it’ll be fine.’ Another time, early on, Bruce and Cybill had to get in a door that was locked, and typically on a detective show the detective would kick in the door or some other phony-baloney mayhem. And my

Crime Television—The 1980S

145

feeling was, we’ve all watched these shows and we know if they don’t get through the door, the show can’t continue. So I had Bruce pull a bobby pin from Cybill’s hair, and she says ‘What are you doing?’ And he says ‘Watch.’ And he shoves it in the lock and he starts to sing, ‘You put the bobby pin in, you pull the bobby pin out, you put the bobby pin in and you shake it all about, you do the hokey pokey, and that’s what it’s all about …’ and he opens the door, and the network said ‘You can’t do that because we won’t take them seriously as detectives.’ And I said, ‘I have no intention of you taking them seriously as detectives.’ ABC would talk a lot about jeopardy, and say you have to put them in jeopardy, and I’d say they’re not in jeopardy, they’re the stars of the show, everybody knows they’re coming back next week, that’s silly. Again, that was early on, and eventually they got the joke, about the same time everybody else got it, about seven or eight episodes into the show. It took awhile for everyone to really understand because people took their detective shows very seriously, but once everybody got the joke nobody complained.” A great deal of the series’s success certainly had to do with casting Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis in the lead roles. Caron actually had a much easier time landing Cybill, the Hollywood veteran, than Willis, who was a complete unknown. Caron was halfway through penning the pilot when he realized he was basically writing for Cybill. He mentioned this to his agent, who set up a meeting with her. She had been sent the completed half of Caron’s script and remarked, “Oh, it’s a Hawksian comedy.” Caron had no idea what she meant; Cybill clarified that it reminded her of the work of director Howard Hawks. She said if the rest of the script was as good as the first, she’d definitely be interested in doing it. Casting Willis proved more difficult. According to Caron, open casting calls attracted more than 3,000 candidates, but when Willis walked in Caron had an immediate sense that he was the guy. ABC didn’t share his enthusiasm, but Caron wouldn’t give up, dragging Willis back before the network 11 times. They finally said, “Stop bringing him, we’re not going to hire him.” But Caron persisted and finally got his way after the network saw a screen test of Shepherd and Willis together. By the end of its second season, Moonlighting had begun to catch on and finished the year at number 24. But even as its popularity continued to rise, the series began to show signs of serious trouble. The program was more talk than action, with viewers being treated to a verbal trapeze each week as Maddie and David worked their magic and solved the crime. Fans never seemed to mind that the mysteries were sometimes paper thin, they tuned in for the comradery between the characters. But because there was so much

146

Crime Television

dialogue and it was fired off so quickly, the typical Moonlighting script ran a third to a half longer than your typical one-hour crime drama, and also took extra days to shoot. As a result, only 18, rather than the typical 22, episodes were produced that season. Things got worse during the second season, as only 15 new segments made it to the air. Ratings soared, however, with the show finishing the season ranked at number nine. Backstage problems also added to the difficulties. Tensions began to rise between Shepherd and Willis that eventually encompassed Caron as well. “There was certainly a lot of friction between them,” admits Caron. “Bruce and I were very close, but there was tension between Cybill and Bruce and there was also tension between her and me. I didn’t feel any animus toward her, but I think the workload was very, very difficult for her, I know it was. And I think she may have felt like she wasn’t dealt with fairly. I always tried to deal with her fairly, and I believed I was dealing with her fairly. But I know that she was deeply unhappy at certain points.” The situation continued to disintegrate even as the show continued to grow wildly popular. Egged on by the apparent approval of fans, the writers came up with even more bizarre storylines. The episode “Atomic Shakespeare” (11/25/1986), written by co-producers Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno, broke the series’s fourth wall, a gimmick often used on the series. It began with a young boy at home who wanted to watch Moonlighting on TV but whose mother insisted he do his homework—studying Shakespeare—instead. As he reads The Taming of the Shrew, he begins to imagine the Moonlighting characters in the play, including David as Petruchio and Maddie as Kate. The episode became a favorite of both fans and critics. Caron even scripted a segment that made light of the program’s behind-the-scenes personality conflicts, “The Straight Poop” (1/6/1987), in which celebrity journalist Rona Barrett came to the Blue Moon offices with her cameras to do a story on why there was no new Moonlighting episode that week. Guest interviewees included Shepherd’s former lover, director Peter Bogdanovich, and actor Pierce Brosnan in character as fellow detective Remington Steele. What wasn’t funny was what was going on at Moonlighting when the cameras weren’t rolling. The feud between Shepherd, Willis, and Caron was threatening to tear one of ABC’s most popular series apart, and it was all being reported play-by-play in the nation’s tabloids. “It was very difficult because it was new to all of us,” Caron explains. “I suppose there have always been tabloids, and there’s always been publicity, but it seemed like we were on the cover of those damn things every week. I had never read a tabloid until I did the show, and then it became a part of my job to read it. People forget there was a time when frankly you didn’t buy the Enquirer or

Crime Television—The 1980S

147

at least you didn’t want to be seen buying the Enquirer, but then there was a shift, and I think somewhere in the late 1980s people said, ‘You know what, these things are fun.’ And they actually did start to buy them and actually started to believe a lot of what was said in them, and yeah, it complicates your life, it zaps your energy, and it’s hurtful sometimes. It does make things more difficult.” In 1987, Shepherd announced that she was pregnant with twins; Willis landed the lead roles in two studio films, Sunset and Die Hard, which were being shot simultaneously with Moonlighting; and Caron was hired to direct the Warner Bros. feature Clean and Sober starring Michael Keaton. This threw the series’s production schedule into turmoil. Many weeks either Shepherd or Willis would not be available, and the other would have to headline the series alone. Another character, Herbert Viola (Curtis Armstrong), a new investigator and romantic interest for Ms. Dipesto, was added to take up the slack. In one episode, “Here’s Living with You, Kid” (3/15/1988), neither Shepherd nor Willis were on hand, requiring Herbert and Ms. Dipesto to take center stage. After two years of sexual tension, Caron finally got Maddie and David together long enough to consummate their relationship, after which Maddie soon found she was pregnant with David’s child (all an effort to deal with Shepherd’s real-life pregnancy). To compensate for the fact that his two stars were not readily available to share screen time, Caron was forced to create separate storylines for them. Shepherd sat out most of the series’s third season because of her pregnancy. On the show, it was explained that Maddie, after learning she was pregnant, went to stay with her parents in Chicago to think things out, while David continued running the agency in L.A. Later in the season, while on her way back to Los Angeles by train, she met a man, Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan), and married him. Fans were outraged that Maddie would marry another man while still pregnant with David’s baby. Thankfully, the marriage was annulled at the end of the season, but the damage had been done and the series began to lose its audience. (Only 14 new episodes were filmed that year.) Caron felt the show still had a lot of life left in it at that point. “I know a lot of people think that was the death of the show, but I don’t agree,” he maintains. “The problem was there was a confluence of events that happened that made things spin out of control, none of them bad things in and of themselves, a lot of them sort of glorious things, but when they came together they made it very hard to continue with the show. Cybill was pregnant with twins, which made it difficult for her to work, so we had to start constructing storylines that didn’t involve her as much, which was difficult.

148

Crime Television

Bruce was becoming a movie star, had done the Die Hard film, so making all these scheduling things work became tough, and I was off directing, and it just became harder and harder and harder. The answer to dealing with that was to create that story for Cybill, of her meeting this man on a train and marrying him and all this stuff, and then creating a storyline for Bruce. But the truth is, people wanted to see them together, and that just became more difficult to do, and that I think more than anything contributed to the show’s end.” Caron himself resigned as executive producer in the spring of 1987 but continued to contribute the occasional script. Explains Caron: “There was a lot of friction between myself and Cybill, and at a certain point she said, ‘I’m more comfortable if he’s not here.’ I don’t look as good in pumps as she does, so I wasn’t there. And I think that contributed to it as well. I do think that we were in a weird way a band, and you can’t take a third of the band away and expect the band to sound the same.” Maddie miscarried on the first episode of the 1988–89 season after which she and David decided to simply remain friends (in real-life, Shepherd gave birth to twins Ariel and Zach on October 6, 1987). The series continued to be dogged by problems: ABC relocated the show from its Tuesday night perch to Sundays, where ratings spiraled out of the top-20, and ongoing production delays led to another abbreviated season, with only 13 new episodes being completed that year. The program aired its final original segment on May 14, 1989, subtitled “Lunar Eclipse,” in which Herbert and Ms. Dipesto were married. Returning to the Blue Moon offices after the wedding, the characters discover the set being dismantled and ABC executives waiting to inform them that the series has been cancelled. The show never flinched. In the fall of 1985, ABC went for the more dramatic approach with Spenser: For Hire, based on author Robert B. Parker’s series of novels about a private investigator living and working in Boston (where the series was filmed on location). Robert Urich starred as Spenser (the character had no first name), who was an educated, literate hero. He’d been a former Boston police officer who still had ties to the force. He’d been a boxer at one point, too. But it was as a private investigator, working as his own boss, setting his own rules and limits, that he seemed to feel most comfortable (although he still threw, and absorbed, quite a few punches). Spenser lived in a converted firehouse, drove a vintage Mustang, loved to cook gourmet meals, and dated a beautiful woman, Susan Silverman (Barbara Stock). Quite the existence, unless you consider the lowlifes that he encountered as part of his work. Fortunately for Spenser, he had a trusted friend in Hawk (presumably his

Crime Television—The 1980S

149

last name), an intimidating black man who often crossed the line when it came to obeying the law. Avery Brooks was outstanding in the role. He, like Spenser, accepted money to help people in trouble. But whereas Spenser might try to negotiate a peace or if necessary enforce a restraining order, Hawk would save time and expense simply by allowing his long-barreled magnum to do his talking for him. A prime example of their relationship would be displayed in an episode subtitled “The Choice” (10/4/1985), in which two psychotic young thrill killers (Patricia Clarkson and Sam Robards) declare war on Spenser. Even after they miss their target and kill an innocent bystander, there isn’t enough evidence for the police to hold them. Eventually Spenser gets the drop on them, but even though he knows they’ll keep trying to kill him, he’s unable to shoot them. He turns and walks away, leaving the two gleefully anticipating their next move. That is, until Spenser is out of sight and Hawk emerges from the shadows and draws his gun on them, prepared to do the dirty work that Spenser, as a conventional hero, can’t. Hearing the shots in the distance, however, Spenser realizes that justice has prevailed in perhaps the only manner possible. Backing up Spenser, sometimes reluctantly, were Boston Police Department Lt. Martin Quirk (Richard Jaeckel) and his assistant Sgt. Frank Belson (Ron McLarty). Quirk suffered a heart attack while chasing a suspect in 1987 and was forced to retire, after which Spenser turned directly to Belson when in need of police assistance. Spenser proposed to Susan, but she was hesitant to accept because of the danger involved in Spenser’s work and her fear of losing him. She left for San Francisco after the first season, believing she and Spenser needed some time apart. During her absence, actress Carolyn McCormick was added to the cast as assistant D.A. Rita Fiori. She and Spenser worked closely together, but their relationship remained platonic. Susan returned at the beginning of the third season (Silverman also returned and McCormick exited). She told him she still needed time, but wanted to be a part of his life again. Spenser: For Hire ran for three seasons, ending its run in 1988 after 66 episodes. ABC then ordered a spin-off series titled A Man Called Hawk, in which Avery Brooks took his enigmatic character to Washington, D.C. where business pretty much continued as usual. Moses Gunn co-starred as “Old Man” (no one in this series had a full name), who was Hawk’s friend and advisor. The spin-off premiered in January of 1989 and ran for 13 episodes. (In the mid-1990s, the Lifetime Cable Network, which played reruns of Spenser: For Hire, financed four all-new Spenser movies that reunited Urich and Brooks.)

150

Crime Television

By the mid-1980s, Stephen J. Cannell was at the top of his game as an independent producer. He had as many as six series in production at once in 1986, and his list of hits included The A-Team, Hardcastle & McCormick, Riptide, and Hunter. These shows were very different from the more thought-provoking crime dramas that he had created and produced in the 1970s, like The Rockford Files and Baretta. The A-Team in particular was allout fantasy, while Hardcastle & McCormick and Riptide were light and breezy hours punctuated by incidents of gun play (in which seldom was anyone hit) and car stunts (again, everyone usually climbed out of the wreckage unhurt). Cannell was a success because he’d hit upon a winning formula and then proceeded to work it better than anyone else. But he put out so much product, and inspired enough imitations, that by the later part of the decade viewers were tiring of the formula altogether. Cannell realized he had to adapt, as he had done back in 1979 when he departed Universal to become an independent. In the fall of 1987, Cannell introduced two new series. Both provided fans of Cannell with new insight into the producer. Debuting on NBC on September 26, 1987 was J. J. Starbuck, the most autobiographical work of Cannell’s career. Dale Robertson starred as Jerome Jeremiah “J. J.” Starbuck, a self-made Texas billionaire who toured the country in his white 1964 Continental that came complete with steer horns on the hood and a horn that played The Eyes of Texas. In building his fortune, J. J. had immersed himself in his work at the expense of his family. Then one day his wife Lee and 15-year-old son Mark were on their way to visit him aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico when their plane crashed and they were killed. J. J. spent three days locked in his room contemplating his life: “That’s when I learned the most valuable things in life, they can’t be bought, they have to be given. When I had my two greatest assets, I worked all the time making more money. Then when they were taken away from me, that’s when I realized all the money in the world couldn’t bring them back. I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere.” So J. J. took to the road, using his great resources to help others. In real life, Cannell, a self-made man despite his father’s wealth, had also lost a son, Derek (one of his four children), in a tragic accident in 1983. He admits using J. J. Starbuck to vent some of his feelings about Derek’s loss. In the show’s 90-minute pilot (9/26/1987), Starbuck takes in a young boy, Charles Winslow (Jay Underwood), whose high-powered corporate stepfather (Bill Bixby) and an associate (Patty Duke) conspired to murder the boy’s mother (Donna Mitchell). J. J. later admits (in voiceover narration) that Charles had reminded him a little too much of the son he lost.

Crime Television—The 1980S

151

Another episode, “Gold from the Rainbow” (12/5/1987), featured some of Cannell’s best dramatic writing in a tale about a dying father (Telly Savalas) trying to come to terms with his son (Paul Provenza), who has abandoned his Greek heritage. Occasionally seen was entertainer and sausage-spokesman Jimmy Dean as Charlie Bullets, who ran J. J.’s company, Marklee Industries, in the boss’s absence, and Shawn Weatherly as J. J.’s coed niece, Jill. Midseason, actor Ben Vereen joined the cast as E. L. “Tenspeed” Turner, the same character Vereen had played in Cannell’s 1980 series Tenspeed and Brownshoe. Turner became J. J.’s temporary driver after he injured his leg. J. J. Starbuck actually performed admirably in the ratings race, ranking number 33 for the season, but it just wasn’t pulling in the young demographics that NBC was after. The network cancelled the show in the spring of 1988 after 16 episodes had aired. Cannell had much more success that year with his other dramatic effort, CBS’s Wiseguy. As the series opened on September 16, 1987, Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl), an agent for the Organized Crime Bureau of the FBI, was just being released from Newark State Penitentiary after being incarcerated for 18 months to help establish his cover. Terranova then uses his newly established street credibility to infiltrate the Steelgrave crime organization operated by brothers Sonny (Ray Sharkey) and Dave Steelgrave (Gianni Russo). After Dave is killed, Vinnie strikes up a friendship with Sonny and slowly begins to gather the evidence needed to take Sonny down. Jonathan Banks co-starred as Frank McPike, Vinnie’s FBI handler; Jim Byrnes as Daniel Burroughs, aka “The Lifeguard,” whom Vinnie could contact in case of emergency. Gerald Anthony was Vinnie’s brother, Father Peter Terranova, the only other person who knew Vinnie was actually a cop; and Elsa Raven played Carlotta Terranova, Vinnie’s mother, who prayed for her younger son’s redemption, unaware of his true identity. Wiseguy was an immediate hit. In a bizarre way, it actually became as much of a buddy show as Cannell’s past programs such as Hardcastle & McCormick and Riptide. The catch was that Vinnie and Sonny’s friendship was based on lies. Even so, it became clear that Vinnie genuinely began to like Sonny, even as he continued to gather evidence against him. Cannell decided to divide Wiseguy into story arcs, which meant each of Vinnie’s undercover assignments would only last a set number of episodes, then conclude so that Vinnie could move on to his next job. The Steelgrave saga wrapped up after nine episodes with “No One Gets Out of Here Alive” (11/12/1987) in which Sonny finally learns that Vinnie is a federal agent. Rather than being taken in by the man he’d grown to love like a brother,

152

Crime Television

Sonny commits suicide in front of a devastated Vinnie, who has allowed his personal feelings to get the better of him. After taking some time to pull himself together emotionally, Vinnie then headed off to his next undercover assignment, this time infiltrating the smuggling operation of a macabre pair of siblings, Mel and Susan Profitt (Kevin Spacey and Joan Sevarance). William Russ was added as Roger LoCocco, a hitman who worked for the Profitt’s but who later turned out to also be a federal agent working the same case. Vinnie spent the rest of the season thwarting Mel and Susan. Wiseguy became a critical darling that year. It had been a long time since Cannell had received such positive media attention. Most journalists seemed to have forgotten about The Rockford Files and continued to lambaste Cannell as creator of The A-Team. (Not that it seemed to matter to Cannell, who appeared equally as proud of both shows.) CBS renewed Wiseguy, and for the next two seasons Vinnie tackled a couple of cases each season. His brother, Father Peter, was murdered early in the fall of 1988 by white supremacists. The show attracted some big-name guest stars: Jerry Lewis appeared in the second season as Eli Sternberg, the owner of a fashion firm that was being threatened by loan shark Rick Pinzolo (Stanley Tucci), from whom Eli borrowed money. Fred Dalton Thompson, Ron Silver, Glenn Frey, Paul Winfield, Tim Curry, and James Stacy also showed up. At the end of the third season, Ken Wahl left the series because of personal problems. When the series’s abbreviated fourth season opened late in the fall of 1990, it was explained that Vinnie had disappeared without a trace, leading Frank to believe that he might have fallen victim to foul play. Steven Bauer stepped in as agent Michael Santana. Fans jumped ship, however, and CBS cancelled the show after broadcasting only five episodes that fall, leaving three more segments unaired. Those viewers who did tune in were left unrewarded as Santana’s assignment was left unresolved. Vinnie Terranova did survive his ordeal, however, and showed up, along with Banks and Byrnes, in a reunion movie. Aired May 2, 1996, it featured Vinnie investigating the attempted kidnapping of a computer mogul’s son. The original series consisted of 75 hours. Although J. J. Starbuck suffered a quick cancellation, both it and Wiseguy were victories for Stephen Cannell. They proved that he hadn’t lost his skill for dramatic storytelling—that The A-Team was indeed a conscious choice made to appease 1980s fans who wanted a little escapist fantasy. Many of his other early 1980s efforts confirm this: The Greatest American Hero, The Quest, and The Rousters. When the marketplace began to shift thanks to such dramas as Steven Bochco’s Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, Cannell proved he

Crime Television—The 1980S

153

could adapt, a necessity for any writer or producer who hopes for a longlasting career. In the spring of 1987, the fledgling Fox network launched its first hourlong crime drama, 21 Jump Street. At that time, their primary interest was simply in attracting big numbers, not awards. They weren’t worried about critical approval nearly as much as appealing to that segment of the viewing public that most advertisers coveted: young adults between 18 and 34. So it’s not surprising that Fox turned to Cannell to develop a program that would draw these eager consumers to their network. 21 Jump Street was tailored to this crowd. Cannell co-created the series with Patrick Hasburgh, with whom he’d also shared co-creator credit on ABC’s Hardcastle & McCormick. The premise of 21 Jump Street was reminiscent of the late 1960s–early 1970s hit The Mod Squad. The series dealt with a team of undercover officers in Los Angeles who looked young enough to pass for teenagers, who could mingle and mix with the city’s youth undetected. As was the case with The Mod Squad, these young detectives weren’t out to bust their own but to protect them from predators such as drug dealers and street gangs. Unlike their flower-power counterparts, however, these 1980s era cops did carry guns and when necessary would take down offenders of any age. The team worked out of an old chapel located at 21 Jump Street. (Although set in Los Angeles, the series was filmed, because of budgetary reasons, in Vancouver, British Columbia, a popular location for budget-conscious Hollywood beginning in the 1980s.) Despite any similarities, however, Hasburgh maintains that his primary influence in developing the series was a real-life police unit. “It was based on a true L.A.P.D. program called ‘The Buy’ program,” says Hasburgh, “where young-looking police officers would go into high schools pretending to be students to buy drugs and then bust dealers. But I wanted to do a series about high school and having to grow up, not drug stories, per se. So we spun it into a sort of Rebel Without a Cause series, doing teen stories every week that were really intense, as well as funny and poignant.” Hasburgh and Cannell cast the series with a group of relatively unknown actors. For the series two-hour pilot (4/12/1987), Jeff Yagher starred as Tom Hanson, a 21-year-old police officer frustrated that he’s not being taken seriously because of his youthful appearance. That leads to his involvement with the Jump Street unit and first undercover assignment inside a high school plagued by drug problems. The other members of the squad were Peter DeLuise (son of Dom) as Officer Doug Penhall, Holly Robinson as Officer Judy Hoffs, Dustin Nguyen as Officer Harry Truman Ioki, and Frederic Forest as their handler, Captain Richard Jenko.

154

Crime Television

Once the pilot went to series, actor Johnny Depp replaced Yagher. Depp’s career, at that point, had consisted primarily of supporting roles in a couple of films, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Platoon. “Johnny is the most brilliant actor I have ever worked with,” exclaims Hasburgh. “When he walked into the room he had the part, he was awesome. Fox didn’t want Johnny to replace Yagher, they wanted Josh Brolin, but I threw my first of many tantrums and got Johnny to do the show, much to his chagrin and my gain. Without Depp, 21 Jump Street would be a footnote.” Veteran actor Forest, known for his roles in films such as Apocalypse Now and The Rose, was then dropped from the cast after six episodes. Explains Hasburgh: “Forest became a maniac and we had to can him. It wasn’t fun, but we had to do it. Fred is very talented but he wasn’t ready for the pace of TV. Sometimes you only get one take. You can’t talk about who the character’s dad was before World War II.” Actor Steven Williams then stepped in as Captain Adam Fuller. 21 Jump Street became a hit, by Fox Broadcasting standards anyway, and helped to define the upstart network. “Fox loved the show,” insists Hasburgh. “Back then they were so clueless about how to succeed in TV we pretty much just did what we wanted. Jump Street was Fox’s only hit for the first two years. The execs were bumping into each other doing The New Adventures of Beans Baxter and Werewolf while our little ship sailed along without a hitch. Married … with Children wasn’t a hit until year three.” Despite episodes that dealt with subjects that were taboo at the time, such as AIDS, incest, and date rape, Hasburgh insists the show was designed for family viewing: “Our target audience was the whole family. This was a show that kids could watch with their parents. I did write a script about racism with a high school race riot that was scheduled to be episode two, but the Fox boys flipped out so we had to push it until the second season, but they finally came around.” Hasburgh is particularly proud of an episode they did about AIDS subtitled “A Big Disease with a Little Name” (2/7/1988), about a student who was being harassed and beaten because he had the disease. He eventually died. “This was back when AIDS was almost always fatal,” remarks Hasburgh. Another notable episode, “Blindsided,” (5/31/1987), dealt with a young girl, Diane Nelson (Sherilyn Fenn), who tries to hire an undercover Hanson to kill her father, a prominent policeman. At first it appears that Diane is the villain of the piece, but we later learn that her father has been sexually abusing her for years, and is now beginning to turn his attentions toward the girl’s younger sister. Diane wants Hanson to kill her father before he has a chance to molest her little sister the way he did her. “Nothing on

Crime Television—The 1980S

155

TV like 21 Jump Street had ever been available to the teenage audience,” says Hasburgh. “We accomplished that by not writing down to them and giving them real and adult themes.” The series ran on Fox for three-and-a-half seasons before moving to first-run syndication for its final year (Depp left the show after the Fox run). In all, 103 hours were produced. A short-lived spin-off, titled Booker, ran on Fox during the 1989–90 season. With the decade coming to a close, NBC opted not to court the young audience that Fox was so eagerly seeking, and instead turned to an old classic in their attempt at appealing to more mature viewers. As a television series, NBC’s In the Heat of the Night had quite a legacy to live up to. It was based on Norman Jewison’s Oscar-winning 1967 feature film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger (which had itself been inspired by a novel by John Ball). The movie was about an African-American police officer from Philadelphia, Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), who travels to the Deep South to investigate a racist murder in a small town. His investigation is hindered by the prejudice of not only the citizenry but also the police force, including Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Steiger). In the spring of 1988, NBC ordered up a weekly dose of the classic film. The series version was approached as a sequel of sorts, with Tibbs and his wife Althea returning to the small town of Sparta, Mississippi (where Tibbs grew up) for the funeral of his mother. Once there, the city council convinces Tibbs to stay as Chief of Detectives to help diversify the mostly white police department. (It would turn out many of the council members, including Mayor Findlay, happened to be courting the community’s black voters for upcoming elections.) As if the subject matter of the series were not controversial enough, NBC went the extra step of casting former All in the Family star Carroll O’Connor as Chief Gillespie. The future of the program certainly hinged on whether viewers would accept O’Connor, best known for playing Archie Bunker, as a southern police chief. Certain alterations were made to the basic premise to make the character more appealing. Unlike Steiger’s Gillespie, O’Connor’s Chief was portrayed not as an outright bigot, but rather a crusty, often blunt disciplinarian distrustful of outsiders, black or white, especially those who threatened the way he ran his town. Gillespie felt threatened by Tibbs not because he was African–American, but because he was young, educated, and progressive. Actor Howard Rollins was cast as Virgil and Anne-Marie Johnson as Althea. In the Heat of the Night premiered on the evening of March 6, 1988, and was followed in the coming weeks by six additional one-hour episodes in which Tibbs and Althea slowly grew accustomed to their new home and neighbors—some of whom proved to be friends, while others proved less

156

Crime Television

accepting. The relationship between Gillespie and Tibbs also improved and eventually a strong trust and friendship would evolve between them. It would take Tibbs a little longer to bond with Sgt. Bubba Skinner (Alan Autry), who was presented as a real southern redneck with little tolerance for “The New South.” Other cast members included David Hart as Deputy Parker Williams; Hugh O’Connor (adopted son of Carroll O’Connor) as Deputy Lonnie Jamison; Randall Franks as Officer Randy Goode; and Geoffrey Thorne as African-American Deputy Willson Sweet. The authenticity of the series was greatly aided by the fact that it was filmed completely on location. The first season was shot in Hammond, Louisiana; production moved to Covington, Georgia thereafter. Although Sparta was presented as a small town, it seemed to have more than its share of violent crime: murders, rapes, assaults, kidnappings, and arsons occurred weekly. The show shot into the top-20 and was renewed for a second full season that fall, at which time Crystal Fox joined the cast as Sgt. LuAnn Corbin, a black female deputy. A year later, in the fall of 1989, Denise Nicholas was added as Harriet DeLong, a black city councilwoman. Carroll O’Connor won a 1989 Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, confirming the actor’s versatility. In the Heat of the Night would prove to be one of the most well-crafted crime dramas of its era. The series dealt with many issues beyond racism. In “A Trip Upstate” (2/7/1989), Gillespie visits a convict he arrested on the eve of the man’s execution and must examine his own feelings about the death penalty. In the episode “Fifteen, Forever” (4/25/1989), the entire town is affected when a drunk driving accident kills local cheerleaders returning from a game. Another controversial episode was “A Depraved Heart” (9/23/1993) in which a young girl (Lisa Rieffel) kills the man who knowingly infected her with AIDS. Late in the second season, Carroll O’Connor fell ill and had to undergo open-heart surgery. Joe Don Baker was brought in as acting Chief Tom Dugan in the spring of 1989 until O’Connor was back on his feet. By the series’s fifth season in 1991–92, Chief Gillespie and Harriet realized they were developing feelings for one another and embarked on an interracial love affair. In the Heat of the Night switched networks in the fall of 1992, moving from NBC to CBS. The relationship between the Chief and Harriet became public that season and in the fall of 1993, as the series kicked off its seventh and final season, Gillespie’s detractors on the city council, outraged by his romance with Harriet, fired him as police chief. Sparta then got its first African-American Chief of Police, Hampton Forbes (Carl Weathers), a former FBI agent who’d also served on the Memphis police department. Gillepsie

Crime Television—The 1980S

157

wasn’t out of the picture, though. He was then hired as the new sheriff of Newman County, whose jurisdiction also included Sparta. Howard Rollins was absent from the cast that season after he developed a substance abuse problem. It was explained that Tibbs had left Sparta to earn his law degree. In the spring of 1994, with the series coming to a close, Chief Gillespie and Harriet finally tied the knot. In the Heat of the Night went off the air in the summer of 1994 after 142 episodes. The cast did return, however, in four In the Heat of the Night TV-movies that aired during the 1994–95 season. Just as the decade was coming to a close, Fox-TV came up with an interesting idea for a show about cops: instead of investing huge sums of money in assembling actors, writers, directors, and so on…Why not just place a guy with a camera in the backseat of a real police squad car and let reality play out? That was the basic premise of Cops. The basic flaw with the plan is that real life, unlike scripted television, tends to unfold more slowly. The camera crews would often accompany the police on their ride-alongs for days at a time without capturing any useable footage. But when a situation would arise, the cameras would be in the thick of things—often requiring the cinematographer and his sound man to scramble from the car, race through an obstacle course of darkly lit backyards and chain-link fences to keep up with cops in pursuit of their suspects. The crews would often document car crashes, drug busts, prostitution stings, and murder investigations. Most of the action took place at night, and usually in major cities. Production on Cops began in 1988 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and initially aired only on a handful of stations owned by the Fox Broadcasting Group in early 1989. On March 11, 1989, the series was added to the Fox network’s prime-time schedule, airing on Saturday nights at 9:00 P.M. By December 1990, the half-hour show had banked enough episodes that the network began airing two episodes back to back, an original followed by a rerun. Once the program moved to the network, production also began to shift to different cities across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, from Phoenix to Cleveland. In time, as the show became popular overseas, the cameras were granted access to police departments in other countries, including Russia, London, Hong Kong, and South America. In July 1991, Fox moved the series to Saturday nights from 8:00 to 9:00 P.M., where it has played steadily for more than 15 years, many of those spent as a lead-in to America’s Most Wanted, which had premiered in 1988 in very much the same manner as Cops. Host John Walsh, whose sixyear-old son Adam had been abducted and murdered in 1981, presented

158

Crime Television

reenactments of real-life unsolved mysteries. Afterward, Walsh would ask any viewers who might have information that could help solve the crime to call a special toll-free number. The series proved to be extremely effective, leading to the captures of several hundred wanted fugitives. The program was cancelled in September of 1996, but returned to the schedule later that fall after heavy viewer protest and the failure of its replacements to draw decent ratings. In January 1994, America’s Most Wanted moved to Saturday nights at 9:00 P.M. after Cops. The two have provided Fox with a solid evening of reality-based crime drama since. Cops, in particular, inspired several imitations, including Real Stories of the Highway Patrol and LAPD: Life on the Beat. These shows were relegated primarily to first-run syndication. The major networks preferred to stick with their scripted fare, although they increasingly attempted to inject deeper levels of reality, particularly as television moved into the 1990s.

CHAPTER 5

Crime Television—The 1990s

he 1990s marked the beginning of a new era in how producers and networks chose to format their programs. Whereas in the past most shows were truly episodic, with plots playing out from beginning to end over the span of a single episode, the 1990s saw the beginning of the widespread use of story arcs, particularly in crime dramas. Most series still used self-contained stories on a weekly basis, but more and more programs also implemented story structures that played out over the long term. No longer would a lead character, for instance, suddenly fall in love, get married, and lose the new spouse all in the span of a single, one-hour episode. Now such a romance could evolve more slowly and realistically, over the course of many episodes, even a season. Same with the miraculous healing powers of many cops and detectives in the 1960s and 1970s, who could be seriously wounded in one episode, perhaps even lying in a hospital bed on the verge of death, and back running down suspects the next week. The idea of story arcs, presented most prominently in the 1980s by producers Steven Bochco in Hill Street Blues and Stephen Cannell with Wiseguy, quickly found favor with audiences, who increasingly demanded more realism as the 1990s progressed. Fortunately, producers were eager to meet the challenge. Law and Order was without question the most groundbreaking new series of the 1990s and then some, still going strong well into the new millennium. The basic premise of the show is deceptively simple and by-the-numbers: a murder is committed, police investigators follow the evidence to a suspect,

T

160

Crime Television

who is then arrested, turned over to the courts, and tried. The entire story plays out in an hour’s time. The cops are given the first half-hour of each episode to collar their perp, then the prosecution takes over and the rest of the episode follows their efforts to gain a conviction. Dick Wolf, a former writer/producer on Hill Street Blues, created and serves as executive producer on Law and Order, which set the stage for a resurgence of procedural crime dramas. It has proven incredibly durable, earning its place in history as the longest-running crime drama on television. Behind Gunsmoke (which ran for 20 years), it’s also the second longest running overall drama ever to air in prime time. The secret of the series’s success boils down to its well-crafted execution. Although consistently populated with superb performers since its debut on September 13, 1990, no single original cast member has remained with the show for the entire length of its 15-plus season run. The real stars of this series are the city of New York and its criminal justice system. The city is one of the few in America distinct enough to be considered a character in itself, from its bustling streets and wide array of citizens, both wealthy and poverty stricken, to its crowded courtrooms brimming with unrepentant offenders and overworked court personnel. Law and Order succeeds in dissecting, analyzing, exposing, and manipulating the system for better or worse—with viewers at home sitting in ultimate judgment. Law and Order co-executive producer Peter Jankowski recalls the show’s inception: “I was at the studio when the show was created and saw it take shape,” he says. “Dick Wolf wrote a script for Barry Diller called Law and Order back when the Fox network was still a fledgling. Dick turned it in, and soon afterwards Barry decided it was not a Fox show after all. So Dick went to CBS where he sold the script as a pilot. It was shot but CBS passed, then NBC came in and picked it up. Brandon Tartikoff really was the key ingredient, he was the one who decided to pick the show up. Back then, Law and Order was just this anomaly, a kind of anthology with continuing characters, because there was very little characterization in it. You would see the same people every week, but it was more about the caseload than it was the characters. Television really hadn’t done that in a long time.” (The CBS pilot, subtitled “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman,” shot in 1988, was aired as the sixth episode of Law and Order on October 30, 1990.) In resurrecting the procedural crime drama, Wolf looked back to two previous network series from television’s early days. “The inspiration on one or two levels for Dick was a show called Arrest and Trial (ABC, 1963–64) in which the first half was the arrest of the suspect, followed in the second half by the defense getting the suspect off. (Arrest and Trial was the first

Crime Television—The 1990s

161

90-minute series to feature regular characters.) It didn’t last too long, but it was one that Dick always paid attention to because of the way the first and second half were sort of glued together. But it was ultimately doomed to fail because no one wants to sit there and spend 45 minutes watching the bad guys get caught and then the second 45 minutes watching the defense attorneys get the bad guys off. It wasn’t very satisfying. The other show that was a big influence on Dick, obviously, was Dragnet, which he went back to try to remake a couple of years ago.” When the series first premiered, the investigating officers were Det. Sgt. Max Greevey (George Dzundza) and his young partner Mike Logan (Christopher Noth). Their superior was Captain Donald Cragen (Dann Florek). When a murder occurred, Greevey and Logan would take control of the crime scene and begin piecing together the clues. Although crime scene evidence was collected, little screen time was devoted to discussions of forensic science. Instead, the detectives would simply receive a lab report and factor those findings in with the results of their interrogations and personal observations. Law and Order was always about the people, not the science. When the program returned after the commercial break at the bottom of the hour, Greevey and Logan were for the most part gone (until they were later called on to testify in open court). The suspect was now in the hands of the courts. The show’s original prosecutors were Asst. D.A. Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), and Adam Schiff (Steven Hill). It was their job to decide how strong a case Greevey and Logan had been able to put together and what charges to press. If the evidence was strong, they might go for first-degree murder. If marginal, they might opt for something less, or perhaps even offer a plea bargain if they felt conviction was a long shot. Dividing the series into two separate entities was a bit of a risk. The first half of each episode, featuring the investigators at work, represents the police procedural in its purest form. The second half, as the prosecutors pursue convictions, sometimes takes on an air of theatrics. The regular characters on Law and Order do have lives and back stories, but they are rarely alluded to, with the leads being seen only on the job with no families, friends, or significant others to distract them from the performance of their duties. The officers, although close comrades in arms, cannot be called friends. They often appear surprised about certain aspects of one another’s lives, leaving one to believe that at the end of their shifts they simply go their separate ways—no getting together on weekends or dinner invitations. Of course, the series’s rigid structure would not allow time for such character development or B-storylines. The homicide detectives only have the

162

Crime Television

show’s first 22 minutes of actual screen time to nab their suspect. Then the D.A. has an equally limited amount of time to prepare and try the case. For these reasons, the series remains tightly written and directed. Characters tend to be direct, conversations brief and to the point, and little time wasted on following false leads. But this shouldn’t be interpreted to mean the series lacks heart—indeed the crimes depicted each week are horrendous, and the emotions of the victim’s loved ones are openly displayed. But the main characters, veterans in their field, wouldn’t be realistic if they hadn’t developed the ability to distance themselves from the psychological pain associated with their work. For those who followed (and continue to follow) the show religiously, the cases might seem somewhat familiar. Many of the scripts are based on reallife issues taken from newspaper headlines across the country. The producers have made little effort to disguise their intentions, often relying on how topical their scripts are to pull in viewers. Despite being critically lauded, at first Law and Order failed to appeal to mainstream viewers. One reason was that the series’s look, which at times resembled a documentary or even news report, confused audiences, who needed time to become comfortable with the show’s unique style. A second reason was that the early 1990s was a time when sitcoms ruled prime time, with many believing the hour drama, as a genre, was dead. Fortunately, NBC stuck to their guns, and Law and Order was still around when the drama made its comeback later in the decade, eclipsing the sitcom in the process. Quite a few characters (and actors) have come and gone during the series’s run. Max Greevey was killed at the end of the first season, and Logan went through two more partners over the next four years. During the second season there was Det. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), who in turn was succeeded by Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) in year three. In 1995, Logan himself transferred to another office (and Noth left the series). In 1993, Captain Cragen, too, was out, and Law and Order took on its first regular female character in Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson). Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) replaced Paul Robinette in the D.A.’s office the same fall. The series’s most notorious casting change occurred in 1994 when actor Michael Moriarty angrily left after a well-publicized feud with executive producer Wolf over the issue of censorship. In 2000, actor Steven Hill also threw in the towel after 10 seasons as Adam Schiff, the series’s final original character. “The show did fairly well for NBC for about two or three years, and it was in that third year that the network was clear that they wanted us to bring more females into the fold,” says Jankowski. “Dann Florek was replaced by

Crime Television—The 1990s

163

S. Epatha Merkerson and Richard Brooks was replaced by Jill Hennessy in an effort to give the show a little more sex appeal. No insult to the guys who left, because they were terrific actors, but the plan worked and it jumped up in the ratings. Jill later wanted to leave and was replaced by Angie Harmon, and then Elizabeth Rohm, and most recently Annie Parisse. There are certain shows that are all character, and when you change characters, you’re changing the intrinsic value of the show. In Law and Order’s case, the story is so important, so much a part of the tone of the show, that as long as you don’t make a tremendously bad decision, you can change actors out and still keep the program’s integrity intact. It’s not something that we like to do, but I don’t think a character show could last 16 years.” In the mid-1990s, Law and Order finally began receiving a little respect in terms of ratings, as its numbers slowly began to rise. Finally, during the 1997–98 season, after seven years on the air, a time in which most series are winding down, Law and Order finally made the top-20. Then, after 11 seasons, the show landed at number five. Its popularity seemed to have no end. NBC seized on the opportunity and put Dick Wolf to work developing a spin-off. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit premiered on September 20, 1999, scheduled on Monday nights at 10:00 P.M. The “special victims” referenced in the title were actually the victims of violent, sexually oriented crimes such as rape, torture, pedophilia, incest, and child molestation; unfortunately, most of them ended up dead at the hands of their attackers. Each episode begins with an on-screen explanation of the unit’s purpose: “In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.” Obviously, the suspects being sought by the Special Victims Unit are emotionally disturbed and in many cases extremely dangerous. The cops assigned to this duty, on the other hand, had to be emotionally stable enough to deal with the traumatic situations they regularly encountered. Unlike the original Law and Order, the new show dealt primarily only with tracking down and apprehending the villains. To do so required the detectives to use psychological methods that would allow them to predict the next moves of the offender. Recalls Jankowski: “Special Victims Unit was originally called Law and Order: Sex Crimes, but they thought the title was too lurid. That show has truly evolved since the first season. The first year featured sex crimes that were more hardcore. Co-executive producer Neal Baer came in at the end of season two from ER and brought both a very strong medical

164

Crime Television

and a character component, making SVU much more character driven than our other show. Since then it’s garnered a very strong audience.” The squad consisted of Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), a family man who always seemed to keep his emotions in check. On the other hand, his partner, Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), often let her anger get the better of her. She had good reason, having been sexually molested herself as a child, which gave her a keen yet disturbing insight into the minds of not only the bad guys but their victims (those who survived, that is). Then there was Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), who had just transferred from Baltimore (where he had been a regular on the just cancelled NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street). Also on board were Detective Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), and street-savvy Det. Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), who could be quite opinionated. Their boss was Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), whose character had been a regular on Law and Order from 1990–93. Chris Orbach, the real-life son of Law and Order star Jerry Orbach, appeared during the 1999–2000 season as Ken Briscoe, Lennie’s nephew. Winters and Hurd were dropped after the first season and several new characters were added, including Medical Examiner Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie) and Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), both African Americans. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, thanks to the popularity of its parent series, caught on quickly with viewers. By its third season in 2001–02, it had reached number 12 in the seasonal Nielsens. NBC, seeing dollar signs, turned once again to Dick Wolf, eager to learn if he could do it again. Potential ideas seemed as numerous as the unending parade of cases that marched through the New York City courts each year. So Wolf obliged, and in the fall of 2001, NBC scheduled yet another hour of Law and Order. Some said the network was pressing its luck in developing yet a third installment of the series, but any naysayers were soon proved wrong as Wolf and company turned out what was to become arguably the best incarnation of the Law and Order premise to date. Debuting on September 30, 2001, Law and Order: Criminal Intent differed from the other two series in that it was more of a character study than a police procedural. The program had only four regular characters: Det. Robert Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio), homicide detective, his partner Det. Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe), their superior Capt. James Deakins (Jamey Sheridan), and Asst. D.A. Ron Carver (Courtney B. Vance), who, instead of merely stepping in at the end to prosecute, worked with Goren and Eames during their investigation, advising them on how their case was stacking up and how much more he would need to make the charges stick.

Crime Television—The 1990s

165

Although all the actors contributed to the overall product, it was D’Onofrio’s outstanding performance as Det. Goren that made this show stand above the rest. The real focus of the program, and the fun of it, was watching his mind work, from the moment he walked onto a crime scene until the finale, when he finally let loose, throwing a verbal barrage at the suspect that would shatter whatever resolve they would have left. As with the other L & O’s, there was little use for technical jargon or forensic tomfoolery. With Goren, it was all a mind game. He knew the suspect did it, the suspect soon knew that he knew, and from there it was just a matter of how soon the culprit would flinch. Goren seemed to enjoy his work even though he also appeared to despise those who were capable of committing such heinous crimes. That being the case, he never thought twice about manipulating the weaknesses of a suspect, even if it bordered on cruelty, if it led to a confession. In the pilot episode, subtitled “One,” Goren and Eames pursue Karl Atwood (Jake Weber), a jewel thief who murdered a young college couple during his latest heist, a fortune in jewels that he now needs to fence to overseas buyers. Unable to track down Karl, the partners have better luck locating his girlfriend, Gia DeLuca (Michele Hicks), who refuses to turn on him even if it means she’ll go to prison. In an effort to get Gia to sell him out, Goren informs her that Karl, who served time in prison, contracted AIDS while behind bars, and has now knowingly passed it on to her. A terrified Gia at first refuses to believe him, but Goren presses the matter until she falls for the lie and agrees to lead the cops to Karl. By its second season, Law and Order: Criminal Intent joined Law and Order and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit in the Nielsen top-20. By the series’s fourth season, however, D’Onofrio began to experience health problems, at one point collapsing on the set and being rushed to a hospital for treatment of exhaustion. In response, as the series’s fifth season opened, a new set of partners was added to the show to cut down on D’Onofrio and Erbe’s workload. Chris Noth reprised his original Law and Order role as Det. Mike Logan (which he played from 1990–95) and was paired with Annabella Sciorra as Det. Carolyn Barek. Each set of investigators headlined half the episodes that season, with Sheridan and Vance supporting both teams. “Criminal Intent was created with Vincent D’Onofrio in mind,” reveals Jankowski. “Vincent had a couple very difficult years because he’s in just about every scene of every show almost, and we were just driving him down to the nub to the point of total exhaustion. So now what we’ve done is bifurcated that show between Chris Noth and Vincent D’Onofrio and it seems to be working very well. The numbers are almost identical in terms of ratings for both, and they only have to work eight days and they get eight days off.”

166

Crime Television

NBC’s insatiable appetite for Law and Order was far from over, however. Unfortunately, their luck was running out. Only months after getting Criminal Intent on the air, NBC and Wolf went to the well once again. Same premise, only this time the cases, the people, and the consequences were real. Crime and Punishment, the first segment of the franchise not to specifically carry the Law and Order moniker before the subtitle, was a summer reality series that followed real-life cases as they made their way through the San Diego District Attorney’s office and into the courtroom. Viewers got to watch as the prosecutors put their case together. That was this program’s primary, perhaps unforgivable flaw. The show approached these real-life situations as if they were scripted dramas, with the suspects being presented in a manner that suggested their guilt from the first frame. Many of the defendants were indeed found not guilty or guilty of lesser offenses. Because of the stark realism of the series, NBC scheduled it on Sunday nights at 10:00 P.M. It premiered on June 16, 2002, with 13 episodes airing that summer. New episodes also aired during the summers of 2003 and 2004 before NBC finally dropped the show altogether after 27 total hours. A fifth attempt at spinning off the premise was even less successful. In the spring of 2005, Law and Order: Trial by Jury made its debut on NBC. Wolf returned to basics for this attempt; the show was a one-hour scripted drama with real actors. By now, coming up with fresh ideas was becoming a little difficult. Trial by Jury was written around the only group that had not been given the spotlight in the earlier ventures: the defense attorneys. The leads for the new show were lawyers Tracey Kibre (Bebe Neuwirth) and Kelly Gaffney (Amy Carlson). They found support from two characters transplanted from the original Law and Order. D.A. Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson) was their supervisor, while Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), now retired from the police force, became their investigator. Hector Salazar (Kirk Acevedo) was Lennie’s assistant. The show first aired on March 3, 2005 to disappointing ratings, which unfortunately never improved, and the show was dropped after only 12 episodes had been broadcast (a thirteenth went unaired). Comments Jankowski: “Trial by Jury didn’t work out: we thought it should have been renewed, the network decided it shouldn’t be renewed, end of saga. But we all thought it was a really great show.” One sad aspect of the program is that it proved to be actor Jerry Orbach’s final project. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was terminally ill when production began. His failing health had forced him to leave the cast of Law and Order earlier that season. “That was really the tragedy of the whole process,” states Jankowski. “It’s also the hidden victory as well. Jerry was there

Crime Television—The 1990s

167

working until the last month of his life because he wanted to work, and it was tough on everybody to watch it. The guy was amazing; everybody loved him. You say that about people in this business, but Jerry was one person who I don’t think had any enemies. He went to Dick and said ‘Please, I’d like to keep on working.’ And Dick said, ‘Jerry, as long as you can show up, you’ve got the job.’” Orbach completed work on only three episodes before he died. After his death, Scott Cohen began a regular as Detective Chris Ravell for the remainder of the series’s short run. As of 2006, however, Law and Order, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent were all still airing on NBC with no end in sight. Jankowski has his own opinions on why they’ve proven so popular. One is the city of New York, which itself is a character that couldn’t be replaced. “It’s the background for all the shooting and the energy of the show,” Jankowski insists. “If you shot the show in Los Angeles or Toronto, it definitely wouldn’t have the same feel. The streets of New York City have more energy and you get more varied locations. We have what we call “hubbing” when we shoot in New York City where we pick a three or four square block area to do all our shooting for the day. You only have to park your trucks once and you can move from location to location and you feel like you’re going halfway across the city every time you move, but you’re really just staying in the same neighborhood. We try to do “oners” or “walk and talk” shots where we try to get everything in one piece of coverage.” Another series strong point, says Jankowski, is the strong writing and the fact that the show has its own style. “We’ll put a good forensic scene in here and there, everyone loves that, but our shows aren’t based on that,” he says. “ I actually watch those other shows and enjoy them a great deal. But there’s an intellectual process to Law and Order and our other shows that makes them special on television, and if we give up that ground, then we really have nothing. The quality of the writing has always driven our shows, and I truly believe we have the best writers in town here. We have three buildings here filled with top-notch writers, and if it isn’t going to begin with them it isn’t going to begin with anybody else. The action for Law and Order is the intellectual action of the script, so there’s an urgency to cutting into a scene as absolutely late as possible and then cutting out of the scene as absolutely early as possible. You give information nuggets, there are no soliloquies, there are no actors with people dying in their arms, it’s really spartan. Dick wanted to give a different personality to each Law and Order: the original had a very intellectual, legal approach; SVU has a very emotional, empathetic approach; and Criminal Intent is Sherlock Holmes.”

168

Crime Television

Two weeks after Law and Order began its amazing run back in September of 1990, ABC debuted one of the all-time most outlandish crime series in TV history—so unusual that perhaps only a producer of Steven Bochco’s caliber could have gotten a network to take the premise seriously let alone place it on their fall schedule. His idea was to combine two tried and true institutions into one revolutionary idea—the musical and the crime drama. Of course, there was one major flaw with that concept—musicals, which had captivated box office audiences for decades with West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Grease, had never worked on television. But Bochco was determined to try. His series, which first aired on September 26, 1990, was titled Cop Rock. As far as the crime elements of the program goes, it was signature Bochco, featuring a brutally honest indictment of both life in urban America and the criminal justice system that attempts to police it. The catch was that these characters could spontaneously burst into song and dance at any moment, as in the opening scene, as the cops were raiding an inner-city crack house, or in a later episode when a jury returns with its verdict, and break into a gospel number titled “He’s Guilty.” Each episode contained several different musical interludes, each original number written specifically to advance the episode along. Songwriter Randy Newman composed and performed the series’s opening theme, “Under the Gun.” The cast included Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick, a cowboy aficionado who began an affair with the corrupt mayor, Louise “The Iron Lady” Plank (Barbara Bosson). Captain John Hollander (Larry Joshua) was an honest cop who tried to protect his men from the corruption around them. Officer Vicki Quinn (Anne Bobby) was an attractive young patrol officer married to the much older Det. Ralph Ruskin (Ron McLarty) but romantically involved with her partner, Officer Andy Campo (David Gianopoulos). Tough-asnails defense attorney Trish Vaughn (Teri Austin) was kept busy defending troubled cop Det. Vincent LaRusso (Peter Onorati), who shot and killed a murderer in the first episode and ended up behind bars himself, facing a murder indictment. Despite an immense amount of publicity during the summer of 1990, Cop Rock couldn’t find an audience in its Wednesday night, 10:00 P.M. timeslot. Finally in November, ABC pulled the plug on the series, and production ceased after only 11 of the series’s initial order of 13 episodes had been completed. There was time, however, to film a final scene in which the entire cast assembles for one last musical number, “It Ain’t Over ‘Til the Fat Lady Sings” (complete with a fat lady providing vocals). The final episode aired on Christmas day, December 25, 1990.

Crime Television—The 1990s

169

Each episode of Cop Rock consisted of about a half dozen original songs. The music was overseen by a number of established composers, which in addition to Newman included Greg Edmonson, Alan Elliott, Mike Post, and Stephen Geyer. Geyer, who’d gotten his start in television by co-writing the popular theme songs to shows like The Greatest American Hero (a numberone record hit), Hardcastle & McCormick, Valerie, and Blossom, remembers the challenges involved in turning out a weekly one-hour musical. “I loved the show,” he says. “I loved the idea of the show and I’m sure if it would have had another year it would have been absolutely spectacular. As it was, when it was good it was just extraordinary and when it was bad it was terrible.” So what went wrong? “I wish I could tell you,” confesses Geyer. “A lot of people have told me they just didn’t get the idea of having people sing during dramatic action. And the only thing I can say is that I don’t understand that point of view, because it’s been happening in Broadway musicals, which is the American art form, for years, for decades. And I can’t understand why they didn’t want to see it on their televisions. But I’m proud of the work that I and the other songwriters did.” He was involved in writing at least two or three songs per show. “It was a brilliant failure,” he concludes. Ironically, Cop Rock wasn’t the only musical venture in prime time that season. NBC introduced Hull High that same fall, about students and teachers at Cordell Hull High School, who also expressed themselves musically. Whereas Cop Rock offered up a variety of musical styles—from rock to western to gospel and opera—Hull High was after strictly younger viewers and stuck solely to hip hop. It proved even less successful than Cop Rock, getting axed after only eight episodes. Stephen J. Cannell’s first new program of the 1990s was nowhere as edgy or groundbreaking as Law and Order, or even the producer’s own 1980s drama Wiseguy, but instead used elements of Cannell’s more dramatic work seasoned heavily with doses of wry humor. On most crime shows, the police commissioner is usually portrayed as a stuffy bureaucratic whom the leading characters must circumvent to get the job done. But in ABC’s The Commish, Tony Scali was different. He’d started out as a Brooklyn beat cop and rose up through the ranks to become police commissioner of suburban Eastbridge, just north of New York City. Scali was very popular with the members of his force and, for the most part, found favor with the citizenry as well. The only people who didn’t like Scali were the lawbreakers, who would learn first-hand that the usually goodnatured commissioner also had a nasty side.

170

Crime Television

Actor Michael Chiklis starred as the “commish” (as he was often referred to by his men). Chiklis didn’t fit the mold of most TV heroes, particularly in the 1980s, when TV seemed to be returning to the notion that all leading men had to be as camera friendly as Tom Selleck. Chiklis was short, heavy set, and balding (he’d actually played John Belushi in the film Wired). But on screen, he emoted a great deal of charisma and confidence. The role of Scali actually required versatility from Chiklis, as The Commish was a mishmash of both drama and comedy, and dealt not only with Tony’s duties as commissioner but also his hectic home life. When at work, Tony had to be a strong leader of men without becoming a tyrant. He also had to deal with prisoners, which sometimes required him to play hardball, such as when he was trying to negotiate with inmates who’d gone on a hunger strike and had a long list of demands; other instances necessitated a softer touch, as when a mentally disturbed man went berserk in the squad room, claiming to be from outer space. Instead of restraining him, Tony played into his fantasy, welcoming him to the planet on behalf of all humankind. Away from work, Tony’s life was just as complex; he was actually a bit of a pushover when it came to his family. He was married to Rachel (Theresa Saldana), who was extremely supportive and understanding, having been the wife of a cop long enough to understand the demands of his job. She and Tony had a young son, David (Kaj-Erik Eriksen), who was just beginning to enter those rebellious teen years. Also on hand in the earliest episodes was Rachel’s brother Arnie (David Paymer), who had no job and moved from relative to relative, sponging off them as long as he could while pursuing get-rich quick schemes. He and Tony were constantly at each other’s throats; after a handful of episodes, though, Arnie moved on to stay with Rachel’s sister and was never heard from again. In the series’s two-hour pilot film, aired September 28, 1991, Tony learned he was a candidate for a position with the New York Police Department. He and Rachel were also busy trying to have another child and contemplating a move to a new dream home. David was dead-set against both sharing his parents with a new sibling and moving into a new house. When two of Tony’s officers were assassinated, Tony turned all his attentions toward finding their killer. When all leads pointed to his old friend Larry (Tom Mason), a powerful politician, Tony had to make a decision that cost him his promotion. Stephen J. Cannell and Stephen Kronish, who’d previously collaborated on Wiseguy, created The Commish. (The character of Tony Scali was based on Tony Schembri, the real-life police commissioner of Rye, New York, who

Crime Television—The 1990s

171

in the past had provided Cannell with technical assistance on some of his other shows.) Unlike the ultra-serious Wiseguy, Cannell and Kronish elected to infuse the series with a dash of light humor to appeal to a wider, perhaps even a family, audience. When it came to the supporting characters in the workplace, the series had quite a bit of turnover. Tony’s original Chief of Detectives and confidant was Det. Irv Wallerstein (Alex Bruhanski). Irv was around only for a few episodes before being replaced by Det. Paulie Pentangeli (John Cygan), who finished out the first season before departing himself. Tony then hired Det. Cyd Madison (Melinda McGraw), the first woman Chief of Detectives in Eastbridge history. Early in the fourth season, Cyd got a job offer she couldn’t refuse and left town, at which point Paulie assumed his former position. Tony often found himself serving as referee for officers Ricky Caruso (Nicholas Lea) and Carmela Pagan (Gina Belafonte), who despite their bickering were dependable cops. Officer Stan Kelly (Geoffrey Nauffts) looked up to Tony and hoped to someday follow in his footsteps. Sadly, he was killed in the series third season finale, “The Iceman Cometh” (5/14/1994) when his car exploded. Tony headed the investigation into his death, unaware that an assassin, Phil “The Iceman” Greene (Brian Keith), had been contracted to take out Tony and his family. Actually, Tony’s personal life often overlapped with his professional responsibilities. In “Guns & Sons” (10/10/1992), David witnessed a shooting between his best friend and the school bully, but was reluctant to inform his father. Rachel became a “Witness” (12/5/1992) after stumbling on a murder and catching a glimpse of the killer. In the two-part fourth season opener, subtitled “Against the Wind” (9/24/1994 and 10/1/1994), Tony was paralyzed in an accident and became resigned to the idea of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair until the support of family and friends—and an ongoing murder case—prodded him forward in his fight toward recovery. ABC dropped the show in 1995 after four seasons (a pilot film and 88 one-hour episodes), but aired three original Commish movies the next year. After his run as Tony Scali, star Michael Chiklis tried his hand at comedy in the short-lived NBC sitcom Daddio (2000) before returning to the genre in the much darker FX network series The Shield, in which he portrayed an undercover cop who would go to any length to make an arrest—from beating information from a suspect to planting evidence. The fall of 1992 saw the premiere of one of the most bizarre crime series of the decade. It came from the mind of writer-producer David E. Kelley, who was a lawyer working in Boston before getting his big break in Hollywood

172

Crime Television

writing for producer Steven Bochco’s groundbreaking 1980s legal drama L.A. Law. He and Bochco later co-created the medical dramedy Doogie Howser, M.D. Then in 1992, Kelley decided to hang out his own shingle to create and executive produce his first solo effort. His first series, for CBS, was an hour-long hybrid titled Picket Fences, which was a cross between The Andy Griffith Show and Twin Peaks. The series was set in the small-town of Rome, Wisconsin. At first glance, Rome seemed like a quintessential piece of small-town America. But lurking just below the surface was a bizarre community populated by a cast of charmingly eccentric characters. The focal point of the series was the Brock family, who like the municipality itself, initially appeared to be perfectly archetypical. Patriarch Jimmy (Tom Skerritt) was the town’s dependable, even-tempered sheriff. His wife Jill (Kathy Baker) was a respected town physician. Kimberly (Holly Marie Combs) was Jimmy’s daughter from his first marriage. Kimberly had just turned 16 and was beginning to assert her independence, to the dismay of her father, who had brokered an uneasy alliance between Kimberly and her stepmother. Jimmy and Jill had two sons together: 11-year-old Matthew (Justin Shenkarow), whose unruly behavior concerned Jimmy not only as the boy’s father but as the town’s leading law enforcement official, and 8-year-old Zach (Adam Wylie), who was overly sensitive and antisocial. The Brocks possessed all the ingredients for an interesting family drama. But Picket Fences was not a family drama—at least not in the typical sense. In the series pilot, aired September 18, 1992, for instance, a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz was disrupted by the murder of the Tin Man. In the next week’s episode, “The Green Bay Chopper” (9/25/1992), a girl in Zach’s class brought a severed hand in a jar to school for show and tell. Another hand is then discovered on a nearby highway, and Jimmy finds himself searching for a serial killer who severes the hands of his victims. Jimmy’s police force included deputies Kenny Lacos (Costas Mandylor) and Maxine Stewart (Lauren Holly), who were partners and off-and-on lovers. Ginny Weeden (Zelda Rubinstein) was the sassy receptionist, who after retiring early in the series’s third season was found frozen to death in her freezer chest. Early in 1995, several more citizens of Rome were also discovered dead in their freezers, including Mayor Ed Lawson (Richard Masur), whose wife Marcia (Phyllis Lyons) turned out to be the killer. Convicting criminals in Rome was as difficult—if not more so—than tracking them down and arresting them. Judge Henry Bone (Ray Walston) was the judge in whose courtroom most of the cases ended up. Bone was no-nonsense and adhered to the letter of the law. Jimmy’s primary nemesis was defense attorney Douglas Wimbaugh (Fyvush Finkel), who would take

Crime Television—The 1990s

173

any case, defend any position, for the right price or the opportunity to stir things up in the sleepy little hamlet. Bone and Wimbaugh usually squared off in the courtroom; yet away from the courthouse they were friends. Don Cheadle was District Attorney John Littleton, who matched wits with Wimbaugh on legal issues. Carter Pike (Kelly Connell) played the medical examiner. Along with Picket Fences’s talented cast, executive producer David Kelley must also be considered one of the stars of this show. Kelley wrote nearly every episode of the program’s first three seasons, while also serving similar duty on Chicago Hope, a CBS medical series he created in 1994. Kelley became one of the most talented and most prolific writers in the medium; Picket Fences became one of the most controversial shows of its time (it had a definite left-wing slant to the stories). High ratings eluded the series (it ranked number 80 its first season), but critical acclaim prompted CBS to keep it on its schedule. The program’s most outrageous episode didn’t actually turn out the way producers had hoped. “Away in the Manger,” aired on December 16, 1994, was originally conceived as a two-part crossover episode with Fox-TV’s The X-Files. The story was to begin with an X-Files episode subtitled “Red Museum,” in which Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) were to investigate reports that cows were being injected with alien DNA. At the end of part one a lead was to point Mulder in the direction of Rome, Wisconsin, where he would eventually consult with Sheriff Jimmy Brock. David Kelley, along with X-Files executive producer Chris Carter, thought the idea would work, considering The X-Files aired on Fridays at 9:00 P.M. and Picket Fences came on afterward at 10:00 P.M. The problem arose because the two shows aired on different networks. Although Fox seemed okay with the idea, CBS wouldn’t hear of it. Both shows eventually followed through on the basic premise; there just weren’t any character crossover as initially planned. Instead of Mulder arriving in Rome, another FBI agent, Donald Morrell (Sam Anderson) showed up in his place. Instead of alien DNA, it turned out the cows were part of an experiment to harvest human embryos. Not all of the stories on Picket Fences were outrageous; some serious issues were also tackled, such as when one of Kimberly’s friends became pregnant as the result of incest, or when a child molester returned to town after serving 26 years in prison. After the murder of Mayor Lawson, actress Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, joined the cast as the town’s new ranking official, Mayor Laurie Bey, which opened the door to issues involving the disabled. Of course it wouldn’t have been a David E. Kelley series if matters

174

Crime Television

weren’t taken one step further. During the program’s fourth and final season, the unmarried Mayor Bey became pregnant, creating somewhat of a scandal at city hall. Then after giving birth in the spring of 1996, it was revealed she had carried the child for her brother Jerry (Lenny Von Dohlen) and his gay lover Gordy (Bill Brochtrup). Laurie and Jerry’s mother Christine (Louise Fletcher) then showed up to take custody of the baby away from both of them. A testament to the storytelling skill of David E. Kelley and the other writer/producers on this series is that Picket Fences managed to remain a credible, if not outstanding, crime drama, in the midst of all the turmoil and frequent silliness. Most episodes concluded in the courtroom of Judge Bone, who would render his decision followed by a commentary on the moral implications of the events that had unfolded. At its core, that’s just what Picket Fences was about—not necessarily the crimes, but how we as a society both view and respond to the craziness around us. While Picket Fences was luring in viewers at CBS with its bizarre storylines, NBC was attempting to recapture the magic that it had tapped into with Hill Street Blues a decade earlier with a gritty new police drama titled Homicide: Life on the Street. Both series shared similarities. They were both set in large urban landscapes; in the case of Homicide that location was inner city Baltimore. Each show featured a large ensemble cast that congregated in the squad room of a rundown police precinct before hitting the streets. The characters were flawed, the dialogue overlapping, and the scenes were presented via handheld cameras that tracked the detectives as if they were part of a documentary rather than a scripted hour of prime time TV. The language was often coarse and raw. And like Hill Street Blues, it took awhile for viewers to develop an appreciation for what they were seeing. Ratings were initially very low, but by the second season, those numbers were on the rise and Homicide: Life on the Street was on its way to becoming one of the most revered crime dramas of the decade. The series premiered on January 31, 1993, scheduled on Wednesdays at 9:00 P.M. NBC had ordered 13 episodes. They aired the first nine that spring, then pulled Homicide from their schedule. The show could have died then and there, but the next January, a year after it originally premiered, NBC dusted off the four remaining original episodes and broadcast them on Thursdays at 10:00 P.M. following hits Seinfeld and Frasier. The exposure propelled the show into finishing the season ranked 24th in the ratings, earning it a regular birth on the networks 1994–95 schedule on Fridays at 10:00 P.M.

Crime Television—The 1990s

175

Much time was spent in the squad room as Homicide tended to focus quite a bit on the internal conflicts of its characters, both within themselves and with each other. Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) was the man in charge of keeping order within the halls of the precinct. As watch commander, he oversaw the caseload of the series’s four primary sets of detectives. Under his command was Detective Stanley Bolander (Ned Beatty), the wise, overweight veteran who seemed to take an almost paternal interest in the psychological well-being of his co-workers. He was partnered with Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), who seemed unfazed by much of the insanity he was surrounded by. Det. Beau Felton (Daniel Baldwin) was unpredictable and often found himself running afoul of departmental policy, which lead to friction with his female partner, Sgt. Kay Howard (Melissa Leo), who worked hard to be the best and closed more cases than any other officer. Det. Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) was also dedicated and often felt that he was carrying his unmotivated sidekick, Det. Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito). Det. Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) was an ambitious, kick-ass cop who would have preferred that his partner, rookie Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), resign himself to the sideline. But Bayliss was eager to prove himself, and refused to take a backseat to Pembleton on their investigations. Often, the first line of business seemed to be keeping the peace among themselves, then solving the homicides. Medical examiner Carol Blythe (Wendy Hughes) was added during the second season, and began an affair with Bolander. A second watch commander, Capt. Megan Russert (Isabella Hoffman), was added in 1994. The writers did venture beyond dealing strictly with the characters’ professional lives. For instance, an ongoing plotline during the shows early episodes involved Munch and Lewis’s efforts to open their own bar. But more often than not, Homicide: Life on the Street tended to veer toward the darker side. In the December 2, 1994 episode, Steve Crosetti was found dead. An autopsy revealed that he had been drinking heavily and was taking large quantities of antidepressants, which, along with other physical evidence, seemed to indicate that he committed suicide. Realizing that if Crosetti did take his own life, there would be no honor guard made available for his funeral, Bolander and the others debated whether to lie in their report to preserve his memory. They barely had time to recover from the loss of their fellow officer when a month later, in the episode “The City That Bleeds” (1/27/1995), Bolander, Felton, and Howard were gunned down and seriously wounded while attempting to serve a warrant on a pedophile. It was discovered later that a clerical error had led them to the wrong apartment, allowing the suspect to get the drop on them. All three survived.

176

Crime Television

Homicide: Life on the Street was created by Paul Attanasio and among its executive producers were Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere) and filmmaker Barry Levinson (Diner, Avalon), the latter of whom is known for setting his movies in Baltimore. The series was beset by many cast changes: Ned Beatty and Daniel Baldwin left the program in the 1995 fourth season opener after their characters, Bolander and Felton, were suspended from the force after partying a little too hard at a Washington D.C. police convention (in an amusing inside joke, their suspension was for 22 weeks, the number of episodes in a TV season). Neither ever returned to the squad, but two years later, in the episode “Partners and Other Strangers” (5/9/1997), Felton’s headless body was discovered, the apparent victim of a shotgun suicide. In the fourth season finale, (“Work Related,” 5/17/1996), Pembleton suffered a stroke while interrogating a prisoner and had to undergo emergency surgery. He spent the 1996–97 slowly recovering, showcasing the talents of actor Andre Braugher. The 1997– 98 season ended with the two-parter “Fallen Heroes” (5/1/1998 and 5/8/1998) during which a murder suspect being booked into custody got hold of a service revolver and went on a shooting spree that left several officers and a judge dead. Afterwards, Pembleton resigned (and Braugher left the series) along with fellow officer Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond, who’d joined the show in 1995). Homicide aired its final original episode on May 21, 1999 with “Forgive Us Our Trespasses.” The episode featured the marriage of Det. Munch to his girlfriend Billie Lou McCoy (Ellen McElduff), while Bayliss, one of the few remaining original characters, decided to leave the unit. The show ran for a total of seven seasons, producing 122 total hours. During that time, there were three crossover episodes with another of NBC’s crime dramas, Law & Order. In 1999, after Homicide left the air, actor Richard Belzer’s Detective John Munch became a regular on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Belzer also played Munch in episodes of several other series, including the shortlived UPN drama The Beat (also from Levinson and Fontana), The X-Files, and the Law & Order spin-off Trial by Jury. On February 13, 2000, NBC aired Homicide: The Movie, in which Al Giardello is shot after becoming a leading candidate for mayor. The entire cast of the series was then reunited to catch the shooter, even deceased characters Crosetti and Felton, whose ghosts engage in a game of cards in the squad’s break room. Despite the large number of characters, the movie proved extremely satisfying. Homicide: Life on the Street was based on a book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon.

Crime Television—The 1990s

177

Some 1990s series were striving to make a dramatic statement to advance the genre, but others were simply there to entertain, and few did that as well as CBS’s Walker, Texas Ranger. The series focused on one Cordell “Cord” Walker, played by martial artist turned feature film star Chuck Norris. Walker was a modern-day Texas Ranger whose home base was Dallas. Norris portrayed Walker as a true straight arrow, whose advice to young children, other than to do well in school, is that violence isn’t the way to solve your problems, not until you’ve exhausted all other possibilities. Of course, two or three times an episode Walker exhausted his other options and resorted to beating the hell out of the bad guys. There were definitely no lessons to be learned here, but thankfully, Walker spent little time on the pulpit. At least he seldom resorted to actual gunplay, using his martial arts skills to sometimes subdue seven, eight villains at a time. Walker, Texas Ranger premiered on April 21, 1993 and ran for three weeks before being pulled by the network, not because of low ratings, but because part of the series financing deal fell through. It nearly spelled the end of the program, but CBS, encouraged by viewer response, was able to work things out, and Walker, Texas Ranger managed to churn out another 200 episodes over the next eight years. Cordell Walker was a true cowboy at heart. He wore the prerequisite western boots and hat, could rope and ride (although he traveled by pickup), and could even lasso the baddies when necessary. He was also honest, polite, and always ready to lend a helping hand. Norris played Walker with very little visible emotion, but plenty of emoting. Walker believed in the old school approach to law enforcement. His partner, however, had his own way of thinking. James “Jimmy” Trivette (Clarence Gilyard) was an African American officer who had been born and raised in the slums of Baltimore before earning a football scholarship that eventually lead to a position with the Dallas Cowboys. After he blew out his knee, Trivette put on a badge and became a Ranger. Unlike Walker, Trivette preferred turning to computers and forensic science to help track down suspects. Walker of course tracked his prey the old fashioned way, by following their trail (which usually involved pressuring informants or appealing to an individual’s family and friends). Walker had an ally in assistant district attorney Alex Cahill (Sheree J. Wilson), who didn’t necessarily approve of Walker’s methods but was impressed by his arrest record. C. D. Parker (Nobile Willingham) was a good friend of Walker’s, a former Ranger himself who’d been put out to pasture after being shot in the knee. C. D. owned and operated a countrywestern saloon that the others often frequented, and offered them advice

178

Crime Television

on their cases. During the first season, Walker’s native-American uncle, Ray Firewalker (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) was also seen frequently, but was then written out as having passed away. The basic appeal of this series was watching the rough and tumble routines that seemed to propel the series from act to act. Norris had perfected the tough guy routine in films such as A Force of One (1979), Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), Missing in Action (1984), and The Delta Force (1986), and played it to the hilt in this, his first regular TV role. After sneaking up on four drug runners conspiring around a campfire, Walker nonchalantly sits down and pours himself a cup of coffee. “Who the hell are you?” “Walker, Texas Ranger. Well, you boys made two big mistakes. One, smuggling drugs. And two, doing it in Texas. Didn’t you boys know the Texas Rangers would be coming down on you?” After surveying the lone officer for a moment, the lead smuggler inquires, “Oh yeah, where the hell are they?” “You’re looking at him.” “You’re saying you’re here, alone?” “That’s what I’m saying.” Whereupon they all have a good laugh before Walker lets loose with his fists and a few well-placed kicks. Of course being the professional he is, Walker then reads the Miranda rights to those left standing. During the 1989–99 season two additions were made to the cast: Trent Malloy (Jimmy Wlcek) was a former Army Ranger who was also a thirddegree black belt trained in the arts by Walker. Detective Carlos Sandoval (Marco Sanchez) was a member of the Dallas police department. Both men spent most of that season aiding Walker and Trivette on their assignments, before being spun off into their own series in the spring of 1999. Sons of Thunder, in which Malloy and Sandoval opened their own private detective agency, Thunder Investigations, lasted only six episodes. Two new Rangers were added to the cast of Walker that fall, Francis Gage (Judson Mills) and lovely Sydney Cooke (Nia Peeples). In December 1999, Nobel Willingham made his final appearance as C. D., although the character’s absence wasn’t explained until October 2000, when he supposedly died from a heart attack. In May 2000, Walker and Alex finally married. The program performed admirably in the ratings, entering the top-20 during the 1995–96 season (when it tied for 18th place). By the spring of 2001, the show had finally run its course. In the two-hour series finale, subtitled “The Final Show/Down” (5/19/2001), Walker becomes the hunted when a gang he once sent to prison returns for revenge. It turns out they’ve

Crime Television—The 1990s

179

been systematically seeking revenge on the 12 Rangers responsible for sending them to jail—one of their earlier victims, it’s learned, had been C. D., who didn’t actually die from a heart attack but had been poisoned. They’ve been saving Walker for last, and now it’s his turn. Of course, Walker and Trivette triumphed, and by the end of the episode Alex had also given birth to their first child, Angela. (The cast returned for a two-hour TV movie, titled Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire, on October 16, 2005.) Walker, Texas Ranger became a huge success, not just on CBS but in syndication afterward, by tapping into an audience that had been largely abandoned by series like Law and Order, New York Undercover, and Homicide: Life on the Street. In the mid-1990s rush to see who could come up with the next critically acclaimed, award-winning drama, most of the industry seemed to forget that there were still viewers out there in search of something less high-brow. In a business where image and prestige is so highly regarded, sometimes it’s difficult for many producers to admit their viewers prefer mindless action to more thought-provoking work. But like the world it attempts to portray, television is strongest when truly diverse in its tastes and preferences. CBS seemed to have an acquired taste for these cheesy but highly entertaining action adventures. A few years after Walker’s debut, they picked up another similarly styled crime series that quickly became a cult hit in its own right. After epitomizing cool in the crime drama genre during the 1980s with Miami Vice, Don Johnson returned almost a decade later, playing yet another laid-back, smooth-talking detective, CBS’s Nash Bridges. Although a bit older, Johnson had maintained his rugged good looks and sly smile. Premiering in the spring of 1996 for a trial run, Nash Bridges was set in the offices of the Special Investigations Unit of the San Francisco police department. The elite team of which Nash was a member (and eventual leader) was given all of the department’s most difficult and dangerous cases. But Nash took it all in stride, forever relaxed and smilin’—and always ready with a wisecrack—even in the face of danger. Obviously, Nash wasn’t your conventional cop, whether leading his crack team into adversity or tooling around the city in his classic canary yellow 1970 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. He liked referring to everyone as “bubba” and fooled a lot of people into underestimating him. He was actually very intelligent, even possessing a photographic memory. Despite his unconventional style, Nash was highly successful in collaring the bad guys. CBS scheduled the series on Friday nights at 10:00 P.M., the same timeslot that had previously proved so lucky for Johnson with Miami Vice.

180

Crime Television

The show also dealt extensively with Nash’s personal life. Twice divorced, he lived with his father Nick (James Gammon), a retired longshoreman. His first wife had been Lisa (Annette O’Toole), who owned a catering business. She and Nash maintained a complicated relationship, getting along far better after the divorce than they did as a married couple. They had one child, 16-year-old Cassidy (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), a headstrong, opinionated teen who lived with her mother but remained close to her dad as well. Nash’s second marriage had been to Kelly (Serena Scott Thomas), who came from a wealthy clan and wanted Nash to give up his dangerous work, put on a suit, and go to work for the family company. Nash couldn’t do that and the union came to an end. In “Aloha, Nash” (5/3/1996), they did attempt to take the honeymoon they’d missed after their wedding because of Nash’s work, but another big case came along and it was just like old times again. Lisa and Kelly were featured occasionally during the first season only; his daughter, Cassidy, hung around, however, to befuddle Nash. Joe Dominguez (Cheech Marin) was Nash’s best friend and former partner with the San Francisco Police Department. In the spring 1996 episodes, it was explained that Joe had left the force and was working as a private investigator. When the series returned in the fall, however, Joe had gone back to work as a cop, and had been conveniently placed with the S.I.U. where he and Nash became partners. Joe was married to Inger (Caroline Lagerfelt), who gave birth to a daughter, Lusia, in the spring of 1997 (they already have an older son, J. J.). Nash had reported to Lt. A. J. Shimamura (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) in the spring episodes, but the lieutenant returned to Hawaii early in the second season after being passed over for a promotion he felt he deserved; Nash was then appointed acting head of the unit. The other primary members of the outfit during the 1996–97 season were Insp. Harvey Leek (Jeff Perry), a throwback to the counterculture ‘60s who wore a black armband in memory of the late Jerry Garcia of the classic band “The Grateful Dead.” Insp. Evan Cortez (Jaime P. Gomez) was basically a younger version of Nash. Evan, at age 26, tempted fate when he entered into a relationship with 16-year-old Cassidy. Insp. Bryn Carson (Mary Mara) was the token female who had to tolerate her testosterone-fueled fellow officers. The S.I.U. offices were relocated that season to a boat moored at the Hyde Street Pier. Nash Bridges was never a big hit in the ratings, primarily because it was a buddy cop show in an era when such programs were quickly going out of style. It was also light and airy and peppered with humor, when most new crime dramas were set in more gritty surroundings, capturing the grim realities of true life. Yet the show still survived thanks in large part to the strong

Crime Television—The 1990s

181

fan base of Don Johnson and those who still preferred an hour of good old-fashioned fun. There were frequent attempts to throw viewers a curve every once in awhile, which often lead to a character’s untimely demise. Bryn was replaced early in the third season by Insp. Michelle Chan (Kelly Hu). Michelle remained with the team for a year before being murdered by a stalker early in the fall of 1998 (“Hot Prowler,” 10/9/1998). She was replaced by Caitlin Cross (Yasmine Bleeth), an Internal Affairs investigator, who was able to get Nash and Joe off the hook when they were falsely accused of murder. She then stayed on and continued working with S.I.U.; eventually she and Nash fell in love and began an affair. In the series’s fifth season finale, “Jackpot” (5/19/2000), Evan was killed in the line of duty just as he and Cassidy were planning their wedding. As the final season got underway, Cassidy graduated from the police academy and ended up going to work for her father at S.I.U. Caitlin and Nash broke up and Caitlin moved to Washington, D.C., clearing the way for Nash to fall in love once again, this time to Rachel McCabe (Wendy Moniz), who turned out to be an undercover informant placed in the department to uncover wrongdoing by Nash. She came up empty, of course, since Nash was always on the level. Along the way, the series took several detours. Nash’s sister Stacy, also a police inspector, showed up for awhile and revealed that she was a lesbian. Nash and Joe also opened a private detective business on the side as the producers toyed with the idea of getting them away from the S.I.U. So occasionally, the two would work outside the system to help people, making Nash Bridges one of the few shows to be both a police drama and private detective series at the same time. It ended its run in the fall of 2001 after 122 episodes. There was no doubting the popularity of both Walker, Texas Ranger and Nash Bridges and their importance to CBS, but ABC, however, spent the 1990s eagerly searching for hits that would impress critics, rather than duplicating the type of success it had experienced with such 1980s shows as T. J. Hooker or The Fall Guy, which drew positive numbers but were generally panned by reviewers. The network finally hit the jackpot with a series that would not only win enormous critical praise but would become the network’s longest-running crime drama. It also proved another feather in the cap of its creator. After Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco’s second major success in television was NBC’s L.A. Law (1986–94). Featuring its highpriced lawyers working out of their luxurious offices, L.A. Law was set a world apart from Bochco’s earlier venture. Then, after the high-profile failures of his 1990 musical oddity Cop Rock and 1991’s divorce drama Civil Wars, Bochco struck gold again.

182

Crime Television

Co-created with David Milch, NYPD Blue made use of deeply flawed characters whose lives were as bleak as the deteriorating urban landscape where they lived and worked. The program was actually filmed on location in New York using the same jittery cinematography that Hill Street had pioneered and which most gritty crime shows of the 1990s were using to heighten their sense of reality. NYPD Blue was set in the dilapidated, darkly lit offices of the city’s 15th police precinct. (Unlike the Hill Street precinct house, the NYPD structure never became a character in itself, never became “home”.) The primary focuses of the series were two detectives, Detective Andy Sipowicz, played by Hill Street alum Dennis Franz, and his partner Det. John Kelly (David Caruso). Sipowicz was a lonely, grizzled, disenchanted veteran of the force who, as the series began, had clearly become emotionally damaged by the trappings of his profession. In a desperate attempt to keep from going over the edge, Sipowicz simply did what he could to numb the pain—he drank heavily, sought out the companionship of prostitutes, many of whom he’d arrested in the past, and totally immersed himself in the work. He was still losing ground, however, his patchwork psyche on the verge of ripping apart each time he encountered the body of yet another dead child, the victim of rape, gang violence, or drug-addiction. Kelly was also a longtime member of the force who’d been more successful at keeping his life in check. One brutally honest advantage he had over his partner is that Kelly was younger, much better looking, had been married to an attractive attorney, Laura (Sherry Stringfield), and was now dating equally beautiful Officer Janice Licalsi (Amy Brenneman). In other words, Kelly loved and was loved, whereas the balding, heavyset Sipowicz felt alone—totally abandoned—in life. In most cases, the real battle begins once a show premieres and the networks begin to scrutinize the ratings. But for NYPD Blue the first shots were heard months before the first episode was even broadcast. Bochco had always envisioned the series as a true adult crime drama, and to reach those ends, he realized he’d have to compete with the type of hard-edged programming that was beginning to air on pay cable channels. Therefore when it came to NYPD Blue, Bochco decided to push the envelope in regard to content: the series pilot included crude language, partial nudity, and a sex scene played out in a dark bedroom. As expected, the show drew the ire of advocacy groups, in particular the American Family Association led by the Rev. Donald Wildmon. By the time NYPD Blue’s pilot aired on the evening of September 21, 1993, close to 60 of ABC’s 225 affiliates had opted to preempt the broadcast. Most

Crime Television—The 1990s

183

of those outlets were in smaller, rural areas in the Midwest and South, the Bible Belt. In larger cities, all the attention had just the opposite effect, actually drawing viewers who might have otherwise never sampled the show to begin with. As a result, the episode drew huge numbers—prompting many of the stations that had refused to air the premiere to reconsider the next week. Advertisers, too, many of who had steered clear of the show fearing a boycott of their products, eventually began supporting the program. TV veteran Mark Tinker (The White Shadow, St. Elsewhere), who served on NYPD Blue as a director and co-executive producer, defends the programs content. “We felt we had a point of view on the show and we tried not to pollute or dilute it,” he says, “so yeah, we felt the responsibility for telling a gritty, realistic cop story as opposed to watering it down and making it less impactful than it could have been. Steven [Bochco] dug his heels in on certain issues and compromised on others. You have to pick your battles like with anything else. There were times when the network would give you notes and you’d say, ‘You have to be kidding.’ But they had negotiated all the language out in advance, and we got a few new words as time went on, for instance, by the middle of the run of the show we were able to say ‘bullshit.’” As for the actors, adds Tinker, “I can’t say if they were comfortable with it, but I do know that they all had to sign a waiver at the beginning when they got hired stating that there may be nudity involved. There were some people who didn’t want to do it, particularly in the guest cast, but others didn’t have a problem with it. As for the language, I don’t think anyone was that uncomfortable. Sometimes we still felt our hands were tied in terms of language and other things we would have liked to have shown whether it was nudity or violence or whatever, but you had to be very attentive to the rules of the network.” NYPD Blue finished its first season ranked number 18, ABC’s highest-rated hour of scripted television, and received 27 Emmy nominations. Dennis Franz took home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. A year later, the series would win Outstanding Drama Series. The program was a bona fide hit, but not everyone was happy, particularly costar David Caruso. NYPD Blue had taken him from obscurity to stardom virtually overnight. As a result, his character became the primary focus of the show, leaving Franz, despite his Emmy win, to sometimes fall into the category of second fiddle. Most performers in Caruso’s position would have been ecstatic. Caruso’s reaction, though, was to ask Bochco to release him from his contract; he wanted out to pursue motion picture projects. (As Caruso would later admit, it all boiled down to ego, too much fame coming too quickly.)

184

Crime Television

Mark Tinker remembers Caruso’s departure as a difficult time made worse by intense media scrutiny: “David was a little testy and ready to get going,” he recalls, “and everybody was trying to work toward an end and get past that particular bump in the road and get on with trying to get the new guy installed, which is no easy task on most series. As it turned out, on our show, we had plenty of those kinds of changes, and the show seemed to thrive with each one.” Early in the second season, Det. Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits), a young officer who had recently lost his wife, replaced Kelly. “It was a little hectic and crazy for a while,” remembers Tinker, “but Jimmy Smits is such a strong presence that everybody settled in very quickly and of course David [Milch’s] writing facilitated that. It depended on who you spoke to, I know some people had hard feelings, some people couldn’t wait for David Caruso to get going, and others thought it might be the end of the show. I think everyone carried a certain degree of trepidation, but most were ready for the change because of the disruptive nature of how that whole thing presented itself.” Sipowicz, after bottoming out in year one, began to get his life back together. He entered AA and also became involved romantically with assistant D. A. Sylvia Costas (Sharon Lawrence), and they were married in the second season finale, “A.D.A. Sipowicz” (5/23/1995). Simone also found romance with Officer Diane Russell (Kim Delaney), an alcoholic. They, too, were married, in the spring of 1998. After four years on the series, Smits, who had worked with Steven Bochco on L.A. Law, decided he’d had enough and like Caruso before him, decided to walk. As the sixth season opened in the fall of 1998, newlywed Simone was stabbed while taking down a suspect. Although the wound was superficial, he soon began to experience symptoms of a more serious condition. An examination revealed his heart was failing and his only hope for survival was a transplant. The story arc ran for the season’s first five episodes. Simone received his heart transplant, but his condition continued to worsen. He died in the November 24, 1998 episode, “Hearts and Souls.” Fans, especially female viewers, were crushed by Smits’s departure from the series. They weren’t alone, however. Backstage, “I would say that Jimmy’s departure caused more concern for people than David’s,” says Tinker. “The final few episodes of the Simone character were very powerful, which again I feel is attributable to the quality of David [Milch’s] writing.” Sipowicz was then teamed with yet another new partner in December of 1998, young narcotics officer Danny Sorenson. It was the casting of former child star Rick Schroder in the role of Sorenson that gave many fans pause. They felt the former Silver Spoons star was not up to the task of tackling the

Crime Television—The 1990s

185

brand of heavy drama presented on NYPD Blue. Continues Tinker: “When we brought Rick Schroder in it was quite a risky move. Fortunately, most people said, ‘We’ll give him a chance and see what happens.’ And again, good writing will usually trump a situation that’s a little in the gray area, and luckily for us Rick stepped up to the plate and was terrific. I think the cast changes revitalized the writers by allowing them to write for different characters.” Franz, who had been overshadowed by Caruso, then stood equally alongside Smits, was finally elevated to first position, primary lead, when paired with the less experienced Schroder. Despite turning in first-rate performances from day one, he emerged as the main lead only by staying with the show longer than the others. Much of the sixth season involved Sipowicz and Sorenson learning to work together as partners. By this time, Sipowicz and Sylvia had become parents to baby Theo. In the sixth season finale, “Voir Dire This” (5/18/1999), Sylvia was shot during an incident at the courthouse. Her dying words to Sipowicz were: “Take care of the baby.” The next season found Andy on the verge of despair, trying desperately not to turn back to alcohol to deal with Sylvia’s death. He also became overprotective of Theo, who himself had a health scare. (Sipowicz also had a grownup son who’d become a cop in New Jersey, but was killed by a “perp”). By now, NYPD Blue was becoming more about the personal relationships of the characters than the crimes they investigated. In the spring of 2001, Sorenson got involved with a seedy investigation involving strip clubs and prostitution, and he began to experience signs of emotional stress. In the eighth-season finale, “In the Wind” (5/22/2001), he failed to show up for work. When Sipowicz went to his apartment, he found the body of a dead stripper (Jenna Gering) but no sign of Sorenson. When season nine opened that fall, Sorenson had been missing for five months. His body was discovered buried in a vacant lot a couple of episodes later. Sipowicz was then teamed with his fourth partner of the series run, Det. John Clark, Jr. (played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, another former teen heart throb, best known for his starring role on the long-running Saturday morning hit Saved by the Bell). Many other officers came and went over the next four years as the series delved ever more deeply into interpersonal stories. NYPD Blue ended is run on March 1, 2005, after 12 seasons and 261 hours of television. In the finale, Andy Sipowicz, a character who seemed bound for self-destruction in the program’s first season, was promoted and took command of the squad. He was also on the verge of marrying his new love Det. Connie McDowell (Charlotte Ross). The show had become

186

Crime Television

the longest-running of Steven Bochco’s many hits. The series accumulated a total of 90 Emmy nominations, and became a standard by which other crime dramas of the era were measured. Tinker feels the show definitely held up creatively over its long run. “I think we did a great job of keeping the police aspect of the series as realistic as could be. Most law enforcement people that we had spoken with felt it was as accurate and realistic a portrayal of the life of a New York cop as you could expect to get in a television show. I would say almost every single story we did came out of a real case, or was an off-shoot or dramatization of a twist on a real case. We had cops giving us stories all the time. We’d fly them out from New York and they would give us a ton of stories. If you could take any kind of exception to it, it would be that by season 12, when you’ve done 22 episodes a year and told two or three stories in every episode, that’s a lot of stories and a lot of situations to put people in, and after a while it’s like, ‘OK, I think I’ve seen this guy in just about every situation or variation of situation that I can.’ So you reach a point of diminishing returns with the viewers in terms of freshness, and that’s perfectly natural.” He credits that long-lasting creativity to the dedication and talent of those working on both sides of the camera. “There’d have been no show without Dennis [Franz]. He wasn’t the only one who got attention, but he was the power hitter, the strength of our show. Steven Bochco is great, very smart, and understands structure and character motivation like nobody else. He’s a great writer, and a fair guy to work for with a great sense of humor. Between Steven Bochco and David Milch and the cast, I think we made a show for the ages that won’t soon be forgotten in terms of its influence, and I’m not sure it will be topped for a long time to come in terms of being a groundbreaking, influential crime drama.” After successfully launching NYPD Blue in the fall of 1993, then relaunching it in the fall of 1994 after the departure of co-star David Caruso, Steven Bochco was ready to move on to his next project; and ABC, who had him under exclusive contract, was anxiously anticipating his next hit. Murder One was a bold attempt from Bochco to tell a sweeping tale of sex, glamour, and death in a way that hadn’t been attempted on television. The idea was to follow one high-profile murder case from the commission of the crime to the handing-down of the verdict over the course of an entire season. It was a risky undertaking, both creatively and financially. It required Bochco and his team, which included co-creators Charles H. Eglee and Channing Gibson, to stretch one storyline over the course of 23 hourlong episodes. It also required viewers to maintain interest over the course of an eight-month first-run TV season in an era when attention spans were

Crime Television—The 1990s

187

notoriously growing shorter. That Murder One even made it to the air was proof of the how much faith ABC had in Bochco. The program debuted on the evening of September 19, 1995 by introducing the usual suspects, and those paid handsomely to see that they go unpunished. The central character was high-priced criminal defense attorney Theodore Hoffman (Daniel Benzali), a bald, stoic individual who possessed a commanding presence. In the opener, “Teddy” became involved with a case that would make or break his career—and also have profound effects on his personal life. The case involved the murder of 15-yearold Jessica Costello (Collette White), whose body was found on the floor of her bedroom, nude and tied to a bedpost after apparently having consensual sex with her killer. The primary suspect in her death became Richard Cross (Stanley Tucci), a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who owned the apartment building in which the crime occurred and was also having an affair with Jessica’s older sister, model Julie Costello (Bobbie Phillips). Cross was supposed to have been keeping an eye on the unruly teen while her sister was out of the country on a photo shoot. Instead, police believe, he had sex with the girl then killed her in a crime of passion. Cross, it turned out, was a client of Teddy Hoffman. After some legal wrangling (and underhanded use made of the suspect’s vast fortune), the charges against Cross were dropped. But Teddy had little time to celebrate, as aggressive police detective Arthur Polson (Dylan Baker) quickly arrested a second suspect, hot-shot Hollywood actor Neil Avedon (Jason Gedrick), who was a former client of Teddy’s before the attorney finally got fed up with his bad-boy antics. It’s revealed that Neil also knew Jessica, who’d been a fan of his. The two had done drugs together and had sex the night she was killed. Then, according to testimony provided later by Richard Cross (who had also been at the crime scene), Neil had become paranoid and violent, physically threatening Jessica, who locked herself in the bathroom. She then called Cross, who rushed to the apartment and found her body. Neil continued to maintain his innocence, but despite his pleas, Teddy refused to take his case until Cross inexplicably stepped in and asked Teddy to defend the young man. He finally relented and the free-forall began. The rest of the season played out as Teddy and his defense team went to work trying to prove Neil’s innocence—or at the very least, producing evidence that would cast enough doubt in jurors minds to earn an acquittal. Teddy’s minions included lawyers Chris Docknovich (Michael Hayden), Arnold Spivak (J. C. MacKenzie), Justine Appleton (Mary McCormack), and Lisa Gillespie (Grace Phillips). They were all young, eager, and idealistic,

188

Crime Television

preoccupied as much with who would get second chair than with the evidence. Louis (John Fleck) was the office manager and David Blalock (Kevin Tighe) was Teddy’s personal investigator, whose job it was to gather background information, which often included a lot of skeletons hidden in closets, for use in court. On the prosecution side was D. A. Roger Garfield (Gregory Itzin) and Assistant D. A. Miriam Grasso (Barbara Bosson). It was clear from the beginning that Murder One was patterned after the real-life O. J. Simpson trial that captivated the country in 1995. Both Teddy and the prosecutors spent as much time courting the press as they did the jurors. The strain of being under such public scrutiny eventually led Teddy and his wife Ann (Patricia Clarkson) to separate later in the season. One interesting aspect to the show is that, to keep viewers up-to-date on what was happening, the fictitious Law TV cable network was covering the Neil Avedon case. Each episode would begin with a commentator recapping the case thus far, including the use of videotape news footage of the characters in court. When those watching at home were sufficiently filled in on the proceedings, the action would jump into the actual courtroom, from video to film, and the episode would commence. The season and the trial finally wrapped up in April 1996. In the concluding episodes, it was revealed that neither Cross nor Avedon was the killer (although Avedon is actually convicted before new evidence comes to light). Cross, it’s learned, had installed a hidden camera in Jessica’s bedroom to tape the girl having sex and had a video of the murder all along, revealing the real killer, Roberto Portalegre (Miguel Sandoval), a drug trafficker for whom Cross was laundering money. Portalegre had threatened Cross’s life unless he fingered Avedon for the crime. Another revelation is then introduced: Cross is dying from AIDS, and with only weeks to live, no longer fears retribution from his former partner in crime. So he turns over the tape, which succeeds in clearing Avedon and leads to Portalegre’s arrest. Portalegre then approaches Teddy with a $20 million offer to defend him! But wisely, the producers let the storyline die there, and Teddy walked away. Although critically acclaimed, Murder One never attracted much of an audience. In an attempt to salvage the show, ABC renewed it for a second season but implemented many changes. First, actor Daniel Benzali was dropped as the lead and replaced by Anthony LaPaglia as attorney James Wyler. Most of the supporting cast returned. Another resounding alteration to the premise was that no longer would the entire season be dedicated to a single case. Instead, three cases were to be presented that year. The first involved the murder of the California governor and his mistress; the second

Crime Television—The 1990s

189

case featured an African American basketball star who murdered his team’s owner. Wyler managed to get them both off the hook, although it was made clear that the ball player, Rickey Latrell (Rick Worthy), had actually been guilty. What couldn’t be saved was this low-rated series, however, and ABC pulled the plug after the January 23, 1997 resolution to the Latrell case. The final story, in which Wyler defended a serial killer who preyed on other criminals, was eventually telecast as three two-hour movies in May 1997. Although Murder One failed to catch on with viewers, it led to some interesting outside-the-box thinking by other producers, which led to more successful programs like the espionage thriller 24 beginning in fall 2001, in which a single day is dramatized over the course of a season, with each episode playing out in real time. For its contribution to television on that level, Murder One definitely deserves honorable mention. The big-three networks all had multiple successes during the 1990s, both critically and commercially. That tended to leave the fourth network, FOX, as odd-man-out, a tough position considering its desire to be respected alongside the other broadcasters. During the early 1990s, Fox’s most popular series remained the sitcom Married…With Children, while most of their new efforts seemed to fall quickly by the wayside. They did find one bright spot, however, when in the fall of 1994, they introduced New York Undercover, which was basically a cross between the network’s own earlier hit 21 Jump Street and NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street. The program, which opened on January 31, 1993, followed a number of young undercover cops who worked out of Precinct 21 in Harlem. The series featured good-looking young actors as they tried to take down the drug dealers, rapists, and murderers who had taken over the streets. The show had all the earmarks of programs such as Homicide and Law and Order: the grittiness of locale, the stark depiction of violence and crude language, and the use of cinema verité camera work. (Law & Order producer Dick Wolf was a co-creator, explaining the similarities.) Even more unusual for the time was the fact that both leads were ethnically diverse casting choices. Malik Yoba was African American and Michael DeLorenzo was of Puerto Rican and Indian descent. The big-three networks featured few one-hour dramas without at least one white star; Fox, in an attempt to compete with the others, went after the urban audience that had been largely overlooked by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Their efforts paid off and New York Undercover quickly became one of Fox’s biggest hits. Yoba played Det. J. C. Williams, who was divorced but attempting to remain on good terms with his ex-wife Chantal (Fatima Faloye) and trying

190

Crime Television

to remain close to his young son Gregory “G” (George O. Gore II). J. C. was scared G might end up like the homeless, drug-addicted teenagers he encountered in his work, and wanted desperately to be a good father to his son. The first season, J. C. was dating attorney Sandy Gill (Michael Michele). Sandy became pregnant with J. C.’s child and the two planned to marry. In the shocking season finale, “Catman Comes Back” (5/11/1995), Sandy was shot and killed by street thug Danny Up (Ice-T) the day before her and J. C.’s wedding. Co-star DeLorenzo portrayed Yoba’s partner, Det. Eddie Torres, who was single and available, dating many women. He loved his job and worked hard to prove himself. He and his sister, Carmen (Lisa Vidal), spent time the first season searching for their missing father, Mike, a jazz saxophonist and recovering addict. Patti D’Arbanville-Quinn, the only white member of the original cast, played Lt. Virginia Cooper, the precinct’s watch commander. A major element of New York Undercover was a solid weekly dose of R&B and hip-hop music. When the youthful detectives finished a difficult day and needed to relax, they usually ended up at Natalie’s R&B café (singer Gladys Knight appeared occasionally as Natalie). This setting gave the producers an opportunity to offer their viewers an extra treat. Real-life recording artists from The Temptations and The O’Jays to Boyz II Men and Mary J. Blige (and even Knight herself) appeared live onstage. The gimmick proved so popular that MCA put out two soundtrack albums, New York Undercover (released in September 1995) and New York Undercover: A Night At Natalie’s (January 1998). When the series returned for a second season in the fall of 1995, J. C. was still in the hospital recovering from wounds received in the first season finale. He was also trying to recover psychologically from Sandy’s death. While he was laid up, Eddie got a new female partner, Det. Nina Moreno (Lauren Velez). Nina was Puerto Rican, which gave Eddie some pause, as he had often struggled with his own heritage over his desire to fit in with the predominantly white members of the police force. As he and Nina worked on their relationship and developed a trust, Eddie was busy on other fronts as well. One was trying to reestablish his friendship with J. C. That fall, Eddie also caught up with his estranged father Mike, who was diagnosed with AIDS later in the season. (Mike died from a drug overdose in November 1996.) The third season was a mixture of both action and character development. J. C. ended up with an Irish partner, Det. Tommy McNamara (Jonathan LaPaglia), whom he couldn’t stand. Eddie and Nina’s romance blossomed and he proposed to her. But Nina had a few personal issues to resolve. In

Crime Television—The 1990s

191

“School’s Out” (2/6/1997), the daughter Nina had given up for adoption at birth, Melissa (Zoe Dora Lukov), was kidnapped and held for ransom. After Melissa’s rescue, Nina began proceedings to get her back, ultimately failing. (Nina, who was separated from her husband but not officially divorced, also had to legally end her first marriage.) Even Lt. Cooper got into the act, beginning an affair with Captain Arthur O’Bryne (James McCaffrey). She ended it for the sake of her marriage, but her husband eventually found out and filed for divorce. The storylines came to a head in the third season finale, “The Last Hurrah” (5/15/1997): McNamara was killed while undercover trying to infiltrate a gang of bank robbers. Eddie and Nina finally exchanged vows, but their union was, sadly, short lived. He died in the same episode, the victim of a car bomb planted by a female bank robber whose lover had been shot by Eddie. Ratings had fallen during the third season, perhaps because of all the soapy plot threads. When Fox announced their fall 1997 schedule, New York Undercover was nowhere to be found. Instead, the network made the decision to hold it back until mid-season to allow the producers to revamp the premise. Much of this retooling included adding more white characters and dropping the hip-hop music that had driven the first three seasons. When the series returned to the air in January 1998, J. C. and Nina had been transferred to a special task force in Manhattan, where their first assignment was to nail Nadine Jordan (Dana Eskelson), who’d killed Eddie. Their new boss was Lt. Malcolm Barker (Tommy Ford); Lt. Cooper was gone. They were partnered with two new young detectives, Neil DeLaney (Marisa Ryan) and Alec Stone (Josh Hopkins). DeLaney proved to be the most interesting of the new additions. At age 22, she was very cold and distant, but totally dedicated to her job. In one episode, she actually slept with the bad guy to prevent her cover from being blown. But J. C. and Nina remained the central focus of the program. Unfortunately, the producers took their characters in a controversial direction: by the end of the season, J. C. and Nina had not only gotten over mourning for Eddie but had embarked on a steamy love affair. It all happened a little too soon and a little too fast. Fans were turned off and quickly tuned out. After 13 new episodes that spring, New York Undercover ended its four-year run on June 25, 1998, with a total of 89 hours. The amount of on-screen violence has always been an issue with producers of crime series on TV, and as viewers have begun to insist on more realism from their favorite shows, the issue has become an even more cumbersome burden. Producers have reacted differently: some tend to shy away from violence as much as possible, doling it out in carefully measured amounts, but other showrunners seem to use it to their advantage. The

192

Crime Television

producers of NBC’s fall 1996 entry, The Profiler, definitely fell into the later category. The one-hour drama, about an FBI agent with unusual cognitive skills, proved to be one of the goriest and most violent programs of the decade. The series escaped being too heavily criticized for two reasons. First, it was scheduled at 10:00 P.M. Saturdays for much of its run, well out of the 8:00 to 9:00 P.M. viewing hour where children would get a look at it. Second, the show never managed to attract much of an audience. Perhaps a little controversy could have worked to its advantage. The series made its broadcast debut on September 21, 1996. It told the story of an attractive young forensic psychologist named Samantha Waters (Ally Walker) who could walk onto a homicide scene and use her perceptive talents to visualize what had occurred (these sequences where usually played out for viewers as a series of short, black-and-white vignettes, as if we were sharing Samantha’s visions). Samantha’s gift was widely recognized within the Bureau, and she was able to help the FBI track down some of its most wanted and vicious killers. That is, except for one, known only as Jack of All Trades, who had continued his killing spree across the country without being apprehended. Even Samantha was unable to precipitate his capture. She did succeed, however, in getting closer to him than anyone else ever had, which caught the killer’s attention. To get her attention, Jack murdered her husband, leaving Samantha a widow and single mother to young Chloe (Caitlin Wachs). Samantha responded by quitting the FBI, taking her daughter, and moving to the country to live in solace with her friend Angel Brown (Erica Gimpel). But soon her old mentor Bailey Malone (Robert Davi) came knocking on her door, pleading with her to come and work for him in the agency’s Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF) in Atlanta. Eventually, she was convinced and joined Bailey’s team, which also consisted of Det. John Grant (Julian McMahon), who was a bit skeptical of Samantha and her methods; Grace Alvarez (Roma Maffia), the team’s pathologist; George Fraley (Peter Frechette), a computer specialist; and, during the first season only, former attorney turned FBI agent Nathan Brubaker (Michael Whaley). They worked out of high-tech offices in Atlanta, but whenever a case came their way from anywhere in the country, they’d jump on their private jet and soar away. Jack also noted Samantha’s reemergence and became fixated on her. He began to murder people simply as a way of communicating with her, playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. It soon became clear that all of Jack’s victims had some kind of connection to Samantha as well. Jack continued to egg Samantha on, inviting her to catch him if she could. The producers and NBC tried to create a little mystery by keeping Jack in the shadows,

Crime Television—The 1990s

193

never revealing his face, and only crediting the actor playing the role with a question mark. It might have helped if, under those circumstances, they’d chosen an unknown for the role, because viewers were able to recognize actor Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away) primarily by his voice. One of the series’s trademarks became the wide array of horrible ways in which the writers were able to come up with ways to kill and mutilate bodies. (This was well before series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation made grisly crime scenes commonplace in prime time.) Each week, the victims on Profiler were shot, hanged, decapitated, sliced, diced, buried, burned, and cannibalized. Up to its time, the show was one of the most extreme in terms of presenting the aftermath of a serial killer’s handiwork. During the first season, Samantha fell for another agent, Nick “Coop” Cooper (A. Martinez), an ATF explosives expert who worked with the team. Early in the second season, Jack recruited a partner, a protégé of sorts, a disturbed young woman named Sharon Lesher, who he nicknamed Jill (Traci Lords), and began to train her as a serial killer. Her first victim turned out to be Coop (“Second Best,” 11/22/1997). Later in the season, the team successfully arrested Jill. Realizing that Jack might have feelings for her, they attempted to use her to lure Jack into a trap. Their plans failed, and Jill ended up dead in the second season finale, the two-hour “The Root of All Evil” (5/9/1998). Although the entire concept of Samantha and Jack was clever and well crafted, it was perhaps a gimmick that was overused. Jack’s appearances would have had more impact if he’d been given a little less screen time; instead he was used to some degree almost on a weekly basis. The Jack of All Trades saga finally came to an end at the beginning of the fourth season when star Ally Walker decided to leave the series, it was explained, “to pursue other projects.” In the two-part season opener, Jack shoots Bailey and leaves him for dead, then kidnaps Samantha in hopes of winning over her affections. Later, he also targets Chloe (Evan Rachel Wood, who had assumed the role at the beginning of season three). Bailey returns to work and recruits a new profiler, Rachel Hunter (Jamie Luner) to help him find Samantha. Jack dies in the end during a hostage stand off with Samantha and Chloe. Then in an emotional finale, Samantha bids farewell to her colleagues at the VCTF and leaves the complex for the last time. Bailey convinces Rachel to stay on and she becomes the focal point of the series. Rachel faced many challenges that year herself, including family complications brought on by the arrival of her drug-addicted brother Danny (Raphael Sbarge), who turns up dead late in the season. Bailey also learned

194

Crime Television

that Congress was reviewing the entire performance of the VCTF unit, with the possibility of shutting it down (a fairly ludicrous plot turn considering the team’s impressive track record for tracking down incredibly violent criminals). Although Jamie Luner did a fine job as the series new lead, playing Rachel as a much tougher, more aloof character than Samantha Waters, her presence failed to ignite ratings as producers had hoped. NBC finally cut The Profiler loose at the end of the 1999–2000 season, after four years and 83 episodes. One of the most important changes that occurred during the 1990s was the perception of the hero and heroic behavior. The protagonists of earlier decades, primarily the 1950s and 1960s, would never have crossed the line of ethical behavior to capture a suspect. Producers in the 1970s took joy in taking their leads to the edge then pulling them back just in time. The 1980s was the first era in which the good guys sometimes took matters into their own hands, but those were the renegades, and audiences were shocked. The 1990s was a time when our so-called heroes not only crossed the line but tumbled head-over-heels into the abyss. The result was usually critical accolades and award nominations. So by the end of the decade, it seemed only natural that many of these roles would be completely flipped. This was certainly the case with The Sopranos, the mob-related crime saga that premiered on cable’s HBO (Home Box Office) on January 10, 1999. The series centered on Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a conflicted husband and father who, early in the series run, also became head of the northern New Jersey mafia. Running his two highly dysfunctional families literally drove Tony into therapy with psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), a move that alone could have led him to an early grave. But that was only one of Tony’s many concerns. His hostile relationship with his mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) was causing him to experience panic attacks. With his mother’s health failing, Tony was threatening to put her in a nursing home, a move she was not about to tolerate. Tony was also at odds with his Uncle Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano (Dominic Chianese), who had expected to take control of the mob family himself before being passed over for Tony. Eventually, Livia and Junior joined forces, with Livia taking out a contract on her own son and Junior ensuring its enforcement. It was difficult to say which of Tony’s two families was more dangerous. Tony sought solace and refuge at home with wife Carmella (Edie Falco) and his kids, teenage daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), who was embarrassed by her father and his line of work (in one episode, Tony was arrested in front of her and her friends), and young son Anthony Jr. (Robert

Crime Television—The 1990s

195

Iler), who was just becoming aware of his family’s legacy. The premise clicked immediately and the series became a huge hit for HBO; as word spread, tens of thousands of new subscribers joined up simply to view The Sopranos. The show was watched by more than 4 million viewers a week that first season, a number that would rise in later years to more than 7 million, allowing the show to trump many of its mainstream competitors. The bizarre twist to the series was that the traditional good guys—those representing law enforcement—were nowhere to be found. What you had instead were just the bad guys separated into two groups—those you could get behind and oddly enough admire (Tony Soprano of course) and those who would take on the more conventional role of villains. The peculiar situation could certainly be used as fodder for a psychological examination of the changing views of right and wrong in our society. But most viewers at home were not interested in delving that deeply into the social ramifications of the series. Instead, they simply championed the cause of Tony Soprano. An argument could be made that Tony was simply the J. R. Ewing of his era—a character that fans could love to hate. Of course, J. R. in hindsight was a fairly harmless individual. He never graphically strangled anyone, as Tony did in the episode “College” (2/7/1999), in which Tony accompanies Meadow on a trip to Maine to tour a college she is considering attending. While there, Tony spots an ex-mobster (Tony Ray Rossi) who has been in hiding in the government’s witness protection program, and begins stalking him before slowly moving in for the kill. All the while, of course, he’s playing the dutiful father to Meadow. The episode would win writers James Manos, Jr. and (series creator) David Chase awards for Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series at the next year’s Emmy Awards. Violence wasn’t the only thing played to the hilt on The Sopranos. Airing on HBO, the show was under none of the constraints that series on basic cable stations faced. Strong language, far beyond what was ever heard on shows such as NYPD Blue, flowed freely, as did nudity and scenes involving strong sexual content. The success of The Sopranos opened the doors for other series to follow. Producers who had previously shunned the idea of shooting a program for cable and its limited audiences now hungered for the creative freedom that these avenues offered. There were other fundamental differences for cable shows as well, one being abbreviated seasons. The Sopranos, for example, would air only 13 new episodes per season, unlike the average 22 for a series on network TV. As the popularity of The Sopranos continued to soar, many changes occurred over the years. Actress Nancy Marchand died after the second season, ending Tony and Livia’s private little war. Her plans to have Tony killed

196

Crime Television

had failed, and Tony had learned she had been the one who ordered the hit. They were in the midst of attempting to patch up their differences, however, when Marchand lost her long battle with emphysema and lung cancer. To finish off Livia’s storyline, executive producer David Chase spent $250,000 to have Livia resurrected via computer effects for one additional episode. Two scenes were shot with another actress sitting in for Marchand, conversing with Gandolfini, then the late actress’s head was digitally imposed over the stand-in’s, using footage taken from her earlier performances. Her dialogue, too, consisted of sound bites from previous shows. Later in the episode, Tony gets a call that his mother has died in her sleep. Many questioned the appropriateness of the added scenes, but they did serve their purpose and the series was able to move on with Livia and Tony’s plotline finally settled. The series continued to serve as the foundation of HBO’s expansive move into original programming in the early 2000s. As the seasons passed, Tony fought to keep his organization profitable, battling forces on both sides of the law. Federal authorities became a larger presence in the show in later seasons, as they made numerous attempts to either get a mole into the Soprano crime family or convince one of Tony’s soldiers to turn on him. Their efforts always fell short of paying off, however, and those who dared contemplate crossing Tony ended up dead. Viewers could depend on each season of The Sopranos to feature at least one climatic and deadly confrontation, most likely involving the headman. In “Whoever Did This” (11/10/2002), Tony confronted one of his henchman, Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano), who he suspected had set an arson fire that killed Tony’s beloved horse. Their argument turned into a violent altercation in which Tony brutally beat Ralphie to death. In the episode “All Due Respect” (6/6/2004), Tony’s cousin Johnny Sack (Steve Buscemi) committed an unauthorized hit against a member of a rival crime family, and war loomed unless Tony agreed to give him up. Unable to turn Johnny over for what he knows will be a slow and painful death, Tony eventually takes matters into his own hands and executes his cousin personally, quickly, and cleanly with a shotgun blast. Tony faced his own brush with death in the program’s sixth season opener, “Members Only” (3/12/2006), in which Uncle Junior, dazed and confused from illness and age, mistakes Tony for an old nemesis and shoots him while Tony is preparing dinner for the two. Tony survives but is critically injured. He eventually recovers and reassumes control of the family. Besides opening the door for future cable programming, The Sopranos also helped enhance the profile of such existing series as HBO’s Oz, a brutally frank show set inside “Emerald City,” an experimental cell block at

Crime Television—The 1990s

197

The Oswald Maximum Security Correctional Facility. Although recognized by critics, the series failed to ignite ratings quite the way The Sopranos did because of its strong content involving the realities of prison life. HBO, in the decade to come, was to become a major supplier of innovative television of all genres. As the 1990s came to a close, the television crime drama had continued to evolve deeply. The foundation for that change began with the gritty realism introduced by Steven Bochco in 1981 with Hill Street Blues and the cinematic style pioneered by Michael Mann with 1984’s Miami Vice. The 1990s was a decade in which producers pushed the envelope in any direction they could, primarily in an effort to get their shows to stand out. At the same time, the networks were increasingly seeking programs that would draw large audiences right from the start. No longer would they allow shows to build as Hill Street had done. By a series’s second week on the air, the networks had usually seen enough to judge whether they felt a show was worthy of their continued attention and promotion, leaving producers little alternative but to base their premises on gimmicks that would attract immediate viewer attention. This often to led to series that would garner high ratings from curious audiences for their first few outings, only to falter a few weeks down the line. The new millennium would bring increased competition from pay-cable stations and first-run syndication, as well as from other outside sources. New technology—computers, the Internet, and video games—were already threatening to take the place of television as the leading source of entertainment for younger individuals. The 2000s were about to present their own distinct set of problems and solutions.

CHAPTER 6

Crime Television—The 2000s

he 1990s belonged to producers like Steven Bochco and Dick Wolf. Bochco instituted hard-hitting dramas such as N.Y.P.D. Blue, which dealt with the sobering decline of morals in society and the demoralizing psychological effects it could have on police officers whose job required them to deal with such matters on a daily basis. Wolf also stepped up to the plate and reinstated the police procedurals beginning with his long-running hit Law and Order in 1990. His characters, and their world, weren’t quite as gritty as the ones Bochco created, but the villains tended to be equally as sleazy. Viewers seemed to take to the work of both men, perhaps because of the universal concern over the increasing crime rates and the seemingly callous attitude of many perpetrators. In an odd way, that concern often translates to fascination and a desire to delve more deeply into the minds of such individuals—particularly through the safety net of fictionalized characters. In the fall of 2000, CBS introduced a new crime show that took a unique approach to the police procedural. Playing on the same themes that Bochco and Wolf were serving up, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation came from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the man responsible for such big-screen action films as Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Armageddon, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Bruckheimer was a man known for escapist entertainment, and his TV ventures proved to be no exception. With CSI, he managed to sponge up those elements that made N.Y.P.D. Blue

T

200

Crime Television

and Law and Order such hits, and wring out the social commentary. What was left was murder, mayhem, and the decline of western civilization in a circus atmosphere. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is set in Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps, and follows a team of crime scene analysts who work the busy graveyard shift. Although not officially members of the police force, these guys and gals are called to the scenes of the most gruesome murders in the city, where their job is to gather, preserve, and analyze as much physical evidence as possible to help authorities track down and convict those responsible. The crime scenes are indeed realistic, with lots of blood and body parts on display. Once the decedent is taken back to the morgue, the autopsy scenes are equally graphic. Throughout it all, the CSI team members go about their tasks seemingly immune to the horrors around them. The unit is led by senior officer Gil Grissom (William Peterson), who can best be described as a science nerd, certainly not your typical hero. Grissom has many of the same character traits as Sgt. Joe Friday of the classic crime drama Dragnet: both are totally dedicated to their professions, express little if any emotion, and seem devoid of any personal lives. The only time Grissom really seems to come to life is when presented with a particularly gruesome find, such as a badly decomposing corpse that has attracted Gil’s favorite pets—maggots (although he remains fond of cockroaches, too). He truly believes that science is the most important tool in fighting crime. “Forget about the victim, forget about the suspect and focus on the only thing that can’t lie: the evidence,” he advises his people. Grissom and his investigators use the latest, most advanced techniques available to gather and analyze forensic evidence. His charges include Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger), who usually leads a team of her own (each episode consists of two separate murder investigations). Catherine comes with some excess baggage; not only is she a woman trying to prove herself, but she had worked her way through school as a stripper, undermining her efforts to be taken seriously (except by Grissom, who recognizes her skills and potential). Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) is a compulsive gambler who can’t quite seem to stay out of trouble, endangering his future with CSI, while Nick Stokes (George Eads), a handsome young criminalist, is in competition with Warrick for promotion to CSI-3, the next step on their career ladder. In the pilot, aired October 6, 2000, Warrick and a young rookie, Holly Gribbs (Chandra West), were processing the scene of a hotel murder when Warrick excused himself and went downstairs to the casino to place a bet. Holly, left alone at the crime scene in direct violation of departmental

Crime Television—The 2000s

201

policies, became a victim herself. In the end, Warrick got to keep his job, but realized he would have to spend the rest of his life living with the guilt. Rookie Sara Sidel (Jorja Fox) then joined the team. Despite her beauty, Sara seems to have no social life, instead sharing Grissom’s penchant for immersing herself in the work. Dr. Al Robbins (Robert David Hall) is the skilled chief medical examiner, and Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) is an undisciplined lab technician with dreams of becoming a full-fledged CSI. Representing the police presence are Captain Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), who used to be the head of CSI but was fired, and (during the first two seasons) Sgt. O’Riley (Skip O’Brien). CSI was created by Anthony E. Zuiker, a young writer with no previous television credits. He was teamed with two experienced showrunners, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue, to co-executive produce the series. To their credit, the producers have been able to maintain as much interest in the scientific elements of the show as in the personal dramas. CSI did more than just become a popular source of entertainment for its audience; the show is generally credited with a huge increase in the number of college students signing up for classes in forensic science. The science presented on CSI is technically accurate, but the timeline of the investigations is greatly sped up to solve each crime by the end of that week’s episode. The teams seem to have the luxury of dealing with only one or two murder investigations at a time, while most big-city CSI teams are kept busy juggling a multitude of cases simultaneously. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation became the first major hit of the new millennium—not bad for a show that nearly failed to get on the air. CBS wasn’t overly impressed with the pilot, which was filled with technical jargon and gory crime scenes, but sorely lacking in deep character development. It wound up being the last series to be officially placed on the network’s 2000–01 schedule. But when the program finally premiered, viewers tuned in in droves, fascinated by the scientific elements that almost scared CBS away. Instead, the show marked the beginning of the network’s rise to number one. After its impressive start on Friday nights, CSI was moved to Thursday nights at 9:00 P.M., where it would average upwards of 20 million viewers a week, easily winning its timeslot for CBS. The series finished its first season tied for 11th place. By its third year, it was the toprated show on TV. CSI proved so popular, as a matter of fact, that it didn’t take CBS long to order a spin-off. Zuiker, Donahue, and Mendelsohn then went to work developing a new venture. Their proposal, which quickly got a green light from the network, was to take the primary elements of the original show

202

Crime Television

and transport them cross-country to sunny Florida. Viewers got their first taste of CSI: Miami in the penultimate episode of CSI’s second season, subtitled “Cross Jurisdictions” (5/9/2002), in which a former Las Vegas chief of detectives is found murdered. A tip leads Catherine and Warrick to Miami, where they team up with a group of local CSI’s in search of the man’s wife (Darlene Vogel) and young daughter (Jenna Boyd). The Miami crew themselves debuted that fall. CSI: Miami premiered on September 23, 2002 on Monday nights at 10:00 P.M., giving the network ammunition against ABC’s Monday Night Football. The sequel was a fraternal twin of the original. One major difference is that the new team does not work strictly the night shift. They often get out in the sunshine, but unfortunately run into the same grizzly murders. The senior investigator is Horatio Caine (David Caruso), who, although not quite as morose as Gil Grissom in his hobbies, is even more of a dedicated public servant. Horatio (whose mother named him after early twentieth-century writer Horatio Alger) led his team strictly by the book. Once the evidence had been dutifully collected and analyzed, however, he relied heavily on his hunches. This angered Megan Donner (Kim Delaney), the former head of the unit who had just returned after a lengthy personal leave after the death of her husband. She balked whenever Horatio attempted to extrapolate on what the results of her forensic testing might mean to the investigation. Being a DNA specialist, Megan spent most of her time in the lab. In real life, Delaney was no happier with her job on the series than her character was on the show, and opted out after filming only 10 episodes. On screen, in episode 11, “Camp Fear” (12/16/2002), it was explained she had resigned abruptly, stating it was too soon to return after her husband’s death and asking her co-workers not to attempt to contact her. The rest of the group included Tim Speedle (Rory Cochrane), a welleducated but not overly dedicated criminalist who’d joined the force after the death of his best friend. Speedle himself was killed in the line of duty in the third-season premiere, “Lost Son” (9/20/2004), when he and Horatio were caught in the middle of a jewelry store robbery. His gun misfired as the result of his not cleaning it properly. Calleigh Duquesne (Emily Proctor) is a pretty blonde ballistics expert, and Eric Delko (Adam Rodriguez) is the handsome agent who gets to recover those guns and bullets for Calleigh to inspect, wherever they may be found (on more than one occasion he’s had to don a wet suit and dive for evidence). Finally, there is Alexx Woods (Khandi Alexander), the coroner with an aggravating habit of talking to the dead bodies that she is examining, apologizing for the cruel way they were killed. After Speedle’s death, lab technician Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo)

Crime Television—The 2000s

203

became a field agent. Frank Tripp (Rex Linn) is the Miami Dade police detective who works most closely with Horatio and his team, and Det. Yelina Salas (Sofia Milos) is the wife of Horatio’s brother Raymond, who was originally believed to have died in the line of duty but was actually in the FBI’s witness protection program. When this was finally revealed in the third season finale, Raymond, Yelina, and their son were whisked off to Brazil for their own protection. Although not quite as popular as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, spin-off CSI: Miami has proven to have strong legs of its own, completing its first season ranked number 11 in the seasonal ratings. It didn’t take CBS long to decide that if it worked once, it might work again. So in the spring of 2004, they put CSI: Miami creators Zuiker, Donahue, and Mendelsohn back to work developing yet another spin-off. In the next-to-last episode of CSI: Miami’s second season, subtitled “MIA/NYC—NonStop” (5/17/2004), a teenage girl returns from a party to find her parents have been murdered. Horatio then heads to New York City in search of the suspect—who it turns out is an undercover detective—laying the foundation for CSI: NY. Whereas CSI: Miami closely resembled CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: NY attempted to be its own series. Premiering on September 22, 2004, the program was scheduled on Wednesdays at 10:00 P.M., giving CBS their third night of CSI. (Producer Dick Wolf attempted to maintain his reign by introducing a fourth scripted installment of his Law and Order series, subtitled Trial by Jury, but that effort proved to be short-lived.) There were distinct differences with CSI: NY. First, the CSIs in the Big Apple were actually members of the police force (as they are in real life), whereas the Las Vegas and Miami crews were separate entities. Second, the show has its own distinct look. While the original is shot mostly at night, and the Miami crew basks in golden sunshine, the New Yorkers are bathed in a dark blue hue to match the series’s harder edge. The head of the unit is Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), a former Marine who lost his wife Claire during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. His partner is Det. Stella Bonasera (Melinda Kanakaredes), a driven, well-educated investigator haunted by the fact that she is an orphan, which makes her feel detached from her Greek heritage. Dr. Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) is the crime lab’s coroner, a medical prodigy who graduated college at age 18, became a surgeon at 24, was burned out by 26, and then retreated to duty in the morgue. Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) is a spirited criminalist plagued by personal problems at home. Aiden Burn (Vanessa Ferlito) was the team’s anthropology expert who departed early in the second season and was replaced by Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap),

204

Crime Television

who had just arrived in New York after spending three years as a CSI in Montana. Also in the second season Hawkes finally came out of his selfimposed exile and requested duty in the field. Actor Ron Yuan stepped in as the new medical examiner, Dr. Evan Zao, for a few episodes before being replaced by Robert Joy as Dr. Sid Hammerback. Detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) is the Yonkers-born police contact who works closely with Mac and his people. Unlike its predecessors, CSI: NY received only a lukewarm reception when it hit the air. CBS believed the problem to be the series’s dark tone, so mid-season the network instructed Zuiker to brighten things up, both in terms of lighting and character development. The results were mixed. The series’s ratings did improve, although the show still falls well short of achieving the popularity of either of the other CSIs. Still, CBS hasn’t ruled out yet another addition to the franchise. While CBS was enjoying the success of CSI, its other major crime series of the fall 2000 season was rather benign. The District was a series that never really got much attention. It was slotted on Saturday evenings, the least-watched night of television. ABC and NBC had both basically given up on this time slot and had begun to schedule reruns of movies, and Fox aired the inexpensive reality fare Cops and America’s Most Wanted. As television pressed into the 2000s, CBS decided to tough it out alone and continued to produce original programming. The District premiered on October 7, 2000, capping off an evening that included That’s Life and Walker, Texas Ranger. At least the bar was low; by the end of the season, however, That’s Life and Walker were out of production, and The District paired with a new set of companions. And so it would go for the remainder of the show’s run. Set in the nation’s capital, the program starred actor Craig T. Nelson as Washington D.C.’s new chief of police, Jack Mannion. (The show was somewhat loosely based on real-life New York City Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple.) Mayor Ethan Baker (John Amos) had recruited Jack after he successfully turned around the departments in Boston and Newark. Once in office, Jack quickly found that he had both his supporters and detractors. He found a friend in Ella Farmer (Lynne Thigpen), a statistics expert whom Jack paired with a new high-tech computer to analyze crime patterns in the city. Jack’s foe was Deputy Chief Joe Noland (Roger Aaron Brown), who felt he was the better man for the job of Chief and had initially assumed the position was his. Nick Pierce (Justin Theroux) was the Chief’s PR man, who was busy dealing with both local and national media who had Jack under a microscope. Jack had, after all, walked into one of the most volatile communities

Crime Television—The 2000s

205

in the nation. He quickly realized he was walking a tightrope, just one public relations nightmare away from his life and career falling into ruin. As the series progressed, Jack gained the trust of his colleagues and became popular with the people—most of them anyway. There were always those who disagreed with his way of doing things. Over the years, Jack found himself the subject of a Senate investigation, had a run-in with the new mayor, Morgan Douglas (Joseph C. Phillips), and faced riots brought on by the death of a suspect in the back of a police cruiser. One of Jack’s officers, Danny “Mac” McGregor (David O’Hara) was killed in the spring of 2001 by a car bomb planted by the Russian mob. There were also personal dramas: Ella, a five-year cancer survivor, faced the return of her breast cancer, but beat it again; Jack dated several beauties but his heart, at times anyway, still seemed to belong to his ex-wife Sherry (played by Jean Smart in a recurring role). The series was dealt a tremendous blow when Lynne Thigpen died unexpectedly on March 12, 2003 from a cerebral hemorrhage. It was explained that her character, Emma, had died, too. Jack was heartbroken, and for quite awhile refused to clean out her office or hire a replacement. The District ended its four-year term at the end of the next season, in the spring of 2004, after 89 episodes. Afterwards, CBS, too, basically threw in the towel on Saturday evenings, scheduling movies and eventually reruns of those crime series that it aired on other days of the week. Premiering September 24, 2001, on the heels of CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NBC’s Crossing Jordan was also a forensic drama, only with a little more heart, for those who preferred their science served with a healthy dose of convoluted back story. Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh (Jill Hennessy) had worked as a medical examiner for the city of Los Angeles before being fired because of her penchant for wanting to play an active role, outside of the morgue, in solving murders. Years later, her career in shambles and attending anger management classes, Jordan was able to convince her former mentor, Dr. Garret Macy (Miguel Ferrer), to give her a job with his department in Boston. Macy reluctantly agreed, but warned Jordan that he’d be keeping a close watch on her. Even though she was aware that her future rested on making this second chance work, compulsive Jordan found it difficult to restrain her curiosity when she came across a victim who appeared to have died under mysterious circumstances. Fortunately, Jordan knew Garret well enough to realize that he, too, was dedicated to uncovering the truth and could be counted on as ally under the right circumstances. For Jordan, delving into the unknown was more than just a hobby; it was an obsession. When Jordan was younger, her mother had been

206

Crime Television

murdered and the crime was never solved. This has continued to haunt her over the years, perhaps even leading her into her current line of work. Jordan’s father, ex-cop Max (Ken Howard) is equally fixated on his wife’s killing, and has spent much of his time since her death trying to crack the case. When he’s not obsessing over Emily, he finds time to lend Jordan a hand with her unauthorized investigations. They would often play a game together in which they would reenact murders—one playing the victim, the other the suspect—in an effort to work out possible scenarios. Under these dark circumstances, there existed a sense of sadness over their preoccupation with death and identifying the killers. When she can divert her mind to other pursuits, such as her on-again/off-again romance with police detective Woody Hoyt (Jerry O’Connell), Jordan manages to exhibit signs of occasional contentment. Despite being set in the world of forensic science, Crossing Jordan never gets quite as technical as CSI, choosing instead to delve into the personal lives of Jordan and her co-workers. Dr. Macy often comes off as your typical “seen-it-all” authoritarian, an individual who hasn’t ended up where he hoped his career would lead him. He does show a softer, more vulnerable side on occasion: specifically when dealing with Jordan in their more subdued moments, or in coping with his drug-addicted daughter Abby (Alex McKenna). Lily Lebowski (Kathryn Hahn) is the office’s eccentric grief counselor, who harbored unrequited feelings for Dr. Macy. Then there is Dr. Mahesh “Bug” Vijayaraghavensatyanaryanamurthy (Ravi Kapoor), the entomologist from Bangladesh who usually ends up sharing screen time with British criminalist Dr. Trey Sanders (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), providing the series with its lighter moments. Revelations tore apart the Cavanaugh family in the two-part, secondseason finale (“Pandora’s Trunk,” 4/28/2003 and 5/5/2003). It begins with Jordan receiving a phone call from a man who says he has found her late mother Emily’s car. After several days of building up her courage, she follows the man’s directions and finds the automobile. In the trunk she discovers even more—the skeletal remains of the man, Carl Jeffers, who murdered her mother. Further investigation turns up two possible suspects—either Jordan’s father Max or her brother James Horton (guest Michael T. Weiss). It’s also learned that Emily had an affair before her death, and that James is not really Max’s son. Jordan is left in the cliffhanger with the knowledge that either her brother or her father may end up going to prison for the murder of Carl Jeffers. Fans hoping to find out the truth that fall wound up waiting a lot longer than planned for a resolution. Star Jill Hennessy announced she was

Crime Television—The 2000s

207

pregnant that summer and NBC put Crossing Jordan on hiatus while she took maternity leave. Even when the show returned in the spring of 2004, producers opted to ignore the events of the previous spring until the last of that season’s 13 episodes was ready to air. In that segment, subtitled “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” (6/6/2004), it was discovered that the man, Tom Malden (Edward Herrmann), with whom Emily had fathered Jordan’s brother James, had actually killed her. Malden, however, turned up dead in Jordan’s apartment and Jordan—who’d been drugged and couldn’t remember anything that had happened—then became a suspect herself. Eventually she was of course cleared of Malden’s death. Unfortunately, the character of Max Cavanaugh was slowly phased out of the show after Emily’s murder was solved, leaving a deep void where Max and Jordan’s father-daughter relationship had existed. But Crossing Jordan has remained strong in the ratings and was still going strong in the spring of 2006, closing in on its 100th episode. Fox, too, found yet another reason to celebrate in 2001. The network’s only successful crime drama of the 1990s had been New York Undercover. To compensate, they had turned increasingly to soaps aimed at a young demographic. Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place, both from producer Aaron Spelling, helped redefine Fox in the 1990s. They also served to resurrect Spelling’s career; he’d started out in the late 1960s and early 1970s by producing classic crime dramas such as The Mod Squad, The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch, and Charlie’s Angels. In the 1980s, his biggest hit was the ABC soap Dynasty. He continued to dabble in the crime genre, however, with T.J. Hooker and the short-lived MacGruder & Loud, about two patrol officers (John Getz and Kathryn Harrold) who shared a patrol car by day and a bed at night. The two had fallen in love and, ignoring departmental policy, secretly married. They had adjoining apartments that were linked by a revolving wall so that no one would see them coming and going from each other’s homes. By that time, Spelling’s crime shows were as fantastic as his over-the-top soaps. By the end of the 1980s when his style of action became extinct and Dynasty had run its course, Spelling’s career seemed to be going south as well. That is until 1990, when Fox introduced him to a young writer named Darren Star. Both Spelling and Star had deals with Fox. Star had written a pilot titled Beverly Hills, 90210, but had never produced a series before. Spelling, one of television’s most successful nonwriting producers, was looking for a new project to shepherd. Fox brought them together and the resulting series had a dramatic effect on all involved: it revived Spelling’s career, made a name for Star, and enabled Fox to escape the fate that had befallen the DuMont network back in 1956. Prime-time TV

208

Crime Television

once again had an established fourth network that would eventually boast of hits including Party of Five, the animated sitcom The Simpsons, the cult thriller The X-Files, and the legal drama Ally McBeal. In 2001, Fox scored with one of the most innovative and complex crime dramas in the history of the medium. Toying with the basic structure of a television series—particularly a one-hour filmed drama—has long been a concern of the studios and networks, most of whom work diligently to ensure conformity from producers who want to stray too far from the norm. Until the 1980s, there were few exceptions. The most notable example, and the one that marked a turning point for the medium, was Stephen J. Cannell’s Wiseguy in 1987. Cannell took a unique approach to telling the stories of an undercover fed whose job was to infiltrate organized crime outfits and gather enough evidence to warrant a conviction. Instead of spinning each tale over the course of an hour, Cannell developed “story arcs,” which would run anywhere from six or seven episodes to half a season. The agent, Vinnie Terranova, would slowly perform his task, securing the trust of his marks then taking them down. It was a bold experiment for the time. Because the stories were told over the course of two or three months, all an individual had to do was to miss a single episode to fall behind and lose track of the plot. The hope, as with any new series, was to hook viewers and make the show a can’t-miss part of their regular viewing habits. Beyond that, the idea was to present the episodes in a manner that would allow someone to miss a particular segment and still be able to pick up on where the story had gone. Cannell’s experiment was a success, and afterwards networks began to ease up and allow other producers the freedom to experiment with new concepts. In 1995, Steven Bochco introduced Murder One on ABC, which followed a high-profile murder case told over the course of an entire season. In this case, the program failed to hold the long-term attentions of its audience. In 2001, however, Fox jumped into the arena with what has become the most prominent example of the subgenre. 24 proved to be a stylish, daring attempt to tell a fast-paced espionage story in real time as events unfolded over the course of a single day. Each of the season’s 24 episodes moved the plot forward another hour, with a small clock ticking away in the corner of the screen. Multiple screens were sometimes used to convey events that were occurring simultaneously. The lead protagonist is Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), an agent with the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) of the CIA. Jack had just returned home after a trial separation with his wife Teri (Leslie Hope), hoping to patch things up with both her and daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert). Little is Jack aware

Crime Television—The 2000s

209

that he’s about to begin “the longest day of his life.” The first episode of 24 (11/6/2001) opened at 12:00 midnight on the day of the Presidential primary in Los Angeles. First, Jack learns that Kim has snuck out of the house with friends. While searching for her, he’s called into work at CTU, where he has to lead efforts to head-off an assassination attempt against one of the candidates, Senator David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert). Jack’s colleagues at CTU include Agent Nina Meyers (Sarah Clarke), whom Jack had an affair with during his separation; agent Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), her new lover; computer expert Jamey Farrell (Karina Arroyave); and Jack’s boss and nemesis, CTU District Director George Mason (Xander Berkeley). Sen. Palmer himself is having trouble within his own ranks, which includes his aggressive wife Sherry (Penny Johnson Jerald), son Keith (Vicellous Shannon), and daughter Nicole (Megalyn Echikunwoke). It seems each member of the Palmer family has a secret that could end David’s political ambitions even if he survives the day. Jack, too, learns he has a traitor within his inner circle. All three stories eventually come together by the time the plot is resolved 24 hours down the line. Palmer survives, but his marriage doesn’t. Neither does Teri Bauer, who dies at the hands of the CTU traitor, Nina Meyers, leaving Jack and Kim to try to pick up the pieces of their lives together. 24 was heralded by critics and quickly established a loyal following, quite impressive considering that the show was airing on the ratings-challenged Fox network. The show was picked up for a second season and when it returned in the fall, Jack was still with the CIA but was inactive, still recovering psychologically from the events of season one. Kim, too, was attempting to get on with her life, although she and her father had grown somewhat estranged. Jack was recalled to duty after an explosion ripped through CTU headquarters and a terrorist outfit then threatened to eradicate Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb within—you guessed it—the next 24 hours. Nina showed up eventually; even Sherry Palmer returned to befuddle her husband. A nuclear device was discovered mid-season, but the bomb squad was unable to disarm it. So Jack and George Mason (by then George had been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation and was slowly dying) flew the device out over the desert; Jack parachuted to safety but George remained in the plane and died in the massive explosion. Jack eventually avenged his death by hunting down the leader of the terrorist cell. Poor Jack, his days just kept getting worse as each proceeding season brought a new threat. In an effort to boost ratings during the series fourth season, Fox held the program back until mid-season, premiering it in January instead of the traditional November rollout. This way, all 24 episodes could

210

Crime Television

air without the need for preemptions in order to stretch the season out until May. (Fox never did air any reruns of the series, which would have confused fans even further.) That fourth season, considered by many to be the show’s best, began with a terrorist group kidnapping the U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Heller (William Devane), where upon fired agent Jack Bauer is once again lured back to his old job. An almost entirely new cast was in place that year, and the plotting of the story arcs were much less frantic than in seasons past. Of course the extreme violence that had been present since day one was still in force. The changes worked, and the fourth season garnered 24 its best ratings ever, prompting Fox to renew the series through 2007, and leading to numerous attempts by other producers to come up with new ways of fiddling with the structure of their series. Fox may have been a fourth major network, but as TV moved into the new millennium, it seemed more cable channels were getting into the game. It should come as no surprise, then, that three of the most popular crime series of the 2000s came from sources other than the four established networks. Indeed, 2002 proved to be a banner year for off-network programming. Ever since Steven Bochco first introduced Hill Street Blues to viewers in 1981, television producers have worked to bring a heightened sense of realism to both their characters and scripts. Over the years, there have been many lines drawn in the sand concerning content and what was deemed acceptable on prime-time network television. Producers like Bochco fought many battles with network censors, who in turn feared being fined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should viewers at home be offended. The filmmakers often won, as was the case with Bochco’s N.Y.P.D. Blue, which faced the wrath of advocacy groups when it first premiered because of brief glimpses of nudity and bad language. Although Bochco walked away a winner from that fight, in 1996 he lost a much publicized battle over his half-hour comedy Public Morals, a show that revolved around a New York City vice squad. Filled with crude language and suggestive behavior, it attracted controversy from the moment it was added to the CBS schedule. It premiered on October 30 and was never seen again; CBS canceled the show after a single telecast, opting to shelve the 12 remaining episodes rather than risk further public scrutiny. Although the face of network television has changed considerably since the early 1980s, the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the new CW) still face considerable constraints. “Cable channels,” those that are usually carried by cable companies on their upper tiers for an additional charge, including MTV, Lifetime, Comedy Central, Bravo, and E!, do not broadcast over the airwaves but are transmitted strictly by private cables

Crime Television—The 2000s

211

and are therefore not subjected to FCC regulations. Still, although they do not have to legally abide by those rules, they also don’t want to break them so blatantly that they’d force the hand of conservative Congresspeople and Senators to change the law. In recent years these networks, which fall in between the broadcast channels and pay cable subscription services such as HBO and Showtime, have become a breeding ground for increasingly innovative original programming. Consequently, many noteworthy crime dramas in recent years have premiered off-network. One such series came courtesy of the FX cable channel, begun by Fox Television in 1994 and made available to some 80 million homes in the United States. On March 12, 2002, FX premiered the gritty crime drama The Shield. The series was set in the rough Farmington District of Los Angeles (“The Farm”), an area one character quickly established as a crime infested “war zone.” The police worked out of a converted church dubbed “The Barn.” The lead characters are Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his brutal antigang strike team, all of whom operate with as little regard for the law as the criminals they’re trying to take down. They regularly beat their suspects first into submission, and then, if they still haven’t learned their lessons, into providing confessions. Mackey’s tactics aren’t necessarily covert—almost everyone at the precinct knows how he and his men work— but knowing the odds they’re up against, choose to look the other way. That is, except for David Aceveda (Benito Martinez), the newly appointed police captain who despises Mackey and his methods. Aceveda wants to shut down the strike force but finds his options limited: he knows he was appointed merely to add some diversity to the department and continues to struggle with the fact that he has little actual power to act. Mackey also continues to be protected by Assistant Chief Ben Gilroy (John Diehl), an old friend who is involved in some shady dealings of his own. Not that Aceveda is by any means on the straight-and-narrow himself: he is politically aggressive and hopes cleaning up the Farm will pave his way to becoming mayor. He may hate Mackey, but has no trouble using him to further his own goals. The series pilot serves to establish their relationship. Unable to get at Mackey directly because of Gilroy’s interference, Aceveda turns to the Justice Department to plant a spy within the strike force, Det. Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond), to gather evidence of Mackey’s illegal activities. On another front, an eight-year-old girl has ended up in the hands of a child molester (Jim Ortlieb). When efforts to interrogate him fail, Aceveda actually brings in Mackey, turning him loose on the man and looking the other way, in order to find the girl. In the final act, the strike teams breaks into a drug

212

Crime Television

house and kills the dealer. Then, in a shocking turn, Mackey takes the dead man’s gun, turns, and kills Crowley, having realized all along that he was a plant. A total of 4.8 million people tuned into the pilot, a huge number for a channel like FX. Other cast members include Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), a loose cannon identified by Aceveda as the weak link in Mackey’s team, and the member most likely to turn on him if enough pressure is applied; and Curtis “Lemonhead” Lemanky (Kenneth Johnson), mean and muscular. Det. Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder) simply tries to do her job and stay out of everyone else’s business, while her intellectual partner Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach (Jay Karnes), who is actually an effective interrogator, continues to be the butt of jokes from the rest of the precinct for wearing suits to work everyday and doing things strictly by-the-book. Officer Danielle Sofer (Catherine Dent) is a street cop who slowly comes around to Aceveda’s way of thinking. Her partner Julien Lowe (Michael Jace) tries to keep his homosexuality from the rest of the precinct. In a shocking scene during the first season, he receives oral sex from another man, something the censors would never have approved on basic cable. Lowe later went through “sexual reorientation therapy” through his church and began living as a heterosexual, even marrying. Other characters have continued to come and go as Mackey has faced a number of challenges in keeping his illegal ventures operating and profitable. During the second year (2003), the strike team identified a train the mob was using to move large sums of money and managed to rob it. The mob then retaliated the next season (2004) by going after Mackey and his men. The fourth season (2005) saw a new street gang called “The OneNiners” move in and attempted to take over Farmington. As the amount of danger increased, Mackey’s wife Corrine (Cathy Cahlin Ryan) took their three children, two of them autistic, and moved out. Aceveda was forced at gunpoint to perform oral sex on a gang member during the third year and never recovered emotionally. He left the Barn in 2005 and took a seat on the city council. Captain Monica Rawling (Glenn Close), who planned to clean up Farmington and rehabilitate Mackey in the process, filled his position at the precinct. Her efforts, of course, failed miserably. The series, a risky and expensive venture for a cable network like FX, was a tremendous success, popular with both critics and viewers. Star Michael Chiklis, who was previously best recognized for the rather benign ABC police drama The Commish, won kudos for his performance as Det. Vic Mackey, including 2002 Emmy and Television Critics Association awards for Best Actor, as well as a 2003 Golden Globe in the same category.

Crime Television—The 2000s

213

Many have chosen to hail The Shield, but some have condemned it as being morally reprehensible. They argue that viewers cannot help but become desensitized by witnessing violence being perpetrated so often and so casually, particularly by characters who, despite their actions, are presented as the protagonists, the ones you’re expected to root for. While these policemen go around murdering people, or setting them up to be murdered, beating confessions out of suspects, and participating in other illegal and immoral acts, viewers are supposedly expected to know better and to see them for what they really are. But many feel that those tuning in, especially younger people, fail to come to this conclusion and instead begin to accept this type of street violence as a justifiable means to an end. The question at hand seems to be: Are these characters the good guys or the bad guys, and shouldn’t we be able to tell the difference? Even though the argument continues, the controversy has failed to impede the development of similarly minded crime dramas. Some networks, however, have chosen to temper their programs and move in a tamer direction. Just months after the premiere of The Shield, one such series would make its debut. Its development process had actually begun years earlier, though. In the fall of 2000, former Seinfeld actor Michael Richards starred in his own solo effort, The Michael Richards Show. The half-hour comedy featured Richards as Vic Nardozza, a bumbling private detective who worked for a small agency, McKay Investigative Services. Vic always seemed to solve the case, but he did so through sheer luck, as his reasoning skills left much to be desired. So did this rather lame sitcom, which NBC axed after only eight episodes. Many chalked the failure up to the “Seinfeld Curse,” which seemed to plague Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander (Bob Patterson) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Watching Ellie) as well in their attempts to headline solo efforts. Richards’s fortunes could have taken a different turn, however. Richards was originally attached to star in an ABC hour-long mysterycomedy about a San Francisco police detective, Adrian Monk, who goes over the edge after his wife, Trudy, is killed by a car bomb. As a result of the incident Monk becomes overwhelmed by the obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that he has suffered from since childhood. He becomes preoccupied with germs, crowds, clutter, disorganization, and heights—the list goes on and on. Monk is suspended from the force until a psychiatrist deems him fit to return to active duty. He is permitted, however, to continue to act as a consultant on certain cases. It seems even before the loss of his wife, Monk was legendary for his deduction skills. Monk was very much a modern-day Columbo on meds. Richards decided against playing the role, and walked

214

Crime Television

away from the project. When he did, ABC also backed out. Fortunately, Monk found a new home off-network on the USA cable network with actor Tony Shalhoub (TV’s Wings, Men in Black) in the title role. The series premiered with a two-hour movie, “Mr. Monk and the Candidate,” on July 12, 2002, in which Monk tries to draw a parallel between two separate cases—the murder of a young woman and the attempted assassination of a mayoral candidate. Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) is Monk’s former superior on the police force who calls on Monk whenever he encounters a difficult case. Lt. Randall Disher (Jason GrayStanford) is Stottlemeyer’s young assistant, who is eager to impress his boss and is more than a little jealous of Monk. Dr. Kroger (Stanley Kamel) is Monk’s psychiatrist, who is trying to help Monk move through the grieving process over the death of his wife. Ironically, her death is the one case Monk hasn’t been able to solve, although he continues to slowly piece together clues. The person perhaps closest to Monk since Trudy’s death is Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), who was originally hired to act as Monk’s nurse but spends most of her time assisting him on murder investigations. Benjy (Max Morrow) is her young son. When Monk first premiered, it could have best been described as a crime drama laced with a healthy dose of humor. The series was an immediate hit thanks to the playful banter between the characters and the hilarious antics of a detective consumed with mental trepidations brought on by his OCD. The show proved so popular that ABC actually purchased the rights to rerun the series in prime time after the episodes aired on USA. But over time, the primary focus of the stories changed. Less emphasis was placed on the crimes and more on the comedy. This became a sore spot with many viewers. Monk had developed a “cult” following—a subset of very loyal and extremely vocal fans. This same group protested earlier in the series, for instance, when the show’s original theme song (by Jeff Beal) was replaced by a new number written and performed by composer Randy Newman. They stirred up such a fuss that producers eventually addressed their concerns in an episode subtitled “Mr. Monk and the TV-Star” (1/30/2004), in which Monk suspects the star of a fictional television series, Crime Lab S.F., of murdering his wife because her lavish spending habits are bankrupting him. In a subplot, there is an ongoing debate about changing the fictitious show’s theme song. Likewise, when the stories began to get a bit too outrageous, Monk loyalists again voiced their dissatisfaction. In “Mr. Monk and the Panic Room” (6/25/2004), a music producer is found shot to death while sequestered inside his panic room, locked from the inside. The only possible suspect, it

Crime Television—The 2000s

215

seems, is the man’s pet chimpanzee, Darwin. Believing him to be innocent, Sharona breaks Darwin out of police custody and convinces Monk to hide him. The entire episode seems like nothing more than an excuse to get the phobia-stricken Monk in the same room with an out-of-control chimp. To their credit, the producers again showed enough interest in what their viewers were saying to begin developing more substantial mysteries. One interesting segment from the first season was subtitled “Mr. Monk and the Psychic” (7/19/2002). The interesting premise had former police commissioner Harry Ashcombe (John Bourgeois) arranging for the fatal road accident of his wife Kate (Kate Trotter) in order to collect on her insurance. But when a landslide brought on by heavy rains buries her car before the accident is discovered, Ashcombe is in a dilemma. If he leads anyone to the accident scene, they’ll know he was involved. If he doesn’t, the body will go undiscovered. If that happens, it’ll take seven years for Ashcombe to have Kate declared dead and collect on her insurance. So he decides to bring in an unwitting psychic, Dolly Flint (Linda Kash), to lead authorities to his late wife. Midway through the series’s third season, Bitty Schram left the show for reasons that were never made totally clear to the public. It was explained that Sharona had remarried her ex-husband, and she and Benjy had moved back to New Jersey with him. Monk reluctantly agreed to hire a new assistant, attractive Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), a former bartender with an 11-year-old daughter, Julie (Emmy Clarke). It took awhile for Monk to begin trusting someone new, but he and Natalie slowly became friends. Actor John Turturro began appearing occasionally as Monk’s brother Ambrose, who suffers from agoraphobia and has rarely left his and Monk’s childhood home in the past 30 years. (He writes technical manuals from home for a living.) In the fall of 2002, NBC came out with its own timeline-skewered crime series, very much in the vein of 24. Boomtown, premiering on September 29, was set in Los Angeles and featured a large ensemble cast of characters whose jobs revolved around crime in the city—investigating it, reporting it, dealing with the victims, and prosecuting the offenders. Although there were seven characters, none could actually be called the lead. During the course of each episode, each one got his or her chance to be the star, thanks to Boomtown’s rather unique approach to telling its story. Each tale began with an event—a murder, arrest, or some type of revelation—that would require the involvement of the entire cast. The rest of the episode would then be presented from the unique viewpoints of each character. The same scene would often play out several times, but through the eyes of a different

216

Crime Television

player. Other times, we would get a look at events leading up to the actual crime as seen from the viewpoint of the suspect. It was an interesting idea enhanced by superior writing and top-notch performances by the cast. Graham Yost, whose writing credits include the big-screen feature Speed and the acclaimed HBO mini-series Band of Brothers, created Boomtown. His idea was to do away with traditional linear storytelling. This was accomplished by using several techniques. Sometimes, a simple two-way conversation would turn up twice in the same episode, in different acts, featured from different camera angles. Whereas the first time, the focus might have been on one character, it would be recycled later from another angle, capturing the other individual. The trick was to add an entirely new meaning to the same conversation when viewed through the eyes of a second character. Other times, when partners would separate in pursuit of fleeing suspects, the camera might track just one side of the chase; the other would then be presented later in a different context, in an effort to extrapolate that character’s storyline. In the end, all points of view would (it was hoped) merge together in a resolution designed to tie up all plot lines. The characters included police detective Joel Stevens (Donnie Wahlberg), who was still recovering emotionally from the death of a child, and his partner Det. “Fearless” Bobby Smith (Mykelti Williamson), who’d narrowly escaped death in Operation Desert Storm and now carries a list of things he hopes to experience in life. Then there are uniformed officers Tom Turcotte (Jason Gedrick), who is afraid he’s not living up to the image of his father, a veteran of the force, and his wisecracking partner Ray Hechler (Gary Basaraba). Also on the front lines is medic Teresa Ortiz (Lana Parrilla), who is good at her job but has trouble dealing with the suffering she witnesses. David McNorris (Neal McDonough) is the politically ambitious deputy district attorney, and Andrea Little (Nina Garbiras) the equally outspoken journalist with whom David is having a discreet extramarital affair. NBC had high hopes that Boomtown’s multilayered style of storytelling would capture the attention of viewers. The series was scheduled on Sunday nights at 10:00 P.M., a tough night to program, where ABC had managed to gain a foothold with the David E. Kelley legal drama The Practice. NBC would probably have been happy simply overtaking the CBS Sunday Movie for a comfortable second. Unfortunately, the series never seemed to capture the imaginations of a large audience. When the season ended, NBC faced a difficult decision as to Boomtown’s fate. Although ratings had remained low, the program did win two Television Critics Awards that season, for Outstanding Achievement in Drama and Outstanding New Program of the Year. Thanks

Crime Television—The 2000s

217

in large measure to its critical success, NBC renewed the series for a second season. When the series returned in the fall of 2003, however, still slated in the same Sunday night timeslot, ratings were anemic, and the network pulled Boomtown after only two new episodes had been broadcast. Fans protested, but NBC’s decision was final. They did offer a bit of consolation by airing four additional episodes that had been completed but not yet aired. They dedicated their entire prime-time block the evening of Saturday, December 27, 2003, to three hours of Boomtown. The final segment aired the next night, December 28, after which the show was laid to rest with a total of 24 episodes. With CSI: Miami successfully having taken flight, Jerry Bruckheimer decided to branch out by simultaneously launching another hour-long police procedural, Without a Trace, on CBS in the fall of 2002. The series, which debuted on September 26, 2002, is set in New York City and deals with the FBI’s busy Missing Persons Unit. As each episode opens, viewers are introduced to another man, woman, or child who by the end of the show’s teaser has “gone missing.” The clock then begins to tick. With each passing hour, the chances of locating the missing individual alive and well become less likely. Heading up the team is Senior Agent Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia), a grizzled, middle-age veteran of the force. Jack is very good at his job, but the horrible situations he’d been witness to over the years have begun to catch up with him, causing Jack to grow cynical and sometimes belligerent. He’s also having problems at home because his job prevents him from spending time with his wife Maria (Talia Balsam) and young daughters Hanna and Kate (Vanessa and Laura Marano). Other members of the team are dedicated, no-nonsense Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), sexy young blonde Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), intense Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano), and laid-back rookie Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close). Members of the team don’t always see eye to eye about either their work or life in general, but like most police units dramatized on television, when the chips are down they put their differences aside and work in the best interest of the victim. The group is usually on-the-scene within hours of a person’s suspicious disappearance and then proceeds to gather physical evidence and interview family, friends, co-workers, even enemies of the missing individual in hopes of picking up their trail. As they do so, flashbacks are often used to recount how the subject spent their last few hours before vanishing. It’s also hoped that clues will reveal why a person had disappeared—whether they have wandered off, run away, or been

218

Crime Television

abducted. Of course, sometimes Jack and his people encounter extenuating circumstances, such as when people don’t want to be found, or when they’re running for good reason. Watching Jack and his team work is one of the big draws of the series. The agents use advanced psychological tactics to narrow down their search parameters. By interviewing the people closest to those who have gone missing, the investigators slowly peel back the subject’s lives layer by layer, often uncovering deeply kept and troubling secrets. Sometimes to recover a lost family member, the agents must stir up painful memories, or create new ones. If the absent party is recovered unharmed (which isn’t always the case), the family sometimes find themselves facing some tough issues. In one episode subtitled “Wannabe” (2/12/2004), a 12-year-old boy named Eric Miller (Jake Thomas) disappears and his parents fear the worst. When the team interviews his classmates and guidance counselor, they learn the boy was being harassed at school. Later, it’s discovered that a cute girl that Eric had a crush on tricked him into posing for a photo in an embarrassing position, then circulated the picture to other students. In “Revelations” (10/2/2003), the investigators search for a priest (Hector Elizando) who, dying from a liver ailment, disappears from his church shortly after a donor becomes available. As the team rushes to locate the man before time runs out, it begins to appear that he hasn’t been abducted but may rather be in hiding. To prevent the show from becoming too formulaic, the producers began to veer more into the personal lives of the regular characters. During the second season, Jack’s wife Maria filed for divorce and decided to move to Chicago with her and Jack’s daughters. Desperate not to be separated from his girls, Jack decided to hand in his resignation and follow them. Vivian was then given command of the unit, a position she had secretly coveted. At the last moment, Jack changed his mind and the agency elected to give him his old job back. Vivian tried to put up a good front, but she was devastated. Soon afterwards, she faced a health crisis and was forced to undergo heart surgery. During the third season, Samantha and Martin began having an affair that they tried to keep hidden, but their co-workers eventually became suspicious and concluded that something was going on between the two. In the third season finale, subtitled “End Game” (5/19/2005), Martin and Danny were ambushed while transporting a prisoner and nearly killed. Then early in the fourth season, Jack learned that his father Frank (Martin Landau) was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and, after reconciliation, had to deal with his passing (in “When Darkness Falls,” 12/8/2005). Who says police procedurals don’t contain any personal drama?

Crime Television—The 2000s

219

Thanks to having Jerry Bruckheimer as its executive producer, Without a Trace had the good fortune to land one of the most envious timeslots on prime-time TV: Thursday nights at 10:00 P.M., benefiting from C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation as its lead-in. The shows complemented one another nicely (the primary difference being that Without a Trace featured a great deal less blood and gore). Naturally, the series quickly became a mainstay in the Nielsen top-20, giving NBC’s long running hit E.R. its first real competition in years. The episodes all contained public service announcements at the end showcasing real-life missing persons and asking anyone with information to call a hotline. Bruckheimer and company were churning out hit TV shows like they were new cars on an assembly line by the time they introduced Cold Case in the fall of 2003. As a measure of faith, CBS scheduled the program on Sunday evenings at 8:00 P.M. (EST), the timeslot previously occupied by Murder, She Wrote and Touched by an Angel, a big viewing night for families. Cold Case does indeed have an interesting premise and is equally well executed. The series centers on Philadelphia homicide detective Lillian Rush (Kathryn Morris) who for years worked solving murders for the department. One of Lilly’s cases turned out to be a “cold case,” a murder that occurred many years ago and went unsolved until Lilly managed to piece together the clues. Her accomplishment was written up in the local paper, and Lilly suddenly found she was being approached regularly by people who had lost loved ones in the past only to see the investigations into their murders lead nowhere. Soon, Lilly found herself in charge of reopening these old cases. “People shouldn’t be forgotten,” Lilly would say. “They matter. They should get justice, too.” Cold Case, like Bruckheimer’s other projects, adhered to a rigid structure. Each episode would open at some point in the past where viewers would be introduced to the unfortunate victim of that week’s tale. The individual’s actual demise would never be seen on screen, leaving the precise circumstances into their death a mystery. Was it murder, suicide, an accident? If there was a killer, what was their motive? Unfortunately the original investigators could answer none of these questions, and the case files, along with any evidence, ended up being tossed into a cardboard box and shipped off to long-term storage in the department’s warehouse. The crime and the victim would end up sadly forgotten by all but a select few. That’s where Lilly usually comes into the picture. Years, sometimes decades later, a family member or close friends of the deceased would approach her after having stumbled onto some key piece of information that they feel warrants reopening the investigation. Lilly would then head down

220

Crime Television

into the depths of the department’s storage lockers and dust off the evidence for review. If warranted, she would then begin to actively pursue new leads in an effort to finally close the case. This often involved stirring up bad memories from the victim’s survivors, many of whom had spent years trying to forget the very thoughts Lilly was now asking them to recall. These recollections were usually presented as flashbacks (with a set of younger, similar looking actors standing in for the characters in their youth). Although fictionalized by the series’s scriptwriters, many of the stories presented on Cold Case were actually inspired by true-life ordeals, both past and present. The pilot episode, subtitled “Look Again” (9/28/2003), has Lilly’s services being sought out by Bonita Jakarta (Lillian Hurst), a woman who claims she witnessed a murder 27 years earlier. In response, Lilly pulls a case file for the 1976 homicide of a teenage girl, Jill Shelby (Kate Mara), who was beaten to death on the tennis court of a lavish estate where she was attending a party thrown by two brothers. Both of the boys were originally considered suspects, but got off the hook because of the influence of their wealthy parents. Bonita, the family’s former maid, now dying of cancer, is finally ready to step forward and tell what she knows. The storyline for this episode was inspired by the real-life 1975 murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in the plush community of Greenwich, Connecticut. On June 7, 2002, Michael Skakel, one of two brothers considered long-time suspects, was found guilty of first-degree murder, 27 years after Moxley’s bludgeoned body was first discovered. Skakel had committed the crime at the age of 15 and was finally convicted at age 42. The Moxley murder not only provided material for this episode but also most likely inspired the series’s overall creation. (The producers of a Canadian-based reality series titled Cold Case Files felt differently, however, claiming their program may have helped cultivate the CBS drama.) Of all the series’s characters, Lilly remains the most fully developed. In the episode “Fly Away” (11/30/2003), a woman (Laura Regan) awakens after two years in a coma caused by a two-story fall that also killed her six-year-old daughter (Aynsley Lemon). The two were destitute and living on welfare, which brought back troubling recollections for Lilly, who grew up in similar circumstances. (We also learn later that Lilly takes in stray cats, some with physical handicaps.) Lilly is not alone in her quests. She receives emotional support from her superior, Lt. John Stillman (John Finn), with whom she has the occasional run-in but can still count on in times of need. Det. Chris Lassing (Justin Chambers) was Lilly’s original partner. (Chambers departed the series after four episodes.) Later that fall, she teamed with no-nonsense Det. Scotty Valens (Danny Pino). Det. Will

Crime Television—The 2000s

221

Jeffries (Thom Barry) was a longtime veteran of the force who actually recalled, and even worked on, some of the cases Lilly chose to rethink. Det. Nick Vera (Jeremy Ratchford) is an opinionated, tough cop who provides a little verbal and physical muscle when necessary. Sentimentality was one of the tools used by the writers in appealing to viewers, with stories written around painful experiences of youth that tend to haunt people through their lives, although in these circumstances the situations got out of control and often led to murder. The flashback sequences rely heavily on period music to set the tone of each decade and story. One unusual episode, subtitled “8 Years” (1/8/2006), told the story of four high school friends who, although close, ended up going their own separate ways after graduation, only to have one end up murdered in 1988. A present-day tip leads Lilly to reexamine the lives of all four individuals in search of a possible motive. Series creator and lead writer Meredith Stiehm personally chose nine Bruce Springsteen songs that were first released between 1980 and 1988 and strung them together to create the storyline for this episode. Although Springsteen usually does not allow his music to be used in episodic television, Stiehm successfully won him over and acquired his okay. Similar episodes had been done in the past using the music of Johnny Cash and John Mellencamp. Each episode of Cold Case ends in a similar fashion. After resolving the case, Lilly and her team arrest the culprit after years of evading justice. Each arrest is presented in slow motion, with an accompanying song that relates the theme of that week’s story. As the murderer is led away in handcuffs, we see both versions of the character: the youthful offender and the often guilt-ridden adult they became. Also present, watching from the sidelines, is the victim, abstractly visible only to Lilly. The case file and evidence is then once again boxed up and returned to deep storage, now marked “Case Closed.” Jerry Bruckheimer wasn’t the only feature film veteran to move into television production in the 1990s. Among the others were brothers Tony and Ridley Scott, who are both highly prolific and successful motion picture directors (Tony’s credits include Top Gun and Ridley had directed Alien and Gladiator). Under their Scott Free Production banner, the two executive producers helped usher an unlikely hero to the small screen. When Numb3rs first premiered as a mid-season replacement on January 23, 2005, it seemed to have little chance of finding long-term success, at least on CBS. At first glance, it appeared the show might fare better on PBS. Although Numb3rs is a crime drama, its leads don’t use high-tech gadgets or computer systems to track outlaws. Instead, their weapon of choice is

222

Crime Television

numbers. Don Eppes (Northern Exposure’s Rob Morrow) is an FBI agent working out of the bureau’s Los Angeles field office, where he is assigned some of southern California’s most bizarre and violent crimes. In the course of his investigations, Don often turns to his younger brother Charlie (David Krumholtz) for help on his cases. Charlie is a former child numbers prodigy who is now a brilliant mathematician teaching applied mathematics at Cal Sci, a nearby university. Charlie believes that numbers apply to every aspect of our lives, and, by using mathematics, he can predict patterns in criminal behavior. Don was initially a skeptic, but was eventually won over by his brother’s abilities. But the program is much more than simply a glorified math lesson. What really makes this show work is that it has a lot of heart. A key ingredient to the show’s creative success is that it’s a strong family drama as well. Both Don (in his late thirties) and Charlie (in his mid-twenties) live at home with their retired father, Alan (Judd Hirsch). It’s the great chemistry between these three characters (and the actors who portray them) that lifts Numb3rs above the typical crime series, and prevents it from being classified as merely a police procedural. Alan has mixed feelings about seeing his son’s work together. As children, the boys were fierce rivals. Don was popular with the girls and a great athlete (he nearly became a pro baseball player) while Charlie was the young genius. To see them getting along as adults is very satisfying for their father. At the same time, Alan was already concerned enough about Don working in such a hazardous line of work—and now he sees Charlie in the same circumstances. The brothers spend a lot of time worrying about their dad, too. Their mom had died of cancer a year earlier; Don had given up his job as supervisor of the FBI office in Albuquerque and moved back in with his dad to help care for her during her illness. Charlie was there, too, but locked himself in the garage for three months and distracted himself by working on “P versus NP,” which many consider to be an unsolvable mathematics problem. Don was always the one to get openly involved, whereas Charlie has tried since childhood to avoid emotional confrontations. Alan doesn’t want to be a burden to either, but he’s glad they’re around all the same. At work, Don’s team included his partner Terry Lake (Sabrina Lloyd), new FBI recruit David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard), and agent Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno). Don and Terry used to date years earlier, and there were still some signs they cared for each other. The relationship never had a chance to go anywhere, however, and Lloyd left the show after the first season of 13 episodes. When Numb3rs returned for its second season in the fall of 2005, Diane Farr had been added to the cast as Agent Megan Reeves. Megan had

Crime Television—The 2000s

223

previously worked with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit before joining Don’s group as a profiler. Charlie’s friends at the university include Dr. Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol), a highly intelligent yet somewhat eccentric physicist (he only eats food that is white), and Amita Ramanujan (Navi Rawat), who is working on her second doctoral degree (Charlie was her thesis advisor the first time around). Amita seems to have romantic feelings for Charlie that have so far gone unrequited. Scheduled Friday nights at 10:00 P.M., Numb3rs struggled through its first season with marginal ratings. It began to attract more viewers during summer reruns and, by the fall of 2005, was regularly placing in the top-20. The producers do an excellent job of mixing action and logic to reach a satisfying conclusion. Charlie and his intellectual colleagues take the evidence gathered in each case and drop them into computer models generated specifically for the occasion. Once the results are calculated, the FBI then moves in and makes the arrest. Don does feel protective of his little brother and initially tried to keep him out of the field as much as possible. But Charlie insisted on taking a more active role in the investigations, which sometimes came back to bite him. In the episode “In Plain Sight” (11/18/2005), Charlie insists on tagging along with Megan while she leads an assault on a “meth” house. The home ends up being wired with explosives, however, and a shocked Charlie watches in horror as the squad is caught in a fiery ambush. Afterwards, Charlie is left shaken by his sudden reality check, and Diane is guilt-ridden over the deaths of members of her team. In “Calculated Risk” (10/14/2005), an executive at an energy company, Lucinda Shay (Grace Phillips), is murdered, leaving her young son Daniel (Josh Eriksson) an orphan. It turns out Lucinda was about to testify against her fellow executives, which could have brought down the company and put thousands out of work. With all those possible suspects, Charlie is asked to step in and create an equation to narrow down the number of possible killers. Meanwhile, Don enlists Alan’s help in caring for Daniel until the investigation is complete. Episodes usually ended back at home with the three Eppes men trying to make sense of the violence they encountered on the job. Then they’d all sit down to supper together and become just another family again. Although the university where Charlie works is referred to as Cal Sci, it’s obviously based on Cal Tech. Several mathematicians from Cal Tech actually serve as technical advisors to the series, while the scripts are based on real stories taken from FBI files. The same month that Numb3rs took up residence at CBS, NBC took a chance on perhaps one of the decades more bizarre premises. Medium is

224

Crime Television

a difficult show to categorize—it’s a crime series, a supernatural thriller, and a domestic drama all rolled into one. It’s little surprise then that it comes from executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron, who is known for intertwining genres. In the 1980s, he created ABC’s Moonlighting, which was part romantic comedy and part detective drama. Then in 1999, he developed CBS’s hybrid superhero series Now & Again, about a middle-age, overweight insurance salesman who dreams of a more exciting life, and then gets it—postmortem. Medium is based on the real life of psychic Allison DuBois, a woman who wears many hats. Besides communicating with the dead, she is a wife, mother to three young daughters, an author, and a law student who works part-time for the Phoenix district attorney’s office. Her psychic abilities seem to play a part—for better or worse—in each aspect of her life. Upon its premiere on January 3, 2005, Medium became an immediate hit. The series was scheduled on Monday nights at 10:00 P.M., against both ABC’s Monday Night Football and CBS’s CSI: Miami, both of which scored regularly in the Nielsen top-20. Medium managed to do more than simply hold its own; it often finished in the top-20 as well. NBC was so impressed that within a couple of months of its debut, the network ordered additional episodes for the spring of 2005, and renewed the series for a full 22-episode second season. In an era where police procedurals are the rage and in which science is the most powerful tool in solving crimes, basing a series on the life of someone who relies on the more spiritual aspects of the universe seems like a long shot. But Caron was eventually convinced to take a crack at it. “I was living in New York and was under contract to Paramount Television,” he recalls, “and I got a call one day from Gary Hart, who at that time was the president of Paramount Television. He asked, ‘Do you believe in psychics and all that sort of thing?’ I said ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Now I know him to be a pretty down-to-earth guy, so I said ‘Why do you ask?’ I couldn’t figure out where he was coming from. He replied, ‘Well, I’ve met the most extraordinary woman.’ And he proceeds to tell me this story that he and Kelsey Grammer, a year earlier, were trying to do a talk show pilot called The Oracles, and the premise of the pilot was that five oracles—an astrologer, a fortune teller, a numerologist, and so on—would sit on a stage and they would call up people from the audience and give them readings. In trying to cast these five oracles, they basically put out a casting call with the help of a professor at the University of Arizona. At one point there were 300 of these psychics, and from that pool they found their five.”

Crime Television—The 2000s

225

Among the five was Allison DuBois, who didn’t seem to fit the profile at all. “At the time I guess she was in her late twenties, was a law student, and was married to an aerospace engineer; she was young and attractive. When we think of psychics, we tend to think of marginalized people, overweight women with those 800 numbers on late-night TV. But she was very hip and in the moment. Gary was very intrigued by this, and he said, ‘Would you like to meet this woman?’ I was also very intrigued by it, because I thought…She’s married to whom? She does what? She’s an intern for the district attorney in Arizona?’ It didn’t make sense to me.” Hart arranged a meeting between the two. Caron flew to Los Angeles from New York and DuBois caught a flight from Phoenix. They met in L.A. and had lunch together to get acquainted and for Caron to decide whether he could turn her life into a TV series. He began by asking DuBois about her first psychic experience, which she did, “an experience when she was about six years old following the death of her grandfather,” remembers Caron. “Then I said, Tell me about your second experience, about your third, your fourth, and so on, and she told me these stories with such vigor. And when she got to her early teens, to puberty, she told me how when she was about 14, she discovered that if she drank, she could keep the voices down. She could dim the ghosts. And I thought that was such an odd, naked, interesting thing to say. At that point, I still wasn’t even sure that I believed what I was hearing. But that revelation really took me back, because I thought, Why would someone admit this? Why would someone make that up, it’s not self-aggrandizing? In fact, it’s just the opposite. Then she started telling me about meeting her husband, and I’m thinking, This guy is a scientist; his religion is the facts of the physical world, and you’re telling me that he’s married to a woman who says, ‘Oops, don’t step over there, you’ll run into Uncle Ned, your dead uncle’s in the room.’ This fascinated me. So I went out to Phoenix and spent a day with them, read a manuscript of a book she’d written about herself, and I thought, Well, I’d never seen this before. And on that basis, I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do this.’ That’s really how I got involved.” Caron’s TV version of DuBois’s life wasn’t far from the true thing. Actress Patricia Arquette, who was cast in the lead, bears a remarkable resemblance to the real Allison. She is married to Joe (Jake Weber), an aerospace engineer who has come to accept his wife’s disposition even though it continues to complicate their lives. As in the authentic DuBois home, there are three young daughters: 12-year-old Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva), who’s losing interest in her parents and discovering it in boys; 10-year-old Bridget (Maria Lark), who’s stubborn and outspoken; and infant Maria, who has yet to speak her

226

Crime Television

first scripted line. The two oldest girls have already exhibited signs of sharing their mother’s abilities, such as in “Night of the Wolf” (1/24/2005) in which Bridget makes a new friend (Lily Jackson) at the playground that no one else can see. Once Allison realizes her daughter’s imaginary friend is real, she must help the young child move on to the next world. In “Lucky” (2/21/2005), Allison’s brother Michael (Ryan Hurst), a soldier returning from duty, arrives at the front door and takes up residence on the couch. It soon becomes clear that he has visions of his own, which has led to his alcoholism (which may tie in with the real-life DuBois’s disclosure to Caron at their postseries luncheon). But most of Allison’s encounters with the dead came as a result of her work with Phoenix district attorney Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval), who sometimes seems to expect a little too much from her. Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt) is a police detective with whom Allison sometimes spends time in the field, where they investigate missing persons cases or murders that occurred under mysterious circumstances. Much is made of Allison’s attempts, like any other working mother, to balance her home life and career—regardless of how unusual her line of work may be. Her visions most often come to her in the form of dreams, which Alison must then interpret, although actual deceased individuals can appear to her at any time. Many episodes are based on Allison DuBois’s real-life experiences, although naturally the producers choose to embellish them quite a bit. Explains Caron: “Allison toils in the judicial system, where the wheels grind very slowly, so her actual life does not really supply enough fodder for 22 episodes a year. Naturally, we must do a lot of things that are inspired by her and inspired by her condition but are not literally factual stories. Even so, she’ll often clear her throat and say, ‘I’m uncomfortable with this or that.’ But more often than not she understands the spirit in which the show is done. Initially, I think the network would have preferred if it had hued closer to the model of the procedural, they weren’t much interested in her personal life, in her family. But I wasn’t much interested in making a show that was a procedural. It held no interest for me at all, I was much more interested in the family. I actually thought that’s what the show was about. But once the show premiered, and once they realized that what the public was responding to was that family element of it, the fact that hey, this is a real person, and she has many of the same struggles that I have, and lives in the same world that I live in, and she’s either blessed or shackled with this thing, that’s what sort of set the show apart I think.” Although billed by NBC as a crime drama, Caron as usual strives to toy with the label. One way of doing that is to delve into the negative side of

Crime Television—The 2000s

227

Alison’s so-called gift: “She’s not like a water spigot that you go to and turn on, she’s not a Geiger counter in that sense, she doesn’t really have control over what she sees, you can’t just inject her into a situation and say, ‘Now tell me what’s that person thinking, or what’s the truth of this.’ It doesn’t work that way, and we try to show that, that she doesn’t really get to pick and choose. The visions she sees tend to be thrust upon her, they’re not always particularly clear in their meaning.” Only midway through Medium’s second year, the Lifetime Cable Network signed a contract to pick up eventual reruns of the show at a hefty $1.35 million an episode, the most the channel has every ponied up for a syndication package (let alone for a show that has yet to prove itself in the long run). Like most other programs that become unexpected hits, Medium has inspired a number of imitations, the first of which was CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, with Jennifer Love Hewitt as the co-owner of a book store who since childhood has had the ability to communicate with spirits. The show premiered on September 23, 2005 and like Medium clicked with viewers. Meanwhile, CBS offered up two new series in the fall of 2005 in which the leads couldn’t communicate with the dead, but were able to get into the minds of their suspects. “To catch a criminal, you have to think like one” was the tagline for the network’s Criminal Minds. That scenario can be quite disturbing when your job is tracking down serial killers and satanic cults. But that was the task assigned the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, lead by Special Agent Aaron “Hutch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson). Hutch had quite a talented team of young agents, but realized there was something missing—good old-fashioned intuition. So he went to old friend Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), a former agent who had walked away from his job as the FBI’s top behavioral analyst after the darker aspects of his cases began to overwhelm him. Hutch explained to Gideon how much his skills were needed and convinced him to return to the unit. Patinkin plays Gideon as the weathered veteran who has seen it all. Educated and well read, Gideon often recites famous quotes when referencing crime scenarios—bits of wisdom borrowed from the likes of Faulkner, even Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the world …” Thus the difference between Criminal Minds and programs like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation—Gideon is less interested in following the evidence than he is in the possible motivation of the killer. The rest of the BAU team consists of agent Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), whose specialty is identifying obsessive behavior; agent Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), who deals with sexual

228

Crime Television

obsession; and Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), a young statistics expert with a genius level IQ. Jennifer “J. J.” Jareau (A. J. Cook) is the unit’s liaison officer, who sorts through requests from local authorities across the country requesting the BAU’s help. Also joining up mid-season was Penelope Garcia (Kristen Vangsness), a computer wizard who at first was a bit leery about joining the other agents in the field. The group is stationed at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, but has a private jet at its disposal to whisk the team anywhere its services might be required. Criminal Minds premiered on September 22, 2005 and was scheduled on Wednesday nights at 9:00 P.M., one of television’s toughest time slots. Airing opposite ABC’s mega-hit survival drama Lost, many figured Criminal Minds would have a tough time of it. The show surprised everyone by scoring strong numbers right out of the gate, ranking number two in its timeslot. The show soon earned a full-season pickup and joined CBS’s stable of groundbreaking crime dramas. An even greater show of support from the network is that CBS felt comfortable using Criminal Minds as a lead-in for CSI: New York at 10:00 P.M. Once on the scene of a grizzly homicide, Gideon and the others each work the area using their own unique talents to try to pick up on the inner demons that made the “unsub” (unknown subject) kill. From there they work up a profile of the murderer and then begin trying to apply it to someone close to the crime. Although the physical evidence does come into play, Criminal Minds is primarily a character-driven vehicle, involving both the psyche of the agents and their prey. Gideon tends to act paternally toward the younger members of the team. When Reid reveals in one episode that he has begun to experience vivid nightmares about the cases he has worked, Gideon explains to him that he’s not alone, that they’ve all gone through the same thing as part of their adjustment to the job. Reid also has a somewhat brotherly relationship with Morgan, who is trying to get the rather geeky Reid to lighten up, to stop going strictly by the book, and to get a life (realizing, of course, that having a solid foundation away from the work is a necessary part of keeping your head on straight). Reid eventually takes his advice and accompanies J. J. on a date to a Washington Redskins game. The series success was due to the strong performances of the cast, particularly Patinkin, and generally strong scripts by the writers. An example would be the episode subtitled “Riding the Lightning” (1/25/2006), in which the BAU unit arrives at a prison shortly before two death row inmates, husband-and-wife serial killers Jacob (Michael Massee) and Sarah Jean Dawes (Jeannetta Amette) are to be put to death. The goal of the team is to get the two killers to provide information on the whereabouts of several of

Crime Television—The 2000s

229

their suspected victims, whose bodies were never recovered, including that of their own infant son. After several interviews, however, Gideon becomes convinced that Sarah Jean, who was convicted only of killing the couple’s own child, is innocent, and that the boy, who would now be a teenager, may still be alive. With the execution drawing near and requests for a stay denied, it becomes a race to find the boy in time to save Sarah Jean. But when they find him with just moments to spare, Sarah Jean begs Gideon not to reveal who the boy is, even though it will mean her life. It turns out the boy, whom she gave up anonymously, was adopted and is living happily with the only mother and father he has ever known. To reveal who his biological parents are would destroy all that, destroy the very reason she gave him up in the first place, to protect him from Jacob and his horrendous crimes. Gideon reluctantly grants her request, and Sarah Jean is executed with the knowledge that her son won’t be haunted by his gruesome heritage. Gideon’s quote for the episode, from Albert Pine: “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Also on CBS’s fall 2005 schedule was Close to Home, yet another entry among the network’s myriad one-hour crime dramas (and yet another from CBS savior Jerry Bruckheimer). This show’s premise was a little bit unusual compared to the others, however. Whereas most programs were striving for gritty realism, Close to Home tried to present real life from another angle—that of white, upper-middle-class America and what really goes on behind the doors of those well-manicured suburban homes. The series’s protagonist was attorney Annabeth Chase (Jennifer Finnigan) who had just returned to work in Indianapolis, Indiana, as an assistant district attorney after giving birth to her and husband Jack’s (Christian Kane) first child, daughter Haley. The Chase’s live in a nice home, complete with a picket fence, in a beautiful neighborhood where the streets are clean and the neighbors all know one another. Annabeth is no average D.A.; she is highly perceptive and has a perfect conviction record. Having never lost a case has put a lot of scrutiny and pressure on Annabeth to win each time she sets foot in the courtroom, where much of the action of this series takes place. Annabeth’s new boss is Maureen Scotfiled (Kimberly Elise), who got the promotion that Annabeth wanted but lost out on when she went on maternity leave. Maureen is single and has seemingly dedicated her entire life to the pursuit and advancement of her career, which causes the aggressive Annabeth in weaker moments to be just a bit envious of Maureen—and vice versa. As Annabeth states early in the pilot episode to her husband, “I want to be a mommy, and I want to work. I want everything.”

230

Crime Television

CBS debuted Close to Home on October 4, 2005, kicking off with an episode about a mother who sets her house on fire while she and her two young children are still inside. The primary theme of the episode is, of course, the shock and awe from local residents that such a thing could happen in their tranquil little piece of the world, Annabeth and Jack included. The series title is drawn from the fact that the community is so close knit that anything bad that occurs gives Annabeth the feeling that tragedy has struck a little too “close to home.” Strangely, in that first outing, Jennifer Finnigan was credited as a “lead guest star,” because when the pilot for Close to Home was shot, Finnigan was still officially under contract to NBC, where she had appeared in their midseason sitcom Committed. Although that show had wrapped its season and was an unlikely candidate for renewal, Finnigan was still legally bound to the show. CBS and Bruckheimer were evidentially still confident enough to roll the dice and cast her anyway, a gamble that paid off when NBC axed Committed in May, freeing Finnigan to sign on and continue as the star of Close to Home. CBS scheduled the series on Tuesday nights at 9:00 P.M., which in the fall of 2005 became one of prime time’s most competitive time slots. The show was scheduled opposite three hits: Fox’s returning medical drama House and two new entries, ABC’s political drama Commander in Chief and the WB’s weekly horror tale, Supernatural. Suffice it to say, Close to Home’s early numbers were extremely low, and it appeared that the show was headed for an early demise. Fortunately for the Bruckheimer team, CBS had another low-rated hour series, the sci-fi drama Threshold, struggling on Friday nights. CBS decided to swap their timeslots, and Close to Home moved to Friday nights at 9:00 P.M. beginning on November 11, where nestled between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs, the series’s numbers shot up, earning it a full season order from the network. (Meanwhile, Threshold’s numbers on Tuesday nights remained dismal, and it was cancelled after only one broadcast in its new timeslot.) The producers certainly delivered on the program’s premise as Annabeth’s neighbors turned out to have many skeletons in their closets: from selling crystal meth to operating a prostitution ring while the kids are at school. In “The Romeo and Juliet Murders” (11/1/2005), Annabeth goes up against two homicidal teenagers—16-year-old Tracey Fields (Elizabeth Rice) and her adopted 17-year-old brother Scott (Jackson Rathbone), who murdered their parents for threatening to send them away to separate schools after catching the two in bed having sex. In “Under Threat” (11/25/2006), Annabeth’s worst fears are realized when her prosecution of a mobster results in threats against her infant daughter Haley.

Crime Television—The 2000s

231

Annabeth’s character certainly had her flaws and insecurities, some of which are explored in episodes involving recurring defense attorney Doug Hellman (Bruce Davison). In the episode “Reasonable Doubts” (3/3/2006), Annabeth prosecutes a man named Paul Randle (Michael Rodrick) for shooting and killing his mother-in-law (Jennifer Hetrick). When Hellman takes over Randle’s defense, he points the finger of guilt at Randle’s now exwife Jessica (Betsy Brandt), whom he claims murdered her own mother. As the trial plays out before a jury, Hellman continues to toy with Annabeth’s doubts about how effectively she is presenting her case. In the end, convinced the jury will find Randle not guilty, Annabeth agrees to a plea bargain in which the accused will serve only eight years in exchange for admitting his guilt. Only afterwards, when confronted by the jury foreman (Tyrone M. Mitchell), does Annabeth learn they were about to return a guilty verdict. “I knew I couldn’t win,” Hellman explains to her, “I knew you had to give it away. When I said I only needed one person to have a doubt, I didn’t mean a juror. I meant you.” Close to Home also plays heavily on the trials and tribulations of a working mom concept. The problem is the dilemma as played out was a bit one-sided. The show had received static from fans who complained that although Annabeth claimed to want it all, her family seemed to be low on her list of priorities. Indeed, the Chase’s home life received very little screen time, perhaps five-to-ten minutes in a given episode. Jack worked long days in construction, and Annabeth worked late into the evening on her cases, leaving poor little Haley in the care of—well, that’s a question largely left unanswered. The working mom angle—or the two-workingparents angle—just didn’t seem to ring true here. If the producers insisted on pursuing this path, they might have benefited from a little more analysis of the issues of childcare and the need and desire for two-working parent households (an issue handled much more realistically on NBC’s femaledriven crime series Medium). Close to Home is generally well produced and has the advantage of being a Jerry Bruckheimer production, but it also had the increasing handicap of airing on CBS, which is becoming bogged down in successful one-hour crime dramas. Bruckheimer himself would be better off to diversify. With so many flourishing programs available to it, CBS will eventually have to choose only the absolute cream of the crop, leaving many winning prospects without the needed time to mature into hits. Close to Home falls into this category, a promising vehicle still in need of some growth. That kind of growth, however, has driven television since its inception in the late 1940s.

232

Crime Television

Close to Home did earn a second-season renewal from CBS, and producers did throw fans a few surprises at the end of the first year. In the episode subtitled, “David and Goliath” (5/12/2006), Annabeth finally lost her first case, involving a baseball hero who murders a young woman by throwing her off a balcony. His celebrity attracted a media circus to the trial and very likely swayed the jury in his favor. For Annabeth, however, the following week was to be even more traumatic. In “Hot Grrrl” (5/19/2006), after trying a case involving child pornography and the Internet, Annabeth receives word that husband Jack has been killed in a head-on car crash with a drunk driver. The new season will undoubtedly be one of change and personal growth for Annabeth, and hopefully, for Close to Home as well. Women continued to be strongly represented in series television throughout the first decade of the 2000s. Another unexpected hit premiered in the summer of 2005 in an unusual arena—the TNT cable network, best known for airing other networks’ reruns. In June 2005 TNT debuted its one-hour original crime drama The Closer, starring actress Kyra Sedgwick (Something to Talk About, Phenomenon, Loverboy) as Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, a skilled interrogator, known in the business as “a closer.” Johnson is a Southern-bred, CIA-trained interrogator who worked for the Atlanta Police Department before being recruited to head Los Angeles’s Priority Homicide Squad (she turned down a job with Homeland Security to accept the position). Johnson proved to be quite a character, an individual whose personal life was as disorganized as her professional life was prioritized. She speaks with a heavy Southern accent, is trying to kick a junk food addiction, and tends to be a bit rude, often without realizing it. Los Angeles proved to be the perfect locale for the series’s premise. Creator and co-executive producer James Duff explains how The Closer came to fruition: “Our association with TNT came about as the result of a show that I did for ABC called The D.A., which due to its time period and a lack of promotion, just didn’t take. But TNT liked what we had done so they called us—myself, Michael Robins, and Greer Shephard, who are my partners—to a meeting. They basically described what they wanted, which was a companion piece to their already successful reruns of Law and Order. They wanted it to fit in somewhere between NBC and HBO, and they didn’t want to alienate the female audience. Those were my marching orders.” Duff immediately went to work trying to come up with the right vehicle for TNT. He decided to consult with Gil Garcetti, who had spent 24 years inside the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office before being elected district

Crime Television—The 2000s

233

attorney in 1992. Garcetti’s most high-profile case was the chaotic mid-90s prosecution of O. J. Simpson for murder. “I went to Gil,” says Duff, “and asked, ‘What is the very best thing the police can do for you as a district attorney? What really helps you?’ And he said, ‘Well, it may sound a little obvious, but a legally obtained air-tight confession is what helps us the most. And if the police get that, then we’re in fantastic shape, especially in these high-profile cases. Because people like Robert Blake and O. J. Simpson have these amazing resources.’ So that’s kind of how the concept of the show was put together.” Duff decided to write a pilot script revolving around a team that would head off potential fiascos such as the Simpson case before the media could get hold of them. There had been plenty of bad press about interrogation techniques, and Duff wanted to show that interrogation was a fantastic tool when used properly. “At first we were putting a man in the lead,” explains Duff, “and then my partner Greer said, ‘Well, why don’t we have a woman instead, and have her do the job, because that would help us meet our goal not to alienate the female audience. There are a lot more available women in that age range who are not usually in lead roles on television.’” From there, it was a race to cast the right woman and get production up and running in time to meet TNT’s projected premiere date in early summer of 2005. “Kyra was not originally considered because she was on record as saying she would not leave New York and she did not want to do television,” confesses Duff. “Those were two very big problems, because the show is based in Los Angeles, is filmed there, and is about the city. So there wasn’t much of a way we could change that. And of course, it was TV, which she wasn’t interested in doing. So it was a bit of a miracle that she even got the script. She eventually read it and wanted to do it, which was a big surprise. I told her, ‘Look, it’s going to be all about you, and it’s going to be a crushing schedule, and you’re going to have to memorize a ton of lines every week.’ And she was like, ‘Yea! Sign me up!’ We put her on tape for the studio, and they all said, ‘That’s it, she’s the one.’” Duff, who was born in New Orleans, admits that he based much of the character on himself, with many of those traits remaining in place even after the decision was made to cast a woman: “I’m a bit of a junk food addict myself, and I’m also from the South, thus the accent, although it’s a modulated Southern accent. Brenda’s parents were both died in the wool Southerners, but she grew up in a military family and she went to a lot of different schools and lived in a lot of different places. Kyra worked on that accent to get it the way she wanted it. Some people love it and some people

234

Crime Television

don’t. I don’t know what the objection is, but it’s very rare, in both film and television, for the person with the Southern accent to be the smartest person in the room. The Southern accent can cause people to dismiss her sometimes.” The Closer premiered on TNT on June 13, 2005 and earned both critical praise and very respectable ratings, drawing 5.2 million viewers. Costarring with Sedgwick are J. K. Simmons as Asst. Police Chief Will Pope, a former coworker from Atlanta with whom Brenda had had an affair while both were still married. Joe Tenney plays FBI agent Fritz Howard, Brenda’s current lover. Robert Gossett was cast as Captain Taylor, who was in line to lead the Priority Murder Squad but was passed over for Brenda. Among Brenda’s squad are partners Det. Lt. Provenza (G. W. Bailey) and Det. Andy Flynn (Tony Denison), who provide much of the comic relief. Rounding out the ranks are computer-savvy Lt. Mike Tao (Michael Paul Chan); Sgt. David Gabriel (Corey Reynolds), Brenda’s second in command, temperamental Det. Irene Daniels (Gina Ravera); and Det. Julio Sanchez (Raymond Cruz). Brenda’s biggest challenge after assuming command, of the unit was to rally her troops, many of who were about to go over the hill. “The arc of the first season was Brenda trying to pull her team together,” explains Duff. “It was also about being a woman in a man’s world. One thing about Brenda is that we made her unrelentingly female. On most other cop shows, women are shown stripping their femininity in order to prove that they can do anything a man can do. What we wanted was a real woman showing that what a woman could do is just as good as what a man can do, without becoming that man. We wanted to make her desirable, moody, and also unfailingly polite until people push her beyond what she can accept.” During the first year, Brenda became known for ending both her intense interrogations and in-house feuds with a terse “thank you.” Duff explains the phrase’s double meaning: “In the South, it also means ‘fuck you.’ Thank you in the South can mean five hundred different things, it’s like the word ‘really.’ It can be spun. Many times someone has said, ‘Thank you,’ and you realize that you’ve just been told to go fuck yourself. It depends on how she’s saying it and who she’s saying it too.” Being that The Closer is on TNT and not HBO, it’s left up to viewers to make their own interpretations. By the end of the season, Brenda had earned the respect of her team. In the finale, “Standards and Practices” (9/5/2005), a grievance was filed against Brenda that could have led to her being fired. In an unexpected move, the squad all stood up and threatened to resign if she was fired. The Closer finished its freshman season the number one scripted drama on cable TV. Sedgwick was widely recognized for her performances, receiving

Crime Television—The 2000s

235

Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Television Critics Association, and Satellite Award nominations (she took home the Satellite trophy). TNT quickly picked the show up for a second year. It’s season premiere, “Blue Blood” (5/12/2006), dealt with the death of an off-duty LAPD officer and the aftermath. The episode broke ratings records by drawing in an audience of 8.3 million viewers. Duff feels the reason for the series’s success stems from the fact that it shies away from being a procedural and deals with its characters—both the good guys and the bad guys—on a more human level. “We believe that solving the mystery is only half the job,” offers Duff. “Knowing who did it is important but getting them to admit it is another thing. We’re not after serial killers. Most of our crimes are crimes that you can understand. There’s one element that we stress, and that’s trying to make you identify at the end with the killer a little bit. A lot of times, Brenda solves the crime and walks away, and you’re thinking, ‘That could have been me she was talking to, in those same circumstances, and given the same opportunity, I might have done the same thing.’ The reason is that very often the people who are killed are much worse in many ways than the people who kill them.” Duff and the other writers also attempt to make The Closer a little more realistic in terms of how investigations are handled and crimes are solved. “We have an actual robbery-homicide detective on our writing staff as a technical advisor,” explains Duff. “The truth is, very few crimes are solved with forensic evidence, and over seventy-five percent of criminals do not ask for lawyers even though they’re told they can get one. That’s because they’re afraid it will make them look guilty. Other programs make it look commonplace, but the truth is it just doesn’t happen very often. Just as crime scene investigators don’t solve crimes, it just doesn’t happen. They investigate the crime scene, they write reports, they consult with detectives, and they’re gone.” Not that The Closer is without humor. In the episode “To Protect & to Serve” (7/10/2006), detectives Provenza and Flynn are about to depart for a Dodgers game when they discover a woman’s dead body in Provenza’s garage. Not wanting to give up their sky box seats, they decide to simply lock up the garage and deal with it after the game. By the time they return, however, the body is gone, and later turns up at another site. The rest of the episode deals, often comically, with attempts to solve the murder without revealing Provenza and Flynn’s dereliction of duty. Although the episode was obviously not pulled from the actual files of the LAPD, Duff did inquire of some of his sources as to how such a matter

236

Crime Television

might actually be handled. “Oh, they’d go to the game. We might try to get away with that,” he was told. “I guess it would depend on who the Dodgers were playing and whether or not I could get an officer there to stand guard at the door,” continued the source. “I would definitely have an officer there. I’d get him there and say, ‘Stand here at the garage and wait until I get back, then I’d send him off.” Adds Duff: “We have pictures of police officers who made a bet that they could drive to and from Las Vegas during their shift, so they drove to Las Vegas and took a picture, then came back with the picture to show their fellow squad members that they’d been able to do it. Then you’ve got a choice if you’re a supervisor, ‘Do I try to manage this without getting them in trouble, or do I just write up a report and put them on administrative leave?’ And Brenda made the decision to protect her team, which shows you that she thinks of them now as her partners.” Due to its record-shattering second-season ratings, TNT wasted no time in ordering up a third season of 15 episodes for 2007 (both of the program’s first two years consisted of 13 segments). Duff maintains the show will continue to grow and offer new insights into the characters as they attempt to work together as both a team and a unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. Crime dramas have evolved over the last six decades in their efforts to both continue mirroring society and, because of the large number of procedurals, to successfully keep up with the latest techniques in solving crimes. As far as accurately depicting societal changes, the same, of course, can be said for all genres. The nuclear families portrayed in sitcoms of the 1950s, including The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver, gave way to the more fractured representations of the modern American household pictured in such current shows as Reba, Arrested Development, and The War at Home. As with any genre, those changes came slowly and were accompanied by much controversy. Producers found that they could generate increased ratings by addressing as many taboo subjects as possible. Keeping up with a progressive society was one thing, jumping ahead of it was another, and figuring out precisely what necessitated going too far proved to be a topic of unceasing debate. In March 2006, the FCC issued fines totaling $3.6 million against 111 CBS affiliates for airing an episode of the series Without a Trace, subtitled “Our Sons and Daughters” (11/6/2003), which graphically depicted a teen sex party. The FCC ruling stated that the sequences in question, involving high schoolers engaged in various sexual acts, “went well beyond what the storyline could reasonably be said to require.” Only stations that aired the

Crime Television—The 2000s

237

program before 10:00 P.M., those in Central and Mountain time zones and Alaska and Hawaii, were subjected to the action. Most controversies involving television tend to center around what is considered acceptable sexual behavior, but issues of violence continue to be of much lesser concern. This is a particularly odd standard by which to gauge crime dramas, as graphic violence in the genre is generally much more prevalent. But sex remains one of the most hotly debated topics in regard to television (and the arts in general) in the United States. Television has seen change on many levels. With crime dramas, it was not only the characterizations of law enforcement representatives that had to evolve, it was also those they hunted—the criminals. Early crime dramas such as Dragnet usually dealt with thieves and murderers, but seldom if ever with rapists or other sexually oriented offenders. Such topics of course were off limits. Few drug dealers were the targets of cop shows in the 1950s, because portraying them would have meant admitting that there was also a market for what they were selling. It wasn’t until Dragnet returned in the 1960s that we regularly saw teens popping pills and toting marijuana. It was difficult for the networks to authentically present the work of police detectives if viewers did not want to hear the truth or face the seedier side of life in the United States. When it comes to keeping up with the latest methods of solving crimes, technology, primarily in the area of forensic science, has turned the art of scriptwriting (and fiction writing in general) on its head. In earlier decades, police investigators and private detectives alike would gather available evidence and then use it in developing hunches that would lead to their suspects. From there, the key was usually to elicit a confession from the accused. Good intuition seemed to be a crimefighter’s best asset in catching the bad guys. Beginning in the 1990s and becoming commonplace in the 2000s, evidence became the cornerstone of a successful prosecution. No matter how guilty the accused might appear, without hard physical evidence, a good defense attorney could usually put enough doubt in a jury’s collective mind to get an acquittal. Over the course of nearly 60 years, crime dramas have continued to grow and mature along with the medium of television itself. These shows have entertained us, educated us, inspired and angered us. Some provided us with a pleasant escape; others chose to mirror our society and give us a better look at our world. They have offered us insight by providing us with an immense library of diverse characters, and now, in the hindsight of six decades, have enabled each of us to determine for ourselves which were heroes and which were villains.

Index

Abbott, Philip, 33 ABC Mystery Movie, 82 Acevedo, Kirk, 166 Adams, Edie, 74 Adam-12, 51–56, 65, 107; episode, “Elegy for a Pig,” 52; episode, “Log 1—The Impossible Mission,” 51 Adler, Luther, 59 Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, 3, 236 The Affair, 106 Albright, Lola, 23, 27 Alexander, Ben, 9, 13, 47 Alexander, Jason, 213 Alexander, Khandi, 202 Alger, Horatio, 202 Ali, Mahershalalhashbaz, 206 Alien, 221 The Alley Cats, 103. See also Charlie’s Angels All In The Family, 107, 139, 155 Ally McBeal, 208 Almost Perfect, 142 Altman, Robert, 144 Ameche, Don, 97

America’s Most Wanted, 157, 204 Amette, Jeannetta, 228 Amos, John, 134, 204 Amy Prentiss, 45, 72 Anderson, Barbara, 37, 43, 45–46 Anderson, Gillian, 173 Anderson, Loni, 87 Anderson, Sam, 173 Andrews, Tigh, 62–63 And Then There Were None, 128 The Andy Griffith Show, 60, 172 Ansara, Michael, 135 Anthony, Gerald, 151 Apocalypse Now, 154 Archard, Army, 19 Arden, Eve, 97 Armageddon, 199 Armer, Alan A., 29 Armstrong, Curtis, 147 Arnaz, Desi, 4, 28–29 Arness, James, 37 Arquette, Patricia, 225 Arrest and Trial, 32, 160 Arrested Development, 236

240 Arroyave, Karina, 209 Asner, Edward, 27, 38 The A-Team, 57, 102, 129, 131–33, 150, 152; episode, “Without Reservations,” 102 Attack on Terror: The FBI versus the Ku Klux Klan, 35 Attanasio, Paul, 176 Austin, Teri, 168 Autry, Alan, 156 Avalon, 176 Avedon, Barbara, 122 Avery, Margaret, 86 Aykroyd, Dan, 50 Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, 57, 95 Babcock, Barbara, 117 Badler, Jane, 39 Baer, Neal, 163 Bailey, G. W., 234 Bain, Barbara, 36–38 Baker, Dylan, 187 Baker, Joe Don, 156 Baker, Kathy, 172 Baldwin, Daniel, 175–76 Ball, John, 155 Ball, Lucille, 4, 28 Ballard, Alimi, 222 Balsam, Talia, 217 Banacek, 72 Band of Brothers, 216 Banks, Jonathan, 151–52 Banyon, 77 Baretta, 57, 77, 94–95, 150; episode, “He’ll Never See Daylight Again,” Barnaby Jones, 29, 77, 79–80, 100; episode, “The Deadly Jinx,” 80; episode, “Death Beat,” 80 Barney Miller, 82–83 Barr, Douglas, 118 Barrett, Rona, 146 Barrie, Barbara, 82 Barry, Gene, 67

Index Barry, Thom, 221 Barth, Eddie, 119 Basaraba, Gary, 216 Bauer, Steven, 152 Baur, Elizabeth, 45–46 Baxter-Birney, Meredith, 80 Beal, Jeff, 214 Beasley, Allyce, 144 The Beat, 176 Beatty, Ned, 140, 175–76 Beaumont, Hugh, 31 Beery, Noah, Jr., 92 Belafonte, Gina, 171 Belknap, Anna, 203 Bellamy, Ralph, 95 Bellisario, Donald P., 65, 95, 114 Belushi, John, 170 Belzer, Richard, 164, 175–76 Ben Casey, 31 Benny, Jack, 91 Benzali, Daniel, 187–88 Berkeley, Xander, 209 Bernard, Carlos, 209 Bernard, Ed, 84 Bernardi, Hershel, 23, 27 Bernstein, Elmer, 26, 96 Beverly Hillbillies, 77 Beverly Hills Cop, 199 Beverly Hills, 90210, 207 Billboard (music charts), 99, 138 Bixby, Bill, 150 BJ and the Bear, 113, 116 Black, John D. F., 59 Blacke’s Magic, 139 Blake, Robert, 93–94, 233 Blatty, William Peter, 27 Bleeth, Yasmine, 181 Blige, Mary J., 190 Blinn, William, 101 Blossom, 169 The Blue Knight: novel (Wambaugh), 83; feature film, 83; TV series, 83 Bobby, Anne, 168

Index Bob Patterson, 213 Bochco, Steven, 55, 65, 69, 93, 115, 117–18, 152, 159, 168, 172, 181, 183–84, 186–87, 197, 199, 208, 210 Bogart, Humphrey, 124 Bogdanovich, Peter, 144, 146 The Bold Ones, 66 Booker, 155 Boomtown, 215–17 Boone, Richard, 11, 72 Bosley, Tom, 97, 141 Bosson, Barbara, 93, 117, 168, 188 Bourbon Street Beat, 20–21 Bourgeois, John, 215 Bowman, Lee, 95 Boyd, Jenna, 202 Boyett, William, 52 Boyz II Men, 190 Bracco, Lorraine, 194 Brandt, Betsy, 231 Braugher, Andre, 82, 175–76 Braverman, Bart, 105 Bray, Thom, 132 Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 27 Breaking Away, 193 Brenneman, Amy, 182 Bridges, Lloyd, 66, 84 Brinks: The Great Robbery, 35 Brochtrup, Bill, 174 Brolin, Josh, 154 Brooks, Avery, 149 Brooks, Richard, 161, 163 Brooks, Stephen, 33 Brosnan, Pierce, 125–28, 146 Brown, Georg Stanford, 75, 98 Brown, Olivia, 137 Brown, Roger Aaron, 204 Bruckheimer, Jerry, 199, 217, 219, 221, 229–31 Bruhanski, Alex, 171 Bruno, Dylan, 222 Bryant, Lee, 121 Burke, Paul, 16

241 Burns, George, 97 Burns, Michael, 48 Burr, Raymond, 8, 42–46 Buscemi, Steve, 196 Busey, Gary, 61 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 119 Butler, Robert, 70, 125–26, 128 Byrnes, Edd, 18–19, 61; as singer, 19 Byrnes, Jim, 151–52 Cagney & Lacey, 122–24; episode, “Do I Know You?” 124; episode, “D.W.I.,” 124; episode, “Family Connections,” 124; episode, “Filial Duty,” 124; episode, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” 124; episode, “Who Says It’s Fair,” 124 Cagney & Lacey: The Return, 124 Cagney & Lacey: The View Through The Glass Ceiling, 124 Cagney & Lacey: Together Again, 124 Cagney & Lacey: True Convictions, 124 Cahill, Eddie, 204 Campanella, Joseph, 40–41 Cannell, Derek, 150 Cannell, Joseph K., 53 Cannell, Stephen J., 53–57, 65, 69, 89–95, 129–34, 150–53, 159, 169, 170–71, 208 Cannon, J. D., 66, 76, 79–80 Cannon, 22, 76–77; episode, “Requiem for a Son,” 79; episode, “The Seventh Grave,” 77; episode, “A Touch of Venom,” 77 Capone, Al, 28–29 Capone, Sonny, 29 Capra, Frank, 144 Captain Video and His Video Rangers, 4 Cariou, Len, 142 Carlson, Amy, 166 Caron, Glenn Gordon, 143–48, 224–26 Carr, Darlene, 78 Carradine, David, 131 Carradine, John, 67 Carreira, Kristen, 115 Carter, Chris, 173

242 Carter, John, 77 Carter, Terry, 66 Caruso, David, 183–86, 202 Carver, Mary, 119 Cash, Johnny, 69, 221 Cash, Rosalind, 86 Cassavetes, John, 25–27, 69 Cassidy, David, 84 Cassidy, Jack, 69 Cavanaugh, Michael, 134 CBS Sunday Movie, 216 Chadwick, June, 133 Chambers, Justin, 220 Chan, Michael Paul, 234 Charlie’s Angels (TV series), 88, 95, 100, 103–6, 122–25, 207 Chase, David, 195–96 Chase, 56 Cheers, 117, 133 Chermak, Cy, 43–45, 108–10 Chesterfield Presents, 7–8 Chesterfield Sound Off Time, 7 Chianese, Dominic, 194 Chicago Hope, 173 The Chicagoland Mystery Players, 5 Chicago Tribune, 5 Chiklis, Michael, 170–71, 211–12 The China Syndrome, 122 CHiPs, 107–10; episode, “Baby Food,” 108; episode, “Dead Man’s Riddle,” 109; episode, “Dog Gone,” 108; episode, “Meet the New Guy,” 110; episode, “Roller Disco,” 109; episode, “The Volunteers,” 109 CHiPs ’99, 110 Christie, Agatha, 139 Christopher, Dennis, 193 Cinader, R. A., 51 City of Angels (TV series), 95 Civil Wars, 181 Claridge, Shaaron, 52 Clarke, Emmy, 215

Index Clarke, Sarah, 209 Clarkson, Patricia, 149, 188 Clean and Sober, 147 Close, Eric, 217 Close, Glenn, 212 The Closer, 232–35; episode, “Blue Blood,” 235; episode, “To Protect & To Serve,” 235; episode, “Standards and Practices,” 234 Close to Home, 229–32; episode, “David and Goliath,” 232; episode, “Hot Grrrl,” 232; episode, “Reasonable Doubts,” 231; episode, “The Romeo and Juliet Murders,” 230; episode, “Under Threat,” 230 Clough, April, 121 Cobb, Lee J., 67 Cobb, Randall “Tex,” 137 Cochrane, Rory, 202 Code Red, 120 Cohen, Scott, 167 Colasanto, Nicholas, 70 Cold Case, 219–21; episode (pilot), “Look Again,” 220; episode, “8 Years,” 221; episode, “Fly Away,” 220 Cold Case Files, 220 Cole, Michael, 61, 63 Coleman, James, 99 Collins, Phil, 138 Columbo, 44–45, 66–67, 69–74, 96, 139, 213; episode, “Any Old Port in a Storm,” 69; episode, “Forgotten Lady,” 69; episode, “Swan Song,” 69 Combat, 31 Combs, Holly Marie, 172 Commander in Chief, 230 The Commish, 57, 169–71, 212; episode (pilot), 170; episode, “Against the Wind,” 171; episode, “Guns & Sons,” 171; episode, “The Iceman Cometh,” 170; episode, “Witness,” 171 Committed, 230

Index Conflict, 17–18; episode, “Anything For Money,” 17 Connell, Kelly, 173 Connors, Chuck, 32, 83 Connors, Mike, 40, 83 Conrad, Michael, 101, 117 Conrad, Robert, 20, 55, 95 Conrad, William, 22, 35, 76–77 Conti, Vince, 81 Conway, Gary, 69 Cook, A. J., 228 Cook, Donald, 95 Cool Million, 72 Coombs, Kathy, 24 Cop Rock, 168–69, 181; original song, “He’s Guilty,” 168; original song, “It Ain’t Over ‘til the Fat Lady Sings,” 168; theme, “Under the Gun,” 168 Cops, 157–58, 204 Corbett, Gretchen, 92 Corday, Barbara, 123 The Cosby Show, 117 Cotton, Joseph, 67 Cox, Ronny, 168 Creature from the Black Lagoon, 24 Crime & Punishment, 166 Criminal Minds, 227–28; episode, “Riding the Lightning,” 228 Crosby, Bing, 67 Crosby, Gary, 52 Crosland, Alan, Jr., 52 Crossing Jordan, 205–7; episode, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” 207; episode, “Pandora’s Trunk,” 206 Cruise, Tom, 39–40 Cruz, Raymond, 234 C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, 193, 199–203, 205–6, 219, 227; episode (pilot), 201; episode, “Cross Jurisdictions,” 202 C.S.I.: Miami, 202–3, 217, 224; episode, “Camp Fear,” 202; episode, “Lost Son,” 202; episode, “MIA/NYC—NonStop,” 203

243 C.S.I.: New York, 203–4, 228 Cubitt, David, 226 Culp, Robert, 73 Curry, Tim, 152 Curtis, Tony, 105 Cuthbert, Elisha, 208 Cybil, 142 Cygan, John, 171 The D.A. (TV series, 1971), 55 The D.A. (TV series, 2004), 232 The D.A.’s Man, 12 Daddio, 171 Daily Variety, 19 Dallas, 134 Dalton, Timothy, 128 Daly, Tyne, 123 Dan August, 76 Danes, Claire, 63 Dannay, Frederic, 95–96 The Danny Thomas Show, 3 Danson, Ted, 133 D’Arbanville-Quinn, Patti, 190 Darren, James, 121 Darrow, Henry, 85, 87 Davi, Robert, 192 David Cassidy—Man Undercover, 84 Davidson, Avram, 96 Davidson, John, 78 Davis, Betty, 34 Davis, Phyllis, 105 Davison, Bruce, 134, 231 Dean, Jimmy, 151 The Defenders, 31 DeGuere, Philip, 65, 119 Delaney, Kim, 184, 202 DeLorenzo, Michael, 189–90 The Delta Force, 178 DeLuise, Dom, 153 DeLuise, Peter, 153 DeMay, Janet, 125, 128 Demosthenes, 81. See also Savalas, George

244 Denison, Tony (Anthony), 234 Dennehy, Brian, 134 Denning, Richard, 31, 58 Dent, Catherine, 212 DePalma, Brian, 39 Depp, Johnny, 154–55 Desiderio, Robert, 130 Desilu Playhouse, 28–29 Desilu Studios, 28 Devane, William, 210 Devon, Laura, 27 DeVorzon, Barry, 99 Dhiegh, Khigh, 58 The D.I., 13 Dial M for Murder, 19 Diamond, Reed, 176, 211 Dickinson, Angie, 84 Die Hard, 147, 148 Diehl, John, 137, 211 Dierkip, Charles, 84 Diff’rent Strokes, 116 Diller, Barry, 160 Diner, 176 Dirty Dozen, 81 Dirty Harry, 133 The District, 204 DOA, 128 Dobson, Kevin, 81–82 Doherty, James, 52 Dohlen, Lenny Von, 174 Donahue, Ann, 201, 203 Donahue, Troy, 19, 21 Donley, Robert, 92 Donnelly, Tim, 49 D’Onofrio, Vincent, 164–65 Doogie Howser, M.D., 172 Douglas, Michael, 78 Dourdan, Gary, 200 Dow Chemical, 12 Doyle, David, 104 Dragnet (feature film, 1954), 13 Dragnet (feature film, 1987), 50 Dragnet (radio show), 6

Index Dragnet (TV series, 1950s), 5–17, 19, 22–23, 27, 33–34, 46, 50–52, 161, 200, 237; episode, “The Big Cast,” 10; episode, “The Big Little Jesus,” 10, 50; episode, “The Big Red,” 14; theme, 8 Dragnet (TV series, 1960s), 46–50, 55; episode, “The Big High,” 49; episode, “The Big Neighbor,” 49; episode, “The Christmas Story,” 50; episode, “The LSD Story,” 47 Dragnet (TV series, 2003), 50; episode, “Daddy’s Girl,” 50; episode, “The Magic Bullet,” 50; episode, “Retribution,” 50 Dragnet, The New. See The New Dragnet Drivas, Robert, 59 Dr. Kildare, 31 Dryer, Fred, 133, 136 Dubbins, Don, 13 DuBois, Allison, 224–26 Duchovny, David, 173 Duff, James, 232–36 Dugan, Dennis, 92, 147 Duggan, Andrew, 20 Duke, Patty, 150 The Duke, 57, 95 DuMont network, 2, 4, 5, 17, 95, 207 Dynasty, 121, 207 Dzundza, George, 161 Eads, George, 200 Easton, Sheena, 138 Eastwood, Clint, 133 Ebsen, Buddy, 77, 79 Echikunwoke, Megalyn, 209 Edelman, Herb, 140, 142 Edmonson, Greg, 169 Edwards, Blake, 22, 24–25, 27 Edwards, J. Gordon, 22 Eglee, Charles H., 186 87th Precinct, 32 Einstein, Albert, 227

Index Eisley, Anthony, 20 Elcar, Dana, 94 Elise, Kimberly, 229 Elizando, Hector, 218 Ellery Queen, 95, 98, 141; episode, “Adventures of the Comic Book Crusader,” 97; pilot movie, “Fourth Side of the Triangle,” 96; script (unproduced), “Adventures of the Grand Old Lady,” 97 Ellery Queen, Adventures of, 95 Ellery Queen, Further Adventures of, 96 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 95 Elliott, Alan, 169 Ellis, Herbert, 9 Embry, Ethan, 50 Emerald Point, N.A.S., 124 Emergency, 55 Emerson, Hope, 23 Enriquez, Rene, 118 Epps, Omar, 63 ER, 219 Erbe, Kathryn, 164–65 Eriksen, Kaj-Erik, 170 Eriksson, Josh, 223 Eskelson, Dana, 191 Esteban, Gloria, 138 Estrada, Erik, 107, 109–10 Evers, Jason, 38 Ewell, Tom, 94 The Exorcist, 27 Experiment in Terror, 27 Fairbairn, Bruce, 75 Falco, Edie, 194 Falk, Peter, 67–68, 70, 140 The Fall Guy, 118, 120, 181 Faloye, Fatima, 189 Family, 100, 103 Family Affair, 130 Family Ties, 117 Fantasy Island, 103, 107 Faraday & Company, 72

245 Farentino, James, 72, 83, 84 Fargas, Antonio, 101 Farnsworth, Arthur, 34 Farr, Diane, 222 Farrell, Sharon, 60 The Father Dowling Mysteries, 141 Fatima Cigarettes, 6 Fawcett-Majors, Farrah, 87–88, 103–4 The F.B.I., 29, 33–35, 65, 125; episode, “The Mechanized Accomplice,” 34; episode, “The Monster,” 34; episode, “Slow March up a Steep Hill,” 33 The F.B.I. Story, 33 The F.B.I. Story: The F.B.I. versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One, 35 FCC (Federal Communications Commission), 210–11, 236 Fell, Norman, 32 Felony Squad, 47 Fenn, Sherilyn, 154 Fenneman, George, 9 Ferlito, Vanessa, 203 Ferrer, Mel, 97 Ferrer, Miguel, 205 Finch, Marcia, 53 Finkel, Fyvush, 172 Finn, John, 220 Finnigan, Jennifer, 229–30 Fischer, Peter S., 67–70, 73, 96–98, 139–41 Fisher, Gail, 41 Fleck, John, 188 Fletcher, Louise, 174 Florek, Dann, 161, 162, 164 Fluegel, Darlene, 135 Foch, Nina, 67 Fong, Kam, 58, 60–61 Fontana, Tom, 176 A Force of One, 178 Ford, Tommy, 191 Forest, Frederic, 153–54 Forrest, Steve, 98, 100 Forster, Robert, 77

246 Forsythe, John, 103 Foster, Jodie, 86 Foster, Meg, 123 Four in One, 66 Four Star Playhouse, 22 Fox, Crystal, 156 Fox, Jorja, 201 Francis, Anne, 132, 140 Franciscus, James, 15–16, 32 Frank, Ben, 99 Franks, Randall, 156 Frank’s Place, 120 Franz, Dennis, 135, 182–83, 185–86 Frasier, 174 Frazer, Dan, 81 Frechette, Peter, 192 Freed, Bert, 68 Freeman, Leonard, 60 Frees, Paul, 15 Frey, Glenn, 138, 152 The Fugitive, 29, 32, 35, 76, 85 Gabriel, Peter, 138 The Gallant Men, 31 Galloway, Don, 43 Gammon, James, 180 Gandolfini, James, 194, 196 Gangbusters, 9–11, 17, 27, 33; episode, “The Durable Mike Malloy Case,” 10 Garbiras, Nina, 216 Garcetti, Gil, 232–33 Gargan, William, 95 Garner, James, 57, 92–94 Gates, Daryl, 135 Gazzara, Ben, 32 Gedrick, Jason, 187, 216 Geller, Bruce, 35–41 George, Lynda Day, 37, 76 Gerber, David, 83 Gering, Jenna, 185 Getz, John, 207 Geyer, Stephen, 130, 169 Ghost Whisperer, 227, 230

Index Gianopoulos, David, 168 Gibson, Channing, 186 Gibson, Thomas, 227 Gilliland, Richard, 73 Gillis, Jackson, 69 Gilyard, Clarence, 177 Gimpel, Erica, 192 Ging, Jack, 132 Giovinazzo, Carmine, 203 Gladiator, 221 Glaser, Paul Michael, 101 Glaudini, Lola, 227 Gleason, Michael, 125–29, 144 The Glenn Miller Story, 24 Gless, Sharon, 123 Goddard, Mark, 52 Godfrey, Arthur, 97 Goff, Ivan, 103 Goggins, Walton, 212 Goldberg, Leonard, 100, 120 Golden Age of Television, 3, 14 Goldeneye, 128 Gomez, Jaime P., 180 Gordon, Ruth, 69 Gore, George O., II, 190 Gosselaar, Mark-Paul, 185 Gossett, Robert, 234 Gould, Harold, 59 Grammer, Kelsey, 224 Grant, Cary, 23–24 Grant, Lee, 67 Graves, Peter, 37–39 Gray-Stanford, Jason, 214 Grease, 168 Grease 2, 121 The Greatest American Hero, 57, 129, 131, 152, 169 Griffith, Andy, 60 Grover, Edward, 94 Gubler, Matthew Gray, 228 Guilfoyle, Paul, 201 Gulager, Clu, 66 Gunn, Moses, 149

Index Gunn, 27 Gunsmoke, 22, 76, 160 Guzman, Luis, 138 Hack, Shelley, 104 Hacker, Gordon, 125 Hahn, Kathryn, 206 Haid, Charles, 116 Haight-Ashbury, 35, 61 Hall, Robert David, 201 Hallahan, Charles, 134 Halliday, Brett, 31 Hamel, Veronica, 117 Hamilton, Antony, 39 Hamilton, Bernie, 101 Hammer, Jan, 138 Hancock, John, 131 Hanks, Tom, 50 Happy Days, 20, 107; character, Fonzie, 20 Hardcastle & McCormick, 129–32, 150– 51, 153, 169; episode (pilot), “Rolling Thunder,” 131; episode, “A Chip Off the ‘Ol Milt,” 132; episode, “Goin’ Nowhere Fast,” 130; episode, “Man in a Glass House,” 130; episode, “Ties My Father Sold Me,” 131; theme, “Drive,” 130 The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, 113 Hargitay, Mariska, 164 Hargrove, Dean, 69 Harmon, Angie, 163 Harper, Hill, 203 Harris, Cassie, 127 Harris, Stacy, 49 Harrold, Kathryn, 207 Harry-O, 85–88; episode, “APB Harry Orwell,” 88; episode, “Elegy for a Cop,” 87; episode, “The Eyewitness,” 86; episode, “Forty Reasons to Kill,” 87; episode, “Gertrude,” 86 Harry-O: Such Dust As Dreams Are Made Of, 85

247 Hart, David, 156 Hart, Gary, 224–25 Hart, Richard, 95 Hart to Hart, 105–7, 143 Hart to Hart: Secrets of the Hart, 107 Harvey, Laurence, 69 Hasburgh, Patrick, 130–31, 153–55 Hatch, Richard, 79 Hauser, Wings, 134 Hawaiian Eye, 17, 20–21, 31, 58; episode, “The Kamehameha Cloak,” 20; episode, “ Second Day of Infamy,” 20 Hawaii Five-O, 57–61, 65; episode (pilot), 57; episode, “The Case Against McGarrett,” 59; episode, “A Death in the Family,” 60; episode, “Full Fathom Five,” 58; episode, “I’m A Family Crook—Don’t Shoot,” 59–60; episode, “V for Vashon: the Father,” 59; episode, “V for Vashon: the Patriarch,” 59; episode, “V for Vashon: the Son,” 59; episode, “Woe to Wo Fat,” 60 Hawks, Howard, 144–45 Hayden, Michael, 187 Haydn, Lili, 73 Haysbert, Dennis, 209 Hec Ramsey, 72 Helgenberger, Marg, 200 Henderson, Ty, 86 Hennessy, Jill, 162–63, 205–6 Herd, Richard, 121 Herrmann, Edward, 207 Hesseman, Howard, 49 Hetrick, Jennifer, 231 He Walked by Night, 7 Hewitt, Jennifer Love, 227 Heyman, Edward, 11 Hicks, Michele, 165 Hill, Arthur, 140 Hill, Steven, 36–37, 161–62 Hillerman, John, 96, 114

248 Hill Street Blues, 115–18, 123, 127, 136, 152, 159, 160, 174, 181, 182, 197, 210; episode, “Eugene’s Comedy Empire Strikes Back,” 117; episode, “Iced Coffey,” 118; episode, “Officer of the Year,” 118 Hirsch, Judd, 222 His Girl Friday, 144 Hoffman, Charles, 20 Hoffman, Isabella, 175 Hogan, Robert, 93 Holden, William, 83, 106 Holliman, Earl, 84 Holly, Lauren, 172 Holmes, Sherlock, 167 Holmes & Yoyo, 73 Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (Simon), 176 Homicide: Life on the Street, 164, 174– 76, 179, 189; episode, “The City That Bleeds,” 175; episode, “Fallen Heroes,” 176; episode, “Forgive Us Our Trespasses,” 176; episode, “Partners and Other Strangers,” 176; episode, “Work Related,” 176 Homicide: The Movie, 176 Hoover, J. Edgar, 32–36 Hope, Bob, 7 Hope, Leslie, 208 Hopkins, Josh, 191 Horsley, Lee, 80 House, 230 Howard, Ken, 206 Howard, Traylor, 215 Howard, Vince, 77 Hu, Kelly Hudson, Rock, 70 Huggins, Roy, 17–20, 46, 56–57, 89–93 Hughes, Wendy, 175 Hugh-Kelly, Daniel, 130 Hull High, 169 Hume, Edward, 78

Index Hunter, Jeffrey, 22, 34 Hunter, Kim, 96 Hunter, 129, 133–36, 150; episode (pilot), 134; episode, “Dead or Alive,” 134; episode, “Fatal Obsession,” 135; episode, “Rape and Revenge,” 135; episode, “The Shooter,” 134; episode, “The Snow Queen,” 135 Hunter: Back in Force, 136 Hunter: Return to Justice, 136 Hurd, Michelle, 164 Hurst, Lillian, 220 Hurst, Ryan, 226 Hutchins, Will, 17 Hutton, Jim, 96–97 Hyland, Diana, 99 Iacocca, Lee, 137 Ice-T, 164, 190 Ihnat, Steve, 38 Iler, Robert, 194–95 I Love Lucy, 3–4, 11, 28 In the Heat of the Night, 155–57; episode, “A Depraved Heart,” 156; episode, “Fifteen, Forever,” 156; episode, “A Trip Upstate,” 156 The Investigators, 32 Ironside, 42–43, 45–46, 53, 65, 108; episode, “The Priest Killer,” 45 Irving, Richard, 67 Irwin, Stuart, 127 Itzin, Gregory, 188 Jace, Michael, 212 Jackson, Kate, 75, 103–4 Jackson, Lily, 226 Jackson, Mary, 131 Jaeckel, Richard, 149 Jaffe, Sam, 69 J.A.G., 95 Jankowski, Peter, 160, 162–63, 165–67 Janssen, David, 55, 85, 88 Jean-Baptiste, Marianne, 217

Index Jeff Regan, Investigator (radio show), 5 Jenner, Bruce, 109 Jerald, Penny Johnson, 209 Jessica Novak, 122 Jewison, Norman, 155 J.J. Starbuck, 150–52; episode (pilot), 150; episode, “Gold from the Rainbow,” 151 Joe Forrester, 84 Johnny Modero, Pier 23 (radio show), 5 Johnny Staccato, 25, 26, 27; episode, “Shop at the Four Winds,” 26; episode, “Tempted,” 26 Johnson, Anne-Marie, 155 Johnson, Bob, 36, 39 Johnson, Clark, 175 Johnson, Don, 126, 136, 179, 181 Johnson, Kenneth, 212 Johnson, Van, 28 Jones, Henry, 73 Jones, Quincy, 44 Jory, Victor, 41 Joshua, Larry, 168 Joy, Robert, 204 Just for Laughs, 82; episode, “The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller,” 82 Justice, Katherine, 67 Justice in the Back Room (Raab), 81 Kallis, Nichole, 84 Kamel, Stanley, 214 Kanakaredes, Melinda, 203 Kane, Christian, 229 Kapoor, Ravi, 206 Karlen, John, 123 Karnes, Jay, 212 Kash, Linda, 215 Kate Columbo, 74. See also Mrs. Columbo Kate Loves a Mystery, 74. See also Mrs. Columbo Kate the Detective, 74. See also Mrs. Columbo Keach, Stacy, 83 Keaton, Michael, 147 Keith, Brian, 130, 140, 171

249 Kelley, David E., 44, 171, 173–74, 216 Kelly, Michael, 82 Kennedy, George, 45 Kennedy, John F., 47 The Killers, 8 King, Don, 137 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 35 King, Perry, 132 King, Zalman, 86 Kirk, Phyllis, 71 Klugman, Jack, 16, 72 Kneubuhl, John 59 Knight, Gladys, 190 Kojak (TV series, 1970s), 81–82; episode, “The Best Judge Money Can Buy,” 81–82; episode, “Hush Now, Or You’ll Die,” 81 Kojak (TV series, 1980s), 82 Kojak (TV series, 2000s), 82 Kolb, Ken, 11–14, 58–59 Kotto, Yaphet, 175 Kovak, Nancy, 96. See also Mehta, Nancy Kozell, Michael, 116 Kramer, Stefanie, 134–36 Kronish, Stephen, 170–71 Krumholtz, David, 222 Ladd, Cheryl, 104, 143 Ladd, David, 104 L.A. Dragnet. See Dragnet (TV series, 2003) Lagerfelt, Caroline, 180 L.A. Law, 118, 152, 172, 181, 184 Lamas, Fernando, 102 Landau, Martin, 36–38, 218 Landers, Judy, 105 Lane, Lauren, 135 Lanigan’s Rabbi, 72 Lannom, Les, 86 Lansbury, Angela, 139–42 Lansing, Robert, 32 LaPaglia, Anthony, 188, 217 LaPaglia, Jonathan, 190 L.A.P.D.: Life on the Beat, 158

250 Lark, Maria, 225 Larson, Glen A., 65–66, 72, 113–14, 118 The Last Detail, 132 Lauper, Cyndi, 138 The Law and Harry McGraw, 142 Law and Order, 32, 37, 50, 159–69, 176, 179, 189, 199–200, 203, 232; episode (original pilot), “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman,” 160 Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 164–67; episode (pilot), “One,” 165 Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, 163, 164, 165, 167, 176; working title, Law and Order: Sex Crimes, 163 Law and Order: Trial by Jury, 166, 203 Lawford, Peter, 71 Lawrence, Sharon, 184 Lawrence, Steve, 131 The Lawyers, 66. See also The Bold Ones Lea, Nicholas, 171 Leacock, Philip, 60 Leave It to Beaver, 236 Lee, Manfred, 95, 96 Leigh, Barbara, 87 Leigh, Janet, 69 Lemon, Aynsley, 220 Leo, Melissa, 175 Leonard, Herbert, 15 LeRoy, Mervyn, 33 Levine, Ted, 214 Levinson, Barry, 176 Levinson, Richard, 67, 73, 96, 98, 139, 141 Lewis, Jerry, 152 Liddy, G. Gordon, 137 Liggett & Myers, 6–8 Lime Street, 106 Linden, Hal, 82, 139 Link, William, 67, 73, 96, 98, 139, 141 Linn, Rex, 203 Lipton, Peggy, 62–63 The Living Daylights, 128 Lloyd, Sabrina, 222 LoBianco, Tony, 84

Index Locke, Sondra, 77 Locklear, Heather, 121 Loggia, Robert, 102 Lombardo, Guy, 97 London, Julie, 13 Lone Wolf McQuade, 178 Long, Richard, 20 Longstreet, 44 Lord, Jack, 57, 60–61 Lord, Marie, 61 Lord, Phillips H., 9–10 Lords, Traci, 193 Loring, Lynn, 33 Los Angeles Police Academy, 7 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 6, 14, 32, 46–47, 48, 52, 62, 83, 133, 135, 235–36 Lost, 228 Louis, Kimberly, 60 Louis-Dreyfus, Julia, 213 The Love Boat, 103, 107, 139 Loverboy, 232 Loy, Myrna, 70 The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, 28 Lukov, Zoe Dora, 191 Luner, Jamie, 193–94 Lupino, Ida, 69, 80 Lupo, Frank, 133 Lupus, Peter, 36–37 Lynch, Richard, 101 Lyons, Phyllis, 172 MacArthur, James, 58, 60–61 MacGruder & Loud, 207 MacKenzie, J. C., 187 MacNicol, Peter, 223 Madigan, 72 Maffia, Roma, 192 Magnum, P.I., 61, 95, 113–15, 117, 119; episode, “Infinity and Jelly Donuts,” 115; episode, “Limbo,” 115; episode, “Operation: Silent Night,” 114; episode, “Resolutions,” 115; theme, “The Unknown Stuntman,” 118

Index Majors, Lee, 118 Malden, Karl, 78 Malone, Nancy, 16 A Man Called Hawk, 149 The Manchurian Candidate, 140 Mancini, Henry, 23–24, 125, 138 The Mandarin Mystery, 95 Mandylor, Costas, 172 Manetti, Larry, 114 The Man From U.N.C.L.E., 35–36 The Manions of America, 127 Mann, Abby, 81 Mann, Michael, 136, 197 Mannix, 40–42, 91, 103; episode, “Medal for a Hero,” 41; episode, “My Name is Mannix,” 41; episode, “Out of the Night,” 42; episode, “Return to Summer Grove,” 41; episode, “The Sound of Darkness,” 41 Manos, James, Jr., 195 Maple, Jack, 204 Mara, Kate, 220 Mara, Mary, 180 Marano, Laura, 217 Marano, Vanessa, 217 Marchand, Nancy, 194–96 Marcovicci, Andrea, 86 Marcus-Nelson Murders, 81–82 Margolin, Stuart, 92 Marin, Cheech, 180 Marinaro, Ed, 117 Mark VII Limited (Productions), 13, 46, 50, 55 Markham, Monte, 96 Markwell, Terry, 39 Marley, John, 130 Marlow, Hugh, 96 Married…With Children, 154, 189 Martin, Quinn, 29, 32–33, 35, 46, 65, 76–79 Martinez, A., 193 Martinez, Benito, 211 Martin Kane, Private Eye, 6 Massee, Michael, 228

251 Matlin, Marlee, 173 Marvin, Lee, 10 The Mary Kaye Trio, 19 The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 107 Marx, Jeannette, 39 The Marx Brothers, 144 Mascolo, Joseph, 94 M*A*S*H (TV series), 107, 115, 123 Mason, Tom, 170 Masur, Richard, 172 Matlock, 44 Matt Houston, 80 Maude, 123 Maverick, 17, 92 McBain, Diane, 21 McCaffrey, James, 191 McCarthy, Kevin, 59 McCloud, 45, 66–67, 70–72, 113; episode, “The Day New York Turned Blue,” 67; episode, “McCloud Meets Dracula,” 67; episode, “Shivaree on Delaney Street,” 67. See also Four in One McCloud: Who Killed Miss U.S.A.?, 66 McCord, Kent, 51 McCormick, Carolyn, 149 McCormick, Mary, 187 McCoy, 72 McDonough, Neal, 216 McElduff, Ellen, 176 McGavin, Darren, 75 McGraw, Melinda, 171 McIntire, John, 15 McKenna, Alex, 206 McLarty, Ron, 149, 168 McMahon, Horace, 15 McMahon, Julian, 192 McMillan, 73. See also McMillan & Wife McMillan & Wife, 45, 66, 70, 71, 72; episode, “Aftershock,” 71; episode, “Once Upon a Dead Man,” 70, 71; episode, “Terror Times Two,” 71; episode, “Til Death Do Us Part,” 71 McMurtrey, Joan, 120

252 McRaney, Gerald, 118 McShane, Ian, 138 Medic, 11, 12; theme, 11 Medium, 223–27, 231; episode, “Lucky,” 226; episode, “Night of the Wolf,” 226 Meet the Press, 2 Mehta, Nancy, 96. See also Kovak, Nancy Mellencamp, John, 221 Meloni, Christopher, 164 Melrose Place, 207 Melville, Sam, 75 Mendelsohn, Carol, 201, 203 Men in Black, 214 Meredith, Don, 82 Meriweather, Lee, 34, 79 Merkerson, S. Epatha, 162–63 Miami Vice (TV series), 136–39, 179, 197; episode, “Brother’s Keeper,” 136; episode, “Down for the Count,” 137; episode, “Freefall,” 138; episode, “The Hit List,” 137; episode, “The Prodigal Son,” 138; soundtrack album, Miami Vice, 138; soundtrack album, Miami Vice II, 138 The Michael Richards Show, 213 Michael Shayne, 31 Michele, Michael, 190 Milch, David, 182, 184 Milland, Ray, 96 Miller, Marvin, 35 Mills, Judson, 178 Milner, Martin, 51 Milos, Sofia, 203 Mineo, Sal, 86, 97 Missing in Action, 178 Mission: Impossible (feature films), 39 Mission: Impossible (TV Series, 1960s), 35, 37–40, 53, 56, 105; albums, 37; episode, “The Mind of Stefan Miklos,” 37–38; episode, “The Survivors,” 38; theme, 36 Mission: Impossible (TV Series, 1980s), 39; episode, “The Condemned,” 39; episode, “The Fortune,” 39 Mitchell, Don, 43, 45

Index Mitchell, Donna, 150 Mitchell, George, 24 Mitchell, Keith, 142 Mitchell, Thomas, 67–68 Mitchell, Tyrone M., 231 The Mod Squad, 61–63, 65, 74, 153, 207 The Mod Squad (feature film), 63 Moniz, Wendy, 181 Monk, 213–15; episode (pilot), “Mr. Monk and the Candidate,” 214; episode, “Mr. Monk and the Panic Room,” 214; episode, “Mr. Monk and the Psychic,” 215; episode, “Mr. Monk and the TVStar,” 214 Montgomery, Belinda, 137 Montgomery, Elizabeth, 26 Montgomery, Poppy, 217 Moonlighting, 133, 142–48, 224; episode (pilot), 142–43; episode, “Atomic Shakespeare,” 146; episode, “Here’s Living with You, Kid,” 147; episode, “Lunar Eclipse,” 148; episode, “The Straight Poop,” 146 Moore, Roger, 128 Moore, Shemar, 227 Moorehead, Agnes, 67 Morgan, Harry, 47, 50 Moriarty, Michael, 161–62 Morris, Greg, 36, 39, 105 Morris, Kathryn, 219 Morris, Phil, 39 Morrow, Max, 214 Morrow, Rob, 222 Moser, James E., 9, 11–12 Mosley, Roger E., 114 Moxley, Martha, 220 Mr. Lucky, 24, 25, 27; soundtrack albums, 24 Mrs. Columbo, 73, 74; episode, “It Goes with the Territory,” 74; episode, “Ladies of the Afternoon,” 74; episode, “Murder Is a Parlor Game,” 74; episode, “Word Games,” 73. See also Kate Columbo; Kate the Detective; Kate Loves a Mystery

Index MTV Cops, concept, 136. See also Miami Vice Muldaur, Diana, 66 Mulgrew, Kate, 73 Murciano, Enrique, 217 Murder One, 186–89, 208 Murder, She Wrote, 97–98, 136, 139–42, 219 Musante, Tony, 89–90, 93 NAACP Image Awards, 45 Nader, George, 96 Naff, Lycia, 135 The Naked City, 14–16, 19, 31; episode, “Portrait of a Painter,” 16; episode, “The Tragic Success of Alfred Tiloff,” 16 The Name of the Game, 70 The Nancy Walker Show, 73 Nash, David, 99 Nash Bridges, 138, 179–81; episode, “Aloha, Nash,” 180; episode, “The Grateful Dead,” 180; episode, “Hot Prowler,” 181; episode, “Jackpot,” 181 National Enquirer, 146–47 Nauffts, Geoffrey, 171 NBC Mystery Movie (various nights), 42, 45, 65–67, 69, 71–73, 97 Nelson, Craig T., 204 Nelson, Oliver, 44 Nelson, Willy, 137 Ness, Eliot, 28 Neuwirth, Bebe, 166 The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, 154 The New Breed, 32 The New Centurions (novel, Wambaugh), 83; (feature film), 83 The New Doctors, 66. See also The Bold Ones The New Dragnet (TV series, 1989), 50, 53 Newman, Randy, 168–69, 214 New York Undercover, 179, 189–91, 207; episode, “Catman Comes Back,” 190; episode, “The Last Hurrah,” 191; episode, “School’s Out,” 191; soundtrack album,

253 New York Undercover, 190; soundtrack album, New York Undercover: A Night At Natalie’s, 190 Ney, Richard, 23 NFL Monday Night Football, 124, 202, 224 Nguyen, Dustin, 153 Nicholas, Denise, 156 Nichols, Mike, 144 Nielsen, Leslie, 32 Night Court, 117 Night Gallery, 66. See also Four in One A Nightmare on Elm Street, 154 Nimoy, Leonard, 37, 69, 122 Niven, Kip, 97 Nolan, Lloyd, 6, 31 Norris, Chuck, 177 North by Northwest, 128 Northern Exposure, 222 Noth, Christopher, 161–62, 165 Novack, Shelly, 34 Now & Again, 224 Numb3rs (aka Numbers), 221–23, 230; episode, “Calculated Risk,” 223; episode, “In Plain Sight,” 223 The Nurses, 31 N.Y.P.D. Blue, 118, 182–83, 185–86, 195, 199, 210; episode, “A.D.A. Sipowicz,” 184; episode, “Hearts and Souls,” 184; episode, “Voir Dire This,” 185; episode, “In the Wind,” 185 Oakland, Simon, 84, 99 O’Brien, Skip, 201 O’Connell, Jerry, 206 O’Connor, Carroll, 155–56 O’Connor, Donald, 97 O’Connor, Hugh, 156 O’Hara, David, 205 O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, 55, 85 O’Jays, 190 O’Keefe, Jodi Lyn Olandt, Ken, 132 Olmos, Edward James, 137 O’Loughlin, Gerald S., 75 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 78–79

254 O’Neil, Ed, 50 O’Neill, Dick, 124 One Man’s Family (radio show), 6 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 81 Onorati, Peter, 168 Ontkean, Michael, 75 Operation Petticoat (feature film), 27 Oppenheim, Ariel, 148 Oppenheim, Zach, 148 The Oracles, pilot, 224 Orbach, Chris, 164 Orbach, Jerry, 142, 162, 164, 166–67 Ortlieb, Jim, 211 Osborn, Ron, 146 Osterhage, Jeff, 50 O’Toole, Annette, 180 Our Gang comedies, 2 Oz, 196 Paich, David, 44 Paich, Marty, 44 Palm Beach Story, 144 Palminteri, Chazz, 82 Pantoliano, Joe, 196 Parisse, Annie, 163 Parker, Jameson, 118 Parker, Robert B., 148 Parrilla, Lana, 216 Parros, Peter, 53 Party of Five, 208 Patinkin, Mandy, 227–28 Pat Novak, For Hire (radio show), 5 Patten, Robert, 79 Patterson, Lee, 21 Paulsen, Albert, 38 Paymer, David, 170 Peeples, Nia, 178 Penghis, Thaao, 39 Penhall, Bruce, 110 Penn, Leo, 70 Penny, Joe, 132 Peppard, George, 72 Perrin, Vic, 47

Index Perry, Jeff, 180 Perry, Rod, 99 Perry Mason, 8, 31, 42, 44, 46 Pete Kelly’s Blues, 13 Peter Gunn, 23–24, 27, 31; episode, “The Blind Pianist,” 23; episode, “Death House Testament,” 24; soundtrack album, Music From Peter Gunn, 24, 138; soundtrack album, More Music From Peter Gunn, 24, 138 Peterson, William, 200 Pettet, Joanna, 87 Pflug, Jo Ann, 118 Phenomenon, 232 Phillips, Barney, 9–10, 23 Phillips, Bobbie, 187 Phillips, Grace, 187, 223 Phillips, Joseph C., 205 Phillips, Lee, 96 Phillips, Todd, 102 Picket Fences, 172–74; episode (pilot), 172; episode, “Away in the Manger,” 173; episode, “The Green Bay Chopper,” 172 Pidgeon, Walter, 97 Pine, Albert, 229 Pine, Robert, 108 Pinero, Miguel, 136, 138 The Pink Panther, 27 Pino, Danny, 220 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 199 Platoon, 154 Pleasance, Donald, 69, 74 Poitier, Sidney, 155 Police Story (TV series, 1970s), 75, 83–85; episode, “A Chance to Live,” 84; episode, “The Gamble,” 84; episode, “The Return of Joe Forrester,” 84; episode, “Slow Boy,” 83 Police Woman, 84, 122 Polito, Jon 175 Ponce, Poncie, 20

Index Poor, Poor Ophelia (Weston), 78 Post, Markie, 118 Post, Mike, 117, 130, 169 Post, Ted, 123 Pounder, CCH, 212 Powell, William, 70 Powers, Stefanie, 106–7 The Practice, 216 Preece, Michael, 79 Prelutsky, Burt, 49 Prescription: Murder, 67. See also Columbo Presley, Elvis, 126 Price, Eugene, 78 Prine, Andrew, 34–35 Pringle, Joan, 45 Proctor, Emily, 202 Profiler, 192–94; episode, “The Root of All Evil,” 193; episode, “Second Best,” 193 Project U.F.O., 55 Prosky, Robert, 117 The Protectors, 66. See also The Bold Ones Provenza, Paul, 151 The Psychiatrist, 66. See also Four in One Public Arts, 57 Public Morals, 210 The Quest, 129, 152 Quillan, Eddie, 95 Quincy, M.E., 72, 113 Quinlan, Kathleen, 81 Raab, Selwyn, 81 Raiders of the Lost Ark, 115 Raleigh Cigarettes, 15 Randall, Tony, 82 Randolph, John (actor), 82 Randolph, John (writer), 47, 51. See also Webb, Jack Ransom for a Dead Man, 67. See also Columbo Rastatter, Wendy, 84 Ratchford, Jeremy, 221 Rathbone, Jackson, 230

255 Raven, Elsa, 151 Ravera, Gina, 234 Rawat, Navi, 223 Ray, James Earl, 35 Ray, Martha, 73 Read, James, 125, 128 Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, 158 Reba, 236 Rebel Without a Cause, 153 Reddin, Elizabeth, 84 The Red Skelton Show, 15 Reed, Robert, 41, 80 Reefer Madness, 48 Reese, Tom, 96 Regan, Laura, 220 Reid, Tim, 119–20 Reilly, Tom, 110 Remington Steele, 124–29, 143–44; episode, “License to Steele,” 125; episode, “Steele Away with Me,” 128 Renegade, 57 Reno, Jeff, 146 Republic Pictures, 13 Return of Frank Cannon, 77 The Return of Hunter, 136 The Return of Ironside, 46 Return of the Mod Squad, 63 Reynolds, Burt, 76 Reynolds, Corey, 234 Reynolds, William, 13, 34 Rhames, Ving, 82 Rhue, Madlyn, 94 Ribisi, Giovanni, 63 Rice, Elizabeth, 230 Richard Diamond (radio series), 22 Richards, Michael, 213 Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, 57, 92 Richie Brockelman: The Missing 24 Hours, 93 Rieffel, Lisa, 156 Riptide, 129, 132–33, 150–51; episode, “Boz Busters,” 132; episode, “Conflict of Interest,” 132; episode, “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em,” 133

256 Robards, Sam, 149 Roberts, Ben, 103 Roberts, Doris, 128 Roberts, Michael D., 94 Roberts, Tanya, 104–5 Robertson, Dale, 150 Robin Masters (concept), 115 Robins, Michael, 232 Robinson, Holly, 153 Robocop, 128 The Rockford Files, 57, 89–93, 129, 150, 152; episode (pilot), 92 Rodman, Howard, 86 Rodrick, Michael, 231 Rodriguez, Adam, 202 Rogers, Wayne, 95, 142 Rogosin, Joel, 44 Rohm, Elizabeth, 163 Rollins, Howard, 155, 157 The Roman Hat Mystery (Queen), 95 Romen, Rachel, 52 The Rookies, 74–75, 98, 100–101, 103, 207 The Rose, 154 Rosenberg, Arthur, 134 Rosenzweig, Barney, 123 Ross, Charlotte, 185 Rossi, Tony Ray, 195 The Rousters, 134, 152 Rowlands, Gena, 32 Rozsa, Miklos, 8 Rubinstein, Zelda, 172 Ruskin, Buddy, 61 Russ, William, 152 Russell, Mark, 81 Russo, Gianni, 151 Ryan, Cathy Cahlin, 212 Ryan, Marisa, 191 Ryan, Mitchell, 56 Sagal, Boris, 70 Saint James, Susan, 70, 73 Saldana, Theresa, 170 Sanchez, Marco, 178

Index Sandoval, Miguel, 188, 226 San Francisco International Airport, 66. See also Four in One Santiago, Saundra, 137 Santos, Joe, 92, 131 Sarge, 45 Sarnoff, General David, 12 Saunders, Herman S., 53–54 Savalas, George, 81. See also Demosthenes Savalas, Telly, 81–82, 151 Saved by the Bell, 185 Sbarge, Raphael, 193 Schembri, Tony, 170 Schifrin, Lalo, 36, 38, 41 Schram, Bitty, 214–15 Schroder, Rick, 184–85 Schuck, John, 71, 73 Schumann, Walter, 8, 48 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 79 Sciorra, Annabella, 165 Scott, Brenda, 49 Scott, George C., 83 Scott, Ridley, 221 Scott, Tony, 221 Secor, Kyle, 175 Sedgwick, Kyra, 232–35 Seinfeld, 174, 213 Selleck, Tom, 93, 113–15, 118, 170 Serling, Rod, 66 Sevarance, Joan, 152 The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, 12 77 Sunset Strip, 17–22, 27, 31, 33, 61; episode, “Girl on the Run,” 18; episode, “The Silent Caper,” 19; episode, “Six Superior Skirts,” 19 Shadows, 25, 27 Shakespeare, William, 146 Shalhoub, Tony, 214 Shannon, Vicellous, 209 Sharkey, Ray, 151 Shatner, William, 16, 69, 120–21 Shaver, Helen, 122 Shayne, Bob, 115, 119, 120

Index Shear, Barry, 100 Sheen, Martin, 85 Sheinberg, Sid, 56, 57 Sheldon, Sidney, 106 Shenkarow, Justin, 172 Shephard, Greer, 232 Shepherd, Cybill, 133, 142, 144–48 Shepherd, Harvey, 140 Shera, Mark, 80, 99–100 Sheridan, Jamey, 164–65 Sherman, Bobby, 34 The Shield, 171, 211, 213 Sierra, Gregory, 137 Sierra, Margarita, 21 Sigler, Jamie-Lynn, 194 Sikking, James B., 117 Silk Stalkings, 57 Silliphant, Stirling, 15 Silver, Ron, 152 Silverman, Fred, 88, 103, 116 Silver Spoons, 184 Simmons, J. K., 234 Simon, David, 176 Simon & Simon, 118–20 Simon & Simon: In Trouble Again, 120 Simpson, O. J., 188, 233 The Simpsons, 208 Sinise, Gary, 203 The Six Million Dollar Man, 103, 118 60 Minutes, 141 Skakel, Michael, 220 Skerritt, Tom, 172 Slattery’s People, 31 Smart, Jean, 205 Smile Jenny, You’re Dead, 86. See also Harry-O Smith, Jaclyn, 103 Smith, Roger, 17, 19 Smith, Samantha, 106 Smits, Jimmy, 136, 184–85 Smokey and the Bandit, 107 Snoop Dogg, 102 The Snoop Sisters, 72

257 Something to Talk About, 232 Sommars, Julie, 86 The Sopranos, 194–97; episode, “All Due Respect,” 196; episode, “College,” 195; episode, “Members Only,” 196; episode, “Whoever Did This,” 196 Sorkin, Aaron, 44 Sorvino, Paul, 162 Soul, David, 101 The Sound of Music, 168 Spacey, Kevin, 152 Speed, 216 Spelling, Aaron, 61–63, 65, 74–75, 98–101, 103–6, 120–21, 143, 207 Spenser: For Hire, 100, 148–49; episode, “The Choice,” 149 Spielberg, Steven, 70, 115 Springsteen, Bruce, 221 Stack, Robert, 28 Stacy, James, 152 Stander, Lionel, 106–7 Stapleton, Jean, 139 Star, Darren, 207 Starsky & Hutch (feature film, 2004), 102 Starsky & Hutch (TV series), 100–103, 207; episode, “The Fix,” 102; episode, “The Game,” 102; episode, “Shootout,” 102 Star Trek, 122 Steiger, Rod, 155 St. Elsewhere, 176, 183 Stern, Leonard, 71 Stevens, Connie, 19–20 Stevens, Craig, 23, 27 Stevens, Naomi, 105 Stewart, Jimmy, 33 Stewart, Mark, 42 Stiehm, Meredith, 221 Stiller, Ben, 102 St. Leon, Ryan, 137 Stock, Barbara, 148–49 Stocker, Walter, 82 Stone, 57 Strangers on a Train, 19

258 Strauss, Peter, 27 The Streets of San Francisco, 29, 77–78; episode, “Dead Lift,” 79; episode, “Mask of Death,” 78 Strike Force, 120 Stringfield, Sherry, 182 Stuart, Randy, 49 Sturges, Preston, 144 Sugarfoot, 17 Sullivan’s Travels, 144 A Summer Place, 21 Sunset, 147 Supernatural, 230 Surfside Six, 17, 21, 31 Sutherland, Kiefer, 208 Swanson, Robert, 141–42 S.W.A.T. (TV series), 80, 98–100, 103; episode, “Death Carrier,” 99; episode, “The Killing Field,” 98; episode, “Kill S.W.A.T.,” 99; episode, “Sole Survivor,” 99 Sweeney, Bob, 60 Swit, Loretta, 123 Switch, 75, 106, 113 Swofford, Ken, 96 Szmanda, Eric, 201 Tagawa, Cary-Hiroyuki, 180 Talbott, Michael, 137 The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare), 146 Tartikoff, Brandon, 116, 134, 136, 138, 160 Temple Houston, 22 The Temptations, 190 Tenafly, 72 Tenney, Joe, 234 Tenspeed and Brownshoe, 151 Tessier, Michael, 82 That’s Life, 204 Theroux, Justin, 204 Thigpen, Lynne, 204–5 The Thin Man (feature film), 128, 144 The Thin Man (TV series), 71

Index Thinnes, Roy, 66 Thomas, Betty, 117 Thomas, Danny, 61, 67 Thomas, Heather, 118 Thomas, Jake, 218 Thomas, Philip Michael, 136 Thomas, Serena Scott, 180 Thompson, Fred Dalton, 152, 166 Thorne, Geoffrey, 156 Three Men and a Baby, 115 Threshold, 230 Tighe, Kevin, 188 Tightrope, 40 Tinker, Grant, 116 Tinker, Mark, 183–86 T.J. Hooker, 120–22, 181, 207; episode, “The Protectors,” 121; episode, “Vengeance Is Mine,” 122 Tobin, Michele, 122 Today’s F.B.I., 120 Togo, Jonathan, 202 Toma, David, 89 Toma, 89–90, 93 The Tony Randall Show, 82 Top Gun, 199, 221 Toto (music group), 44 Touched by an Angel, 142, 219 Towne, Dorothy, 13 Travanti, Daniel J., 116 Trotter, Kate, 215 The Trouble with Harry, 128 Troup, Ronne, 99 Tucci, Stanley, 152, 187 Tunie, Tamara, 164 Turner, Tina, 138 Turturro, John, 215 Twelve O’Clock High (TV series), 31 21 Jump Street, 153–55, 189; episode, “A Big Disease with a Little Name,” 154; episode, “Blindsided,” 154 24 (TV series, 2001), 189, 208–10, 215; episode (pilot), 208–9 Twin Peaks, 172

Index Underwood, Jay, 150 Universal Studios, 24, 42, 46, 54–56, 65, 81, 89–91, 95–96, 113–15, 129, 150 The Untouchables (feature film), 39 The Untouchables (TV series), 28–30, 35; episode, “The Scarface Mob,” 28 Urecal, Minerva, 23 Urich, Robert, 99–100, 105, 148 Urquhart, Gordon, 5 The U.S. Steel Hour, 16 Valerie, 169 Vance, Courtney B., 164–65 Vangsness, Kristen, 228 Van Patten, Joyce, 60 Vassilieva, Sofia, 225 Vaughn, Robert, 70 Vega$, 100, 105–6 Velez, Lauren, 190 Vereen, Ben, 151 Vidal, Lisa, 190 Vigoda, Abe, 82 Vivyan, John, 24 Vogel, Darlene, 202 Voight, Jon, 39 Volz, Nedra, 118 Wachs, Caitlin, 192 Wagner, Lindsay, 92 Wagner, Robert, 106–7 Wahl, Ken, 151, 152 Wahlberg, Donnie, 216 Walker, Ally, 192 Walker, Nancy, 71, 73 Walker, Texas Ranger, 177–79, 181, 204; episode, “The Final Show/Down,” 178 Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire, 179 Walsh, Adam, 157 Walsh, John, 157–58 Walston, Ray, 172 Walter, Jessica, 45 Wambaugh, Joseph, 83 Wanted: Dead or Alive, 24 The War at Home, 236

259 Ward, Arthur, 33 Ward, Richard, 101 Warner Bros. Studios, 16–22, 32, 35, 46 Warren, Lesley Ann, 37 Warren, Michael, 116 Watching Ellie, 213 Waxman, Al, 123 Wayne, David, 96 Wayne, Ethan, 53 Weatherly, Shawn, 151 Weathers, Carl, 156 Weaver, Dennis, 66, 124 Webb, Jack, 5–14, 22–23, 46, 48–49, 51, 53–57, 72; as John Randolph, 47 Weber, Jake, 165, 225 Weiss, Michael T., 206 Weitz, Bruce, 117 Welles, Orson, 114–15 Werewolf, 154 West, Chandra, 200 Westerman, Floyd Red Crow, 178 Weston, Carolyn, 78 West Side Story, 168 Whaley, Michael, 192 White, Bernard, 50 White, Collette, 187 The White Shadow, 183 Whitmore, James, Jr., 134 Widmark, Richard, 72 Wilcox, Larry, 107, 109–10 Wildmon, Rev. Donald, 182 Williams, Clarence, III, 62–63 Williams, Steven, 154 Williams, Van, 20 Williamson, Fred, 102 Williamson, Mykelti, 216 Willingham, Nobel, 177–78 Willis, Bruce, 133, 143–48 Wilson, Jeannie, 117 Wilson, Owen, 102 Wilson, Sheree J., 177 Winchell, Walter, 35 Windom, William, 141

260 Windsor, Geri, 126 Winfield, Paul, 152 Wings, 214 Winters, Dean, 164 Wired (feature film), 170 Wiseguy, 40, 57, 120, 151–52, 159, 169–71, 208; episode (pilot), 151; episode, “No One Gets Out of Here Alive,” 151 Without a Trace, 217, 219; episode, “End Game,” 218; episode, “Our Sons and Daughters,” 236; episode, “Revelations,” 218; episode, “Wannabe,” 218; episode, “When Darkness Falls,” 218 The Wizard of Oz, 172 Wlcek, Jimmy, 178 Wolf, Dick, 50, 160–61, 163–64, 166–67, 189, 199, 203 Wonder Woman, 123 Wood, Evan Rachel, 193 Wood, Natalie, 106 Wood, Ward, 41 Woodbury, George, 81 Worthy, Rick, 189

Index Writers Guild of America (WGA), 44 Wylie, Adam, 172 Wyndham, Anne, 82 Wynter, Dana, 46 X-Files, 173, 176, 208; episode, “Red Museum,” 173 Yagher, Jeff, 153–54 Yarborough, Barton, 6, 9 Yniguez, Richard, 135 Yoba, Malik, 189–90 Yost, Graham, 216 You Bet Your Life, 9 Young, Collier, 43 Young, Victor, 11 Yuan, Ron, 204 Zerbe, Anthony, 87–88 Zimbalist, Efrem, Jr., 17–18, 22, 33–35, 125 Zimbalist, Stephanie, 125–26, 128 Zmed, Adrian, 121–22 Zuiker, Anthony, E., 201, 203–4 Zulu, 58

About the Author DOUGLAS SNAUFFER is an accomplished scriptwriter and producer whose work has aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. He writes frequently on subjects related to television and film for several publications, including the Akron Beacon Journal and the magazines Starlog and Fangoria.