Barnaby Jones season 1 (1973)

Barnaby Jones started life as a spin-off from the very successful Cannon private eye TV series. Barnaby Jones would go on to be a massive hit, running for no less than eight seasons.

Buddy Ebsen was already a household name thanks to The Beverly Hillbillies which ended its long run in 1971. By that time Ebsen was well into his sixties but his career was far from over. Barnaby’s daughter-in-law Betty acts as his secretary and confidant. She’s played, and played pretty well, by Lee Meriwether.

The first episode of Barnaby Jones, Requiem for a Son, seems at first like it’s an episode of Cannon. Frank Cannon is preparing one of his gourmet meals when he gets a phone call from a friend who is also in the private detective business, a guy by the name of Hal Jones. Jones is in trouble and wants to talk to Cannon, Cannon tells him to come to his apartment, Jones doesn’t show up. The next morning Cannon finds out his friend has been murdered. He gets the news from Hal’s father, Barnaby. Now we find out about Barnaby Jones. He’s a private eye as well, but retired. His son had taken over the business. Now Barnaby is out of retirement and he intends to track down his son’s murderer, with some help from Cannon.

Barnaby is no spring chicken but he’s tough physically and mentally. He’s tough, but it’s his own distinctive brand of toughness. He doesn’t touch alcohol but he does enjoy a cold glass of milk. He also has a degree in forensic science and has his own little forensics laboratory – very convenient when you want some answers about a clue but you don’t want  the answers to come from the police.

Barnaby Jones slots into what you could call the gimmick detective category which enjoyed quite a vogue in the late 60s and early 70s. There was Ironside, the wheelchair-bound detective. There was Longstreet, the blind detective. There was Cannon, the fat detective. And then came Barnaby Jones, the old detective. Unfortunately apart from that gimmick Barnaby Jones is very much a routine private eye series, with some rather pedestrian scripts. On the plus side, like all Quinn Martin’s shows, it boasts high production values and it’s very polished and very well-made. Buddy Ebsen is excellent. What I particularly like about his performance is that he doesn’t try too hard to make Jones a loveable old codger but he also doesn’t try too hard to make him a crusty old curmudgeon. Jones comes across as a fairly likeable guy but one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Lee Meriwether doesn’t get a whole lot to do. She is pretty good though and she and Buddy Ebsen make a good team.

The Episode Guide
To Catch a Dead Man is a very very Columbo-like episode. It not only follows the Columbo formula, it has very much the Columbo feel as well. It opens with a rich man, Philip Carlyle, committing a murder that is clearly intended to cover his own disappearance. He then changes his appearance and pops up in the sleepy little town of Lake Tomac California under the name Fred A. Williams. Barnaby is employed by the murdered man’s girlfriend and he follows the trail to Lake Tomac where we are treated to a Columbo-like battle of wits between Barnaby and the killer, with Barnaby doing the exaggerated folksy schtick to persuade the killer to underestimate him. The killer is played by William Shatner and he’s a typical Columbo murderer – rich, clever, ruthless and arrogant but with an over-confidence that might well bring him undone. There’s nothing wrong with the story, in fact it’s quite hood, it’s just uncannily Columbo-like.

In Sunday: Doomsday someone is threatening to kill Barnaby. Of course we know it’s some crazy guy who’s just out of prison and who blames Barnaby for sending him there. Of course Barnaby also knows that it has to be some ex-con wanting revenge. So this is an episode that is not exactly scoring any points for originality. It’s executed well enough and there’s a clever touch at the end but otherwise it’s pretty routine.

The Murdering Class takes Jones to an exclusive boys’ school where the headmistress’s brother has met a violent death which has been made to look like an accident. The title is interesting since apart from it obvious meaning it seems to have some definite class overtones, with evil WASPs being the murdering class. An interesting episode.

In Perchance to Kill Barnaby is hired to find a teenaged runaway. The girl and her boyfriend are suspects in a murder but Barnaby doesn’t find the evidence to be overly persuasive, even if they are hippies. Barnaby is more interested in the victim’s business partner, and he’s especially interested in a white suit. A routine story but it’s OK.

Barnaby Jones has been in the game a long time but in The Loose Connection he suffers the embarrassment of being set up as a drug courier. The most interesting thing about this story is that we see that Barnaby is fallible. He makes not jut one but two big mistakes. A reasonably solid episode.

Writer Harry Doyle disappears in Murder in the Doll’s House and Barnaby’s job is to find him, but we know from the first scene of the episode that Harry isn’t going to be found. This one features a strong guest cast including Jack Cassidy (always fun when he turned up as a sinister crazy in detective series) and Anne Francis. Harry had been spending some time in his home town and Barnaby starts to think that the answer to his disappearance may lie in the past, in a tragic accident six years earlier. It’s another solid enjoyable episode.

In Sing a Song of Murder a pop singer meets an untimely end and his business managers decide this could be an opportunity for them rather than a disaster. They have a plan. It’s a crazy plan but if it works it means lots of money. Meanwhile Barnaby has been hired to find the girl who was with the pop star on his unlucky last night on earth. Barnaby solves this case with forensic science which gives it bonus points. A pretty good episode.

See Some Evil… Do Some Evil starts of course with a murder. As usual we know the identity of the killer right from the start and we know the killer’s major secret as well. What we don’t know is why Stan Lambert he would want to kill Henry Warren. In fact we have no idea why anyone would have wanted to kill him. Barnaby picks up a couple of neat (and subtle) little clues in this story. And the trap he lays for the killer is quite clever. A very entertaining episode. It also has Roddy McDowall being sinister which earns it bonus points.

Murder-Go-Round presents Barnaby with a case that doesn’t sound too promising. A man visiting the little town of Parker Junction is killed by a hit-run driver. His wife gets it into her head that there was more to it. And it turns out there’s a whole lot more to it. Buddy Ebsen is the best thing about Barnaby Jones and he’s in particularly good form in this one, giving an amused and almost playful performance. A good episode.

To Denise, with Love and Murder is about a man who marries an older woman for her money. It works out for him as you might expect it to do. He starts an affair with a younger woman, she wants him to marry her, his wife finds out and it all gets very complicated and unpleasant. And ends in murder. It seems straightforward but everyone, including Barnaby,  jumps to the wrong conclusion. It’s not dazzlingly original but it’s well executed.

In A Little Glory, a Little Death a has-been Hollywood star has become involved in something very shady and he’s been very indiscreet about it and now he has a witness to deal with, a very inconvenient witness. Barnaby is hired by a young actress whose mother, also an actress, has disappeared having been last seen at a party at the home of that faded Hollywood star. The main twist is a rather hackneyed plot device that rarely works convincingly. A very pedestrian episode.

Twenty Million Alibis is obviously a story that hinges on an alibi. A reformed jewel thief turned author can’t possibly have committed a daring robbery because at the time he was on national television, and although six minutes are unaccounted for he couldn’t possibly have carried out the robbery, but he did. It’s up to Barnaby to break the unbreakable alibi. A fairly enjoyable story.

Final Thoughts
I mentioned Columbo earlier. This series does mostly follow the Columbo inverted detective story structure. We see the murder at the beginning and we know the murderer’s entity. The interest comes from seeing how Barnaby will arrive at the correct solution.

Columbo did it better of course. The scripts for Barnaby Jones are just not as strong or as consistent.

Barnaby Jones was however a huge hit, running for no less than eight seasons, so obviously audiences liked it more than I did. That’s not to say I disliked it. Not at all. It’s rather lightweight and it’s not exactly ground-breaking but it’s decent harmless entertainment.

Barnaby Jones is available on DVD pretty much everywhere. The first season of course was only thirteen episodes.

Worth a look.

McCloud season 1 (1970)

The 1970s was a real golden age for American TV mystery/detective series. There were good 70s cop shows and good 70s private eye shows but the most enjoyable and most characteristic American 70s crime shows were the puzzle-plot murder mysteries in which a brilliant detective matches wits with a brilliant criminal. Columbo was the most famous of these series but Ellery Queen and Banacek were every bit as good, and McMillan and Wife had its moments.

And there was also McCloud. It ran for seven years on NBC so it was one of the most successful of the genre.

What all these series had in common, apart from obvious structural similarities, was that they had colourful and charismatic detective heroes. McCloud certainly qualifies on both counts. Sam McCloud is a Deputy Marshal from a one-horse town in New Mexico. An important case takes him to New York City and for reasons which never really make sense he ends up being on more or less permanent loan to the NYPD. The NYPD isn’t quite sure what to do with him, he can be a bit of an embarrassment but on the other hand he does keep on solving major cases for them.

Dennis Weaver had had a long career already by this time but in McCloud he demonstrates considerable and hitherto unsuspected star quality. When you take Weaver’s performance, combine it with the fish-out-of-water country hick teaching the city slickers a thing or two theme and some fairly solid scripts you have the ingredients for a pretty entertaining series.

Portrait of a Dead Girl was the pilot episode. Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud has to track down a witness who has ignored a subpoena. He finds him in the wilds of New Mexico. McCloud is not altogether thrilled at the idea of having to escort the prisoner all the way to New York, but McCloud always does his duty.

The witness, James Waldron (Shelley Novack), may be able to give evidence that would overturn the conviction of Luis Ramos for the murder of a beauty queen. Or his evidence may have an entirely different effect. No-one knows but clearly someone does not want Waldron to testify since he is kidnapped as soon as he arrives in New York. This is pretty embarrassing for McCloud and he intends to find the kidnapped witness and those responsible for snatching him.

McCloud’s presence in New York is unwelcome to chief of detectives Peter Clifford (Peter Mark Richman). Ramos’s defence attorney Del Whitman (Craig Stevens) also seems disturbed by McCloud’s presence. The one person who is delighted by McCloud is journalist Chris Coughlin (Diana Muldaur). She’s written a book on the beauty queen murder but she doesn’t seem to care if McCloud finds evidence to discredit her book. She finds him fascinating and she’s a good enough reporter to know that Sam McCloud is good copy and hanging around with him will undoubtedly be useful to her career-wise.

The plot is pretty far-fetched. It also has some political overtones and that’s something that American television invariably did poorly.

Dennis Weaver was already well known to viewers from his rôle in the long-running Gunsmoke series. McCloud made him a bona fide star. He’s perfect as the Deputy Marshal from New Mexico. He doesn’t overdo the wide-eyed innocence and he doesn’t overdo the dumb hick thing. Sam McCloud finds New York to be a very strange place but he’s a smart cop and he learns quickly and he’s nobody’s fool. To some extent he uses the Columbo technique of persuading suspects to underestimate him.

Diana Muldaur is a semi-regular character in the series and provides a love interest for Sam McCloud as well as managing to get him lots of publicity which gets him into constant trouble. She’s pretty good. Terry Carter as Sergeant Joe Broadhurst plays the sidekick rôle and does it fairly effectively.

Portrait of a Dead Girl doesn’t quite gel for me, partly because I just didn’t but the central plot idea as being plausible. But it does introduce Sam McCloud effectively enough.

The first episode of the first season proper is Who Says You Can’t Make Friends in New York City? McCloud has been posted to Peter Clifford’s precinct in New York to learn about big city policing. I have no idea why a Deputy Marshal from New Mexico would need to learn such things but the premise of the whole series is that it’s about a hick cop in the big city so some justification for his continued presence had to be cooked up. McCloud proves to be a bit of an embarrassment to Clifford who is overjoyed when he finds an excuse to ship McCloud back to New Mexico. The only problem is that McCloud refuses to go until he’s cleared up the case he’s stumbled into.

Horse Stealing on Fifth Avenue is about actual horse stealing on Fifth Avenue, and it’s about a gunman who won’t kill. It’s an offbeat tale and it plays to the strengths of McCloud as a character – he gets to crack a few down-home jokes, he gets to demonstrate his gift for understanding and empathising with people and he gets to approach a case in his own inimitable and unconventional way. And he gets to play the climactic action scene on horseback!

The rodeo comes to New York in The Concrete Corral and McCloud is assigned to keep an eye on the cowboys. He’s pretty annoyed by this since he’d rather be chasing actual criminals but he’ll find plenty to keep him occupied with those cowboys, especially when their dramas lead to murder. And McCloud finds that when you have to track down a country boy it’s a definite advantage to be able to think like a country boy yourself. A decent episode.

The Stage Is All the World plunges McCloud into the world of the theatre where a megalomaniac producer is receiving death threats but he has a track record of publicity stunts so the threats may or may not be bogus. The threats still have to be taken seriously, and McCloud is inclined to think there really is a tragedy brewing. A pretty solid episode.

In Walk in the Dark McCloud gets assigned to an all-female squad for training. As you might expect there’s a fair bit of politically incorrect humour (in fact there’s quite a bit of political incorrectness in this episode, this being 1970 when it wasn’t necessary to tread so carefully). McCloud fears he’s going to be stuck investigating shoplifting incidents but in fact he finds himself in the middle of a multiple murder case, with one of the victims being a policewoman. He’s not supposed to be on the murder case but when Sam McCloud is given an instruction he tends to interpret it rather loosely. He also finds time for some romantic dalliance with a pretty young policewoman (played by Susan Saint James). There are some interesting moral subtexts to this story, subtexts you would never get away with today, wth McCloud being less than happy about young women being used as bait for a murderer. It’s a good story with a solution that is a bit far-fetched but still quite clever.

Our Man in Paris is a change of pace. What could possibly be more fun than having a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico running loose in New York City? That’s easy. Having a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico running loose in Paris. Chief Clifford is held hostage and McCloud is forced to fly to Paris with a briefcase full of money, very hot money. It’s not all bad though, since McCloud strikes up a friendship with a pretty French stewardess. One thing they do appreciate in Taos, New Mexico is a pretty girl, and McCloud appreciates them more than most (and it has to be said that the ladies seem to find him irresistible). This is a fine thriller episode to close out the first season.

A word of warning in regard to the DVD releases of McCloud. After their original broadcast the six first season episodes were clumsily edited together into three feature-length episodes. The editing was done so badly that some of the original writers and directors subsequently had their names removed from the credits in disgust. The original hour-long episodes were later lost. When McCloud was released on DVD in the U.S. only the butchered movie-length versions were available and and so those were the ones issued on DVD. Then Madman Entertainment in Australia located the original hour-long versions, which fortunately were in excellent condition. Madman’s Australian DVD release of the first season includes both the original hour-long versions and the edited feature-length versions. So if you’re going to buy the first season on DVD the Madman release (which is in print and easily obtainable in the U.S.) is the only one to consider buying. Of course you’ll need to remember that the Madman release is Region 4.

McCloud isn’t quite in the same league as Columbo or Banacek but it’s still very enjoyable viewing and it’s recommended. There you go.

The F.B.I., season one part one (1965)

The F.B.I. was one of the many hit TV series in the action/adventure genre made by Quinn Martin Productions in the 1960s. In fact it was the most successful of all Quinn Martin’s productions, running for nine seasons from 1965 to 1974. The F.B.I. has been released on DVD in half-season sets and it’s the first part of season one with which this review is concerned.

In this series we always know the identity of the perpetrator right from the start, so these are inverted crime stories. This is also very much in the police procedural mould, with the interest lying in the methods used by the F.B.I. to hunt down wrongdoers.

The two lead characters are Inspector Lewis Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr) and Special Agent Jim Rhodes (Stephen Brooks). Erskine is the old hand and he’s a complex character with some personal tragedies that he’s still working through. Rhodes is a young hotshot but he’s a decent guy and the two agents have a very amicable relationship.

You have to remember that this series originated in 1965 and in 1965 the idea of a series that painted the F.B.I. in an entirely heroic light seemed pretty reasonable. And this series really does present a very very favourable view of the Bureau. It was made with the blessing of J. Edgar Hoover (who was still F.B.I. Director at the time).

The fact that the series began its run in 1965 really is quite important. The F.B.I. deals with all sorts of crimes and this includes political crimes. In 1965 it could be assumed that any political crime would almost certainly be the work of communist agents working for Moscow. And it could be assumed that these communist agents would be working class. This is 1965, just before the social revolution of the 60s. Within a couple of years the F.B.I. would be looking for subversives at university campuses rather than among dock workers.

Social and sexual mores were also about to change radically. In the first season Erskine’s daughter Barbara and Special Agent Rhodes have fallen in love and want to get married. Erskine wants her to wait until she finishes college. Barbara and Rhodes want to get married straight away. Within a few years a senior F.B.I. officer like Inspector Erskine would be delighted by anything that would get his daughter away from the subversive atmosphere of university.

The Episode Guide
The Monster was a rather bizarre opening episode for any series. A con-man named Francis Jerome (Jeffrey Hunter) has escaped from a federal prison. Jerome preys on women. What the F.B.I. don’t know is that he also kills women. Jerome is a seriously weird guy with a weird history.

Erskine is convinced that Jerome will return to his home town. He also suspects that he will try to make contact with one of his previous victims, Jean Davis. There’s some rather odd flirtatious stuff going on between Jean Davis and Erskine. In fact Jean Davis is pretty seriously weird as well. This is just a weird episode.

Image in a Cracked Mirror is a lot better. Erskine and Rhodes are hunting an embezzler. Charles Gates (Jack Klugman) has covered his tracks well. He has managed to destroy every photograph that has ever been taken of him. No-one really seems to know what he looks like. He’s now on the run with his 13-year-old son and that could be his weakness. It’s a weakness that Erskine is prepared to exploit with a ruthlessness that shocks Rhodes. Erskine has an odd personal stake in this case because Gates reminds him of himself. A very good episode.

A Mouthful of Dust is like a flashback to the Wild West, with Erskine and Rhodes saddling up (with six-guns in their gun belts) to join a posse tracking down an Indian. Joe Cloud (Alejandro Rey) is accused of killing a man who raped his wife. Erskine had been Cloud’s commanding officer in Korea and Cloud turns to Erskine for help. Erskine doesn’t want to let Joe down, but he does. Can he then put things right? Can Cloud be persuaded to save himself? Rey’s performance is OK but the Argentina-born actor’s very strong accent is rather wrong and jarring. Italian-American Robert Blake is no more Native American than Rey but he pulls off the important rôle of Joe’s brother Pete Cloud much more successfully. An offbeat episode that works, up to a point.

Slow March Up a Steep Hill is a case of history repeating itself, or at least it seems like it. A bank in Exeter Maryland is robbed and the same bank is robbed again three days later. Everything about these robberies seems to parallel a similar case in 1938. And the 1938 bank robber has just been released from prison. Erskine trusts his instincts on this one. Everyone thinks he’s on the wrong track but he won’t compromise. An excellent episode.

The Insolents involves a very rich young man accused of murder. Special Agent Rhodes seems to have a personal stake in this case. It’s a mystery that appears to have only one solution but what if that solution is the wrong one? This time around it’s Rhodes who has to trust his instincts. Not a bad episode.

In To Free My Enemy Erskine has been trying to find evidence to convict pornographer Bert Anslem. Now his suspect has been kidnapped by a trio of cheap punks and Erskine has to save him. By saving him he may also be helping him to escape justice. But Erskine has no choice. He has to do his best to save Anslem. A good episode with with some cool police procedural stuff.

Given the priorities of the F.B.I. in the sixties it’s perhaps surprising that it’s not until the seventh episode, The Problem of the Honorable Wife, that the evil commies make their first appearance. They’re planing to sabotage the U.S. war effort in Vietnam by planting bombs on the San Francisco dockside. One of the saboteurs is married to a Japanese woman and she unwittingly puts the Feds on her husband’s trail. This is an episode in which Special Agent Rhodes, who is basically a decent young guy, feels just a little uncomfortable about working for the F.B.I. This is quite an interesting episode.

In Courage of a Conviction Lew Erskine should be a very happy man. He’s just caught up with a master forger who has eluded all law enforcement agencies for years. He’s a forger on the grand scale and it’s quite a feather in Erskine’s cap. But he’s not happy. It’s all because of a girl he saw in Ray Lang’s office. The girl is a junkie and Ray is a lawyer who has been supplying the F.B.I. with quality information for years. Ray and Lew are also old buddies. But what is Ray Lang doing with a junkie? As he connects the dots Lew realises  that the unshakeable case he had against that forgery suspect isn’t so unshakeable after all. This is one of a number of episodes that emphasises two key things about Lew Erskine. Firstly, he trusts his instincts no matter what. And secondly, he will risk his own career rather than see a man convicted if he becomes convinced that the man is innocent. Of course it not emphasises Erskine’s high moral standards but also those of the Bureau (and emphasising the honesty and probity of the F.B.I. was a pretty good idea for a series that relied heavily on the coöperation and goodwill of J. Edgar Hoover).

The Exiles would appear to be inspired by the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Exiles from a certain Latin American nation are planning to launch an invasion to overthrow the ruling dictator. The F.B.I. have to persuade the leader of the exiles, General Rafael Romero, not to go ahead with the invasion. It’s not that the U.S. government doesn’t want the dictator overthrown but the F.B.I. has intelligence that indicates that the invasion is guaranteed to be a messy and expensive failure and therefore very embarrassing to the U.S., especially given that the invasion is planned to be launched from Florida.

This is an intriguing one. General Romero and his private army (and his rich backer Maria Blanca) are not portrayed as being the bad guys, in fact they’re portrayed as heroes,  and yet they have to be stopped at all costs. And Erskine has to infiltrate Romero’s group and betray them. This is a surprisingly ethically complex tale and it’s also surprisingly realistic in depicting international relations as a frustrating quagmire. A very fine episode.

The Giant Killer is a total hoot. A fanatic is trying to sabotage a U.S. ballistic missile being transported by road to an Air Force base. This is not just a regular nuclear missile. This is a brand new design and it’s immensely important. If this missile is sabotaged the whole free world will be endangered and world communism will triumph. The paranoia is approaching Dr Strangelove levels in this episode. On the other hand it’s certainly exciting and the idea that a lone fanatic with a rifle can destroy a ballistic missile is intriguing. Robert Duvall is at his crazed best as the lone fanatic. The epilog to this episode is absolutely beyond belief. Dr Strangelove himself would have been embarrassed. A bizarre but weirdly and morbidly fascinating episode.

In All the Streets Are Silent automatic weapons are stolen from the U.S. Marine Corps. Erskine persuades cab driver Frankie Metro to turn informant but informing on the Murtaugh brothers is dangerous work. This one includes a fairly spectacular shoot-out. A pretty good episode.

An Elephant Is Like a Rope presents Erskine and Rhodes with an odd problem. They have a young man with a bullet wound in the head. He’s going to make a full recovery but is suffering from compete amnesia. So he can’t tell the G-Men where the half million dollars in his possession came from. There’s no actual evidence that he has committed any crime. The half million dollars seems to be clean. A strange little offbeat story but it works.

How to Murder an Iron Horse is somewhat silly but very enjoyable. It taps into 1950s obsessions that bad child-rearing practices were going to turn kids into juvenile delinquents. And this is really a typical 50s B-movie juvenile delinquent story with some bizarre diabolical criminal mastermind flourishes thrown in. A young man whose father was more interested in his model trains than his son now wants to blow up trains. Not model trains, real trains. And he demonstrates that he can indeed blow up a freight train. If he isn’t paid $100,000 he threatens to blow up a passenger train. It’s all quite crazy but if you like trains and explosions you’ll enjoy it.

Pound of Flesh is one of the few episodes in which we’re not sure of the identity of the criminal. The chaplain’s wife at an army base is murdered. Private First Class Byron Landy is the obvious suspect and there really isn’t much doubt of his guilt. In fact Erskine and Rhodes wouldn’t have any doubts about the case themselves if only Landy hadn’t confessed. But the confession really seemed bogus and now the two F.B.I. men are more or less convinced of his innocence. Unfortunately the media, the civilian authorities in the nearby town, the base commander and the top brass in the Pentagon just want a quick arrest and Erskine and Rhodes are put under extreme pressure. Of course if you try to put Lew Erskine under pressure like that he just gets really really stubborn. A very good episode with a good performance by Leslie Nielsen as the chaplain blinded by hatred.

The Hijackers is a rather light-hearted episode involving a truck hijacking which is actually a practical joke gone wrong. This one tries to combine whimsicality with sentimentality. The results are not as bad as you might anticipate.

The Forests of the Night deals with a fundamentalist Christian sect victimised by an extortionist on top of having to deal with less than sympathetic neighbours. When you’re dealing with such subject matter there’s always the risk of becoming preachy and that’s what happens here. This is crude hate-filled propaganda that portrays rural people as knuckle-dragging redneck bigots. A shockingly bad episode.

Final Thoughts
It’s easy to mock this series. There’s plenty of full-on hysteria about evil commies and the whole country seems to be overflowing with fifth columnists and foreign agents. But this is how reality looked to most people in 1965. There’s a sincerity about the series that tends to win you over. Erskine and Rhodes and their colleagues at the Bureau are brave dedicated men and they’re thorough professionals. This is basically a police procedural. We pretty much always know who the bad guys are right from the start so the interest lies in the methods used to track down the criminals. There’s some high-tech stuff but mostly Erskine and Rhodes rely on hard work and patient methodical routine investigative procedures. These guys do not give up. One of the things I really love is seeing the technical side of law enforcement in 1965 – it’s all still delightfully analog! To find a fingerprint match you go through thousands of fingerprints on file, and you go through them with a magnifying glass!

The series is a fascinating time capsule with a slightly melancholy edge – the American  society depicted in the first season in 1965 had to a large extent ceased to exist by the time the series ended its run in 1974.

The F.B.I. is a slightly odd series.  The tone is sometimes very serious, occasionally quite dark, and at other times light-hearted and even whimsical. The scripts are however mostly clever and well-constructed and often quite original and the execution is always top-notch. There are unfortunately occasional signs of the preachiness that was already starting to infect American television (signs that are also all too apparent in another contemporary Quinn Martin production, The Fugitive). Production values are high. Efrem Zimbalist Jr has real star quality. This was, like most Quinn Martin productions, very well-made television.

Recommended.

McMillan and Wife, season 3 (1973), part one

The third season of McMillan and Wife is basically the formula as before, but with perhaps a slightly more outrageous tinge.

The format is still the same, which each season comprising a handful of feature-length episodes.

It still relies a good deal on the superb chemistry between Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James. Mrs McMillan is still managing to get herself quite innocently mixed up with just about every major crime in San Francisco. And somehow Stewart McMillan, the Police Commissioner, is still managing to find excuses to take personal charge of investigations in a way that no actual police commissioner ever would. The fact that these two elements in the formula stretch credibility to breaking point is no problem at all. McMillan and Wife does not pretend even for a moment to be a realistic cop series. It’s a series that follows the conventions of the puzzle-plot mysteries of the golden age of detective fiction in which the detective hero is always conveniently on the spot whenever a murder occurs, and always seems by an uncanny coincidence to have some link to either the victim or the killer. It was a type of fiction that actively rejected realism, and McMillan and Wife rejects realism in an exceptionally thorough way.

It’s also a series that to some extent traces its ancestry back to the 1934 hit movie The Thin Man, which established the husband-and-wife crime-solving team as guaranteed box-office gold.

The season opener is Death of a Monster… Birth of a Legend and it takes Commissioner McMillan and his wife Sally to Scotland for a vacation. They’ll be staying in the McMillan castle, owned by the laird who happens to be McMillan’s uncle. And while it might seem very strange that Sergeant Enright should suddenly show up at the castle that’s exactly what happens.

The very first thing that happens after the Commissioner and his wife arrive is that the old laird shoots himself. In fact McMilan doesn’t even get to see his uncle alive. It’s obviously suicide.

McMillan however seems rather unconvinced by the suicide explanation. The viewer of course knows it can’t be suicide because then we wouldn’t have a story.

There’s a certain “it was a dark and stormy night” ambience to this story. The family solicitor tells ghost stories, in this case about a ghost who would have a very good reason to be ill-disposed to the Laird McMillan.

If you’re going to have dark and stormy nights and ghosts and castles you might as well go for broke and have all the gothic trimmings including secret passageways. Which is exactly  what we get.

Apart from the gothic angle this is also an attempt at a locked-room mystery and while there’s an obvious explanation that explanation is not necessarily the correct one.

Now at this point you might be thinking that this is all a little bit far-fetched if not silly. If you are thinking that you should just stop. This is McMillan and Wife and McMillan and Wife was never intended to be taken very seriously. It’s lightweight and it’s meant to be lightweight. The idea is to have a mystery, a few thrills, a few laughs and some romantic moments. Some episodes do contain fairly decent mystery plots but they’re still essentially supposed to be harmless fun.

I should also point out that there’s still a lot more silliness to come. There’s still the matter of the monster.

There’s an obvious motive in the old laird’s unwillingness to sell the castle (a hotel consortium wants to buy it) but that motive could point to more than one suspect. And there are other plausible motives.

The guest cast is headed up by the always delightful Roddy McDowell. He’s the laird’s grandson Jamie and he’s not exactly the black sheep of the family but he’s also not quite the grandson the old boy would have wished for. Jamie is rather hard-up for money and he also has a very expensive fiancée who is likely to develop into an even more expensive wife.

The solution is far-fetched but it’s clever enough and it is fairly clued and it is just about plausible.

Death of a Monster… Birth of a Legend offers plenty of fun.

The second episode is The Devil You Say and it continues the gothic theme, and also the outrageousness, of the first episode. This time Sally’s life is in danger from devil-worshippers. She gets a call from Dr Comsack at the children’s hospital where she does volunteer work with deaf kids. It’s not quite clear if it’s Sally who’s in danger or Dr Comsack. Mildred might be in danger as well, after witnessing a murder that didn’t happen. There’s also the matter of the film of the Satanic ritual that someone sent Sally. The same person also sent her some other curious items. Those items are obviously significant, but significant of what? If that’s not enough craziness for you there’s Dr Comsack’s totally insane and creepy wife and there’s Professor Zagmeyer who is an expert in hypnotism, reincarnation and Satanism.

So this episode has pretty much the entire quota of the lunacy that was so characteristic of the 70s.

Once again there are some deliriously over-the-top performances from the guest stars, especially Keenan Wynn as Professor Zagmeyer, Werner Klemperer as Dr Bleeker (best-selling author of a diet book but we get the strong impression he’s probably into some seriously weird stuff as well) plus a truly bizarre performance by Barbara Colby as the loopy Mrs Comsack.

And once again it always seems to be a dark and stormy night. The masks are however a very effective sinister touch. This one overall is even nuttier than the previous episode. The plot hangs together well enough. You don’t have to believe all the crazy stuff, as long as you’re willing to believe that the characters themselves do believe every word of it.

Back in the early 1970s Dennis Wheatley’s occult thrillers were immensely popular and I think it’s possible to discern a definite Dennis Wheatley influence in this episode. That’s OK by me since I happen to love Wheatley’s occult thrillers.

The Devil You Say is highly enjoyable nonsense.

These two episodes get season three off to a most entertaining start. I’ll be reviewing the other four episodes in the season in the near future.

You might also be interested in my reviews of McMillan and Wife season one and season two.

The Rockford Files (season 2, 1975)

The first season of The Rockford Files had been a huge success. The ratings took a major nosedive during the second season and never really recovered. Both Universal Television and NBC insisted that the series lost huge amounts of money.  It’s one of those series that became more and more popular with the passing of the years.

As to why the ratings crashed, it has to be said (as much as I love this show) that there were certain ideas that the series used way too much. Rockford seems to get arrested every second episode. Apart from the fact that it gets a bit old after a while it also makes him look like a loser. The original concept of the series is that it would be an updated version of Maverick. Which was a great idea. Now Maverick was a guy who got himself into trouble pretty frequently but somehow he never came across as a loser. He always seemed to be pretty confident of getting himself out of trouble. There are times when Rockford just seems a bit too easy to set up as a patsy. Maverick could be outsmarted occasionally but it was something you really had to work at. Sometimes Rockford just seems to put his head on the chopping block.

Now the idea of a private eye who is unglamorous and unheroic and not always totally successful is great but in the second of The Rockford Files it did get overdone just a little. The most enjoyable episodes are the ones like The Farnsworth Stratagem in which Rockford is the one calling the shots and pulling the strings.

Of course even when Rockford does get set up as the patsy he’s always smart enough to extricate himself eventually, but the fact that he keeps getting set up in the first place and that even when he gets himself out of trouble he usually ends up not being paid might have led some viewers to see him as being a bit ineffectual. It’s not something that bothers me all that much, the series has plenty of strengths to compensate for one or two minor weaknesses, but the weaknesses are there.

The second season opens with The Aaron Ironwood School of Success. Jim Rockford gets a strange request from an old friend. Actually Jim and Aaron Ironwood are more than just friends. Jim’s dad Rocky more or less raised Aaron after Aaron’s parents died so Jim and Aaron are more like brothers. Now Aaron wants to give Jim his company, a company worth $200 million. Had it been anyone but Aaron making this request Rockford would have been suspicious but Aaron is like a brother and if you can’t trust a brother whom can you trust? Even if Aaron’s business schemes have always appeared to Rockford to be a little on the carnival huckster side of the street.

The plan starts to seem like less of a good idea when it tuns out that mobsters are involved.

The Farnsworth Stratagem is a story of a con man being conned, not a wildly original idea but it’s rarely been executed with so much wit and style. Rockford’s buddy Detective Becker gets burned in a clever hotel investment scam and Rockford sees a way to turn the table on the con man, with involves a great deal of fun as he masquerades as a larger-than-life oil man. Linda Evans guest stars as Audrey, another victim of the scam, or is she?

Rockford has $10,000 stolen from him in a small desert town and in the process of trying to get it back he stumbles across the The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company, a rather outrageous real estate scam. He also stumbles across a murder.

In The Real Easy Red Dog Rockford gets sent on a wild goose chase by another PI, Tina Dusseau (Stefanie Powers), chasing up a suicide that might have been a murder but in fact it really was just a suicide all along. Except that Rockford isn’t so sure. He also isn’t so sure he wants to work with Tina Dusseau but maybe they won’t have a choice. The fact that someone tries to kill them does tend to support the theory that they’ve stumbled onto something big. It’s the kind of “was it suicide or was it murder” story that was pretty old even back in 1975 but it’s done reasonably well and James Garner and Stefanie Powers work well together.

Resurrection in Black & White brings Rockford a pretty blonde client, which is not unusual since most of his clients seem to be pretty blondes. This one’s Susan Alexander, a journalist digging into an old murder case. She’s convinced that an innocent man was convicted. Rockford is equally convinced that the whole thing is nonsense and that Susan is getting conned by the murderer but on the other hand it is slightly odd that people keep trying to kill Susan. So he takes the case and it leads to a reasonably satisfying mystery and a reasonably satisfying solution.

Chicken Little Is a Little Chicken is a complicated tale of multiple swindles. Jim’s old cell-mate Angel has landed himself in a major jam and now he’s landed Jim in the same jam and they have two separate parties of mobsters wanting to kill them as a result. Rockford has a really clever plan for getting them out of trouble. It just can’t fail. A fairly enjoyable episode.

2 Into 5.56 Won’t Go starts with Rockford’s old commanding officer from his service days in Korea contacting him out of the blue and wanting help. This is more than a little surprising since Rockford and Colonel Daniel Hart Bowie were never exactly bosom buddies. Then the colonel dies in a traffic accident and his daughter wants Rockford to look into it since she suspects her dad was murdered. It’s a particularly bizarre and ingenious conspiracy that the colonel had stumbled into. This is a fine episode with Rockford being not overly happy about revisiting the memories of his less than distinguished military career.

In Pastoria Prime Pick Rockford finds himself in a whole lot of trouble in the town of New Pastoria. In New Pastoria it seems that crime does pay – at least it pays as far as New Pastoria is concerned. This town has what you might call an entrepreneurial market-driven criminal justice system. Another very good episode.

The Reincarnation of Angie throws Rockford into the middle of a complicated stock fraud and it’s made more complicated by his client, a pleasant enough young woman whose brother may have been mixed up in the fraud and now he might well be dead and she’s not dealing too well with any of that. Plus the Feds are taking an interest and Rockford has to tread carefully because he’s taken a bit of a punt on this case and if he’s guessed wrong he’ll have a lot of explaining to do. So it’s a typical Rockford Files story, but it’s a good story as well.

In The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club Jim has ostensibly been hired to check out whether the illegal card games organised by the Bay City Boys Club are rigged or not, but Jim’s client has lied to him and in fact pretty much everyone seems to be lying to him. The Bay City police don’t seem anxious to help (Philip Marlowe always had problems with those Bay City cops as well).

An overheard conversation gets Jim’s dad Rocky into big trouble in Gearjammers. Now there are some very nasty and very serious people trying to kill him. The trouble is that Rocky didn’t actually overhear the conversation so he has no idea why these guys are trying to kill him. The eventual explanation of the scam he has stumbled into is pretty clever.

The Hammer of C Block brings Rockford a rather unwelcome client in the person of Gandolph Fitch (Isaac Hayes), an old acquaintance from prison who has served twenty years for murder and now wants to prove his innocence. Innocence and guilt turn out to be complicated concepts.

The No-Cut Contract sees Rockford being pursued by several sets of hitmen. They’re after some tapes which Rockford knows nothing about. Unfortunately third-rate pro footballer King Sturtevant (Rob Reiner) has told the mobsters that Rockford does have the tapes. The FBI also think Rockford has the tapes and they’re making his life a misery a well although at least they’re not actually trying to kill him. It all gets horribly confused in an inspired and very entertaining way. An excellent episode.

A Portrait of Elizabeth has a fiendishly twisted plot. Jim’s lawyer Beth brings him a client who suspects shady financial dealings involving stolen cashier’s cheques in the company he works for. There are shady dealings all right but they’re a whole lot more complicated than stolen cheques and there are multiple double-crosses going on. Oh, and there are also a couple of murders and the bodies are in Jim’s trailer and the victims were shot with his gun. This gets Jim into difficulties with the cops and into even nastier difficulties with the Feds. This is typical Rockford Files stuff with Jim getting arrested and facing charges for crimes he had nothing to do with for about the 200th time in the show’s run. Jim gets cast as the patsy on a regular basis but this time he can kind of see it coming. It’s a routine episode but it’s nicely executed.

Joey Blue Eyes is an ex-gangster but he’s tried to go straight. And in fact he has gone straight. He now has a very successful restaurant business. The only problem is that Joey has been conned by some sharp operators and now he realises he doesn’t own the restaurant. He doesn’t own anything. Beth happens to be friends with Joey’s daughter and she persuades Rockford to help. Within five minutes Joey and Rockford want to kill each other. But Rockford can’t turn down the case because Beth would be mad at him and that’s a risk that is not worth taking. This is one of the episodes in which Rockford comes up against con-men and turns the tables on him. And nobody can execute a con with quite the same style as Jim Rockford.

This episode stars Michael Ansara as Joey. Michael Ansara is one of my favourite character actors. He was Syrian so he got tossed into the Miscellaneous Ethnics basket which meant he was never short of work and got lots of really interesting roles as everything from Italians to Native Americans to Arabs to aliens from outer space. He was a great tough guy but usually not a thug – he had a certain dignity that made more suited to slightly more complex roles than thugs.

In Hazard involves Jim’s lawyer Beth in something that is obviously pretty big. Big enough to make it worthwhile trying to kill her. The theft of documents from her safe indicates a connection with one of her clients, but which one? A good solid story.

The birds in The Italian Bird Fiasco are sculptures and they are masterpieces, or they would be if they were originals. In fact they’re early 19th century copies but they’re still quite valuable. Art dealer Thomas Caine hires Rockford to by one of the birds at auction. At the auction he meets another dealer, Evelyn Stoneman, who wants the bird very badly. There is a possibility that the birds are not copies but are actually the originals, in which they’re fabulously valuable. But the people who are after the birds (and are prepared to use violence to get them) seem curiously uninterested in the sculptures themselves. There are multiple double-crosses going on and nothing is what it seems to be and no-one is who he or she seems to be. While you’re probably going to figure out what is really going on before Rockford does it’s still a lot of fun.

Where’s Houston? involves a kidnapping but the kidnapping makes no sense because the target has no money. But the one thing Jim Rockford is sure of is that the case definitely involves money. It has to. It’s a pretty solid episode.

Foul on the First Play has Jim teamed up with an old buddy. Only Marcus Aurelius Hayes (Louis Gossett Jr) isn’t actually a buddy. In fact Jim can’t stand him. Hayes used to be Jim’s parole officer and Jim has good reason to dislike him. But fate has ordained that Jim and Marc are going to work this case together. Working the case together means, as far as Marc is concerned, doing everything to ensure that Marc Hayes gets the rewards and that all the costs are borne by Jim. Marc never misses an opportunity to try to pull a scam but Jim Rockford knows all the scams and manages to stay one step ahead. This tense relationship provides plenty of thrills and plenty of humour and Garner and Gossett work beautifully together. A very enjoyable episode.

A Bad Deal in the Valley see Jim get set up as a patsy once again, by an old flame. She’s obviously trouble but he doesn’t see it coming. So he gets arrested, but he gets arrested every second episode so that’s no big deal. This is not a simple con but a whole web of cons and the spider just keeps on weaving that web. A good episode to end the season.

The highlight of the special features on the DVD release is an extremely good interview with the show’s co-creator Stephen J. Cannell. He talks about the battles with the network to maintain the show’s essential flavour which of course the network hated – they wanted something much blander and less original.

Was The Rockford Files really the greatest of all American private eye TV series? I think it probably was. Season two is definitely recommended.

three Ellery Queens

For this post I’m going to take a look at a couple of episodes of the excellent 1975-76 Ellery Queen television series which starred Jim Hutton as Ellery and David Wayne as his father Inspector Richard Queen of the NYPD.

The Adventure of the 12th Floor Express is a episode that seems to be generally highly thought of, and with good reason. It features an impossible crime and as a bonus for hardcore Ellery Queen fans it also includes a dying clue.

Newspaper publisher Henry Manners takes the private elevator to his 12th floor office. The elevator opens, it’s empty, it opens again on another floor and there is Henry Manners’ body. The difficulty is that no-one could have gained access to the elevator therefore he must have been shot by somebody in the elevator but there was nobody else in the elevator.

There are plenty of suspects. As Manners’ editor remarks you can judge the worth of a newspaperman by how many enemies he made and Henry Manners was one hell of a newspaperman. A lot of those enemies were in the Daily Examiner office at the time of the murder and none of them have much in the way of alibis.

The bitchiness, the backbiting, the ruthlessness and the amorality of the newspaper world give a nicely cynical background. Just about everybody connected with the Daily Examiner would cheerfully commit a dozen murders if it would further their interests. And they’re all very willing to spill the dirt on each other.

The trouble with impossible crimes is that the solutions do often tend to be just a bit on the far-fetched side. That is definitely not a problem here. The solution is clever but it’s very simple. And it’s very plausible. Ellery’s solving of the case is also entirely plausible – the clues to the killer’s identity are there and puzzling out the mechanism of the murder is just a matter of eliminating fanciful theories and concentrating on explanations that might have actually worked in the real world.

Overall the decision to set the series in the late 1940s works very well. I’m a particular fan of the early Ellery Queens so I guess I’d have preferred a 1930s setting but the important thing is that they realised that a period setting was essential. Setting it in the mid-70s would have been a disastrous mistake. In this particular case the period setting works wonderfully for a story with a newspaper background. A superb episode.

Murder mysteries involving archaeology and ancient civilisation, and especially ancient Egypt, are something I’m inordinately fond of so The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Curse sounded pretty promising.

Wealthy businessman Norris Wentworth has managed to track down and buy a very important Egyptian sarcophagus for a major museum. Naturally he is warned about the curse attached to the mummy, a curse that has already claimed the lives of six men. Sure enough Norris Wentworth becomes the seventh victim. But is it death from natural causes, is it the revenge of the mummy or is it murder? Ellery is inclined to suspect murder but if that’s the case the murder method is puzzling indeed.

This is one of several cases in which Ellery is in competition with radio detective how host  Simon Brimmer but of course we know that Simon will almost certainly come up with a plausible solution which is totally wrong. Which adds some humour. It also adds a bit of interest to a plot which is not, to be brutally honest, one of the more ingenious plots of the series. That’s not to say that it’s a poor episode. It’s just perhaps not quite up to the very high standards of the series as a whole.

It does have its cute moments though with some ingenious clues.

Cult TV fans will be excited by the presence of Ross Martin (from The Wild Wild West) and June Lockhart (from Lost In Space).

The Adventure of the Chinese Dog is an attempt to capture the rustic appeal of the Ellery Queen Wrightsville novels. Ellery and his father head off to Wrightsville on a fishing trip. There’s a surprising amount of drama in the usually sleepy town. There’s a fiercely contested election for Sheriff, and there’s a murder (an event almost unheard of in these parts).

The murder weapon is a gold Chinese temple dog worth a cool half million dollars.

The plotting here is intricate and ingenious, with clues that are obvious enough except that they don’t mean what you expect them to mean.

While the murder is unusual the solution is plausible and it is the only solution that can explain the major oddities of the murder method.

While the murder investigation proceeds Inspector Richard Queen is pursuing a vendetta with an old enemy. The enemy in question is a big old fish in the local river and it’s become Inspector Queen’s White Whale. As is usually the case in the Ellery Queen series the comic relief is handled with discretion and is never allowed to become intrusive or irritating. It’s gently amusing and it serves its purpose.

So overall, out of the three episodes, two turned out to be exceptionally good and the other is still pretty solid. Two of the three incorporate one of the major trademarks of the Ellery Queen novels – the dying clue.

All three episodes involve rather unsympathetic murder victims.

Ellery Queen was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable of all American whodunit TV series  and it was remarkably consistent. Great stuff.

You might also like to check out my reviews of some of the classic Ellery Queen novels such as The French Powder Mystery and The  Chinese Orange Mystery.

Knight Rider, season one (1982)

As I’ve mentioned before the 80s is a television decade that I more or less missed out on. Most of the classic 80s action adventure shows were until recently just names to me. All I really knew about such series was that that they had a reputation for being unbelievably cheesy and trashy. Knight Rider had a reputation for being particularly cheesy.

In fact it really is very cheesy. But, mostly, it’s cheesy in a good way. It’s cheesy in a good-natured way. It doesn’t take itself seriously and it doesn’t expect the viewer to take it seriously. It has a comic-book sensibility but with some humour..

The two-part pilot episode Knight of the Phoenix gives up the setup. Michael Long is an undercover cop and he’s on a big job involving very rich very powerful people sand the job all goes horribly wrong. Michael’s partner is killed and Michael is grievously wounded and very very close to death. He would certainly have died in a very short time but instead of ending up in a hospital he ends up in the hands of an eccentric billionaire. Wilton Knight (Richard Basehart) has plans for Michael Long. Michael is patched up, which is quite a job since his whole face had been blown off. Now he looks quite different, in fact now he looks like David Hasselhoff. Wilton Knight’s plan is that Michael, now renamed Michael Knight, will be a crime-fighter for the Foundation for Law and Government, a kind of private vigilante justice outfit but with Wilton Knight’s considerable wealth behind it. Michael has been given a second chance at life and the idea is that he’ll be sufficiently grateful to accept this deal.

They have also fixed his car for him. Actually they’ve done a little more than fix it. Michael’s Trans-Am is now the K.I.T.T. 2000, a computerised supercar. The car is practically indestructible and it has an artificial intelligence that makes it crash-proof and capable of doing everything except fly. And the car, or at least its artificial intelligence, can talk. And it can think. OK, this concept might not seem so startling today in an age of self-driving cars but in 1982 it was pretty darned exciting.

There are those who have been unkind enough to suggest that K.I.T.T. has more personality than Michael Knight. It’s certainly true that David Hasselhoff is a bad actor. But he’s a fun bad actor, and his acting is bad and fun in just the way the series needs. Edward Mulhare plays Michael’s boss, Devon Miles, as a prissy and disapproving comic relief character. The other regular character is Bonnie Barstow (Patricia McPherson) who is the engineer who keeps K.I.T.T. going and naturally has to be a beautiful woman.

Knight Rider is comic-book stuff in both style and content. That’s something you either accept about this show or you don’t. Knight Rider doesn’t have the edginess or the touch of cynicism that you’ll find in a series like Airwolf. Or at least it doesn’t have the same degree of cynicism. Not quite, but it’s still cynical enough in a low-key way. In all the episodes I’ve seen so far it never for one moment occurs to Michael or to his boss Devon that the police or other legal authorities might be trusted to deal with serious crimes. It’s simply taken for granted that the legitimate authorities are entirely useless. So I guess you could say there’s the same passive cynicism about authority that you get in The A-Team where anyone who has serious problems with criminals doesn’t bother with the police – they call in totally illegal private mercenary vigilantes who, unlike the police, will actually get the job done. And in Knight Rider the police aren’t always just useless. Sometimes they’re crooked. Judges are sometimes incompetent but sometimes dishonest. FBI agents are sometimes just over-zealous but sometimes they’re unethical.

We’re not quite in full-blown Fox Mulder paranoia territory in series like Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf but the idea that the government is not your friend is always there as a subtext.

Glen A. Larson created Knight Rider and it follows the same basic formula as all his successful series – it has humour, it has lots of action but no graphic violence, it has likeable sympathetic characters, it’s generally upbeat and it qualifies as what used to be known as family entertainment. Larson’s 70s science fiction series Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century achieved decent ratings but were cancelled mostly because they were just so expensive to make. Knight Rider has the science fiction elements and the gadgetry but because it’s about a car rather than spaceships it was presumably not quite so expensive.

The one thing that all Glen A. Larson’s shows have in common is that critics hated them, which worried Larson not at all.

Episode Guide
Deadly Maneuvers is outrageously silly, but that’s not a problem for a Knight Rider story. There are shady goings-on at an army base. Shady is perhaps an understatement since there’s been at least one murder. The daughter of the murdered officer, who is a junior officer herself, persuades Michael to help her to find out the supposed accident that killed her father. They uncover a tangled web of corruption. This is an episode that has a bit more cynicism than you expect from Knight Rider. It also has a spectacularly crazy, ludicrous but thoroughly enjoyable action climax with Michael and his car up against half the U.S. Army!

In Good Day at White Rock Michael decides he needs a holiday and some rock-climbing is what appeals to him. The little town of White Rock is pleasant enough except for the sheriff. The sheriff wants to avoid trouble at all costs, in any situation that arises, and while that is often a wise approach in this case it seems to be a symptom of weakness rather than good judgment. And now the town is about to become a battlefield for a war between two rival biker gangs. The sheriff as usual thinks he can evade trouble but it’s clear to Michael that trouble is coming whether the sheriff likes it or not.

Of course the entire premise of Knight Rider is that the legitimate law enforcement authorities are not always adequate (and perhaps not always reliable) so sometimes Michael and K.I.T.T. are needed as a private vigilante force. In this case it’s obvious that the sheriff is incapable of dealing with the situation. Calling in the state police doesn’t seem like a viable option – at this stage the bikers haven’t actually broken any laws. The advantage of a vigilante force like the Foundation for Law and Government is that it can take pre-emptive action.

Slammin’ Sammy’s Stunt Show Spectacular is a family-run stunt driving show under threat from a crooked businessman. Michael has to save the show by taking over as the star driver. The bad guys are of course trying to kill Michael and sabotage K.I.T.T. and mostly the episode is an excuse for some cool stunt driving. It’s quite entertaining though.

Just My Bill has Michael acting as bodyguard to a crusading (and annoyingly self-righteous) state senator. This is a very poor episode, clumsy and uninteresting.

Not a Drop to Drink pits evil big rancher Herb Bremen against a bunch of virtuous little guy ranchers, the issue at stake being control of water rights. Bremen is prepared to take drastic, and violent, measures to break the good small ranchers. The Foundation is acting for the small ranchers. Michael’s job is to keep Herb Bremen at bay until legal measures can be instituted. This entails K.I.T.T. having to teach himself bull-fighting and fight several battles against heavy earth-moving machinery. They’re the fun parts of the episode. Otherwise it’s a standard western plot that threatens to become rather soppy but it’s OK.

No Big Thing is yet another example of one of the most tedious American TV tropes of all time – a city person ventures into the country only to discover that every single person in rural American is a knuckle-drugging redneck and every small-town sheriff is a vicious corrupt monster preying on innocent city folks. This time Devon Miles is the city person victim. A very poor episode.

Trust Doesn’t Rust introduces K.I.T.T.’s evil twin, K.A.R.R., the original prototype on which K.I.T.T. was based. The big difference is that K.I.T.T. is programmed to serve and protect humans. K.A.R.R. is programmed merely for self-preservation. K.A.R.R. teams up with a couple of small-time hoods who then go on a crime rampage. Only Michael and K.I.T.T. can stop them. Fortunately Michael has learnt a thing or two about robot psychology. A good episode.

Inside Out is a heist story and it’s a good one. A crazy pensioned off U.S. Army colonel has assembled a crack team to pull off a huge robbery. Michael has infiltrated himself into the colonel’s organisation. The heist itself is clever and exciting and it’s the element that makes one of the best episodes of season one.

In The Final Verdict Michael has to find a witness who can provide an alibi for a girl charged with murder but the witness (a harmless inoffensive guy) has managed to get himself mixed up with all sorts of legal difficulties. It has a reasonable car chase but otherwise it’s fairly routine.

A Plush Ride has Michael infiltrating a school for bodyguards. One of the bodyguards is actually a terrorist planning to assassinate Third World leaders at a summit meeting but which one is the terrorist? The bodyguards school has a whole fleet of heavily armoured limousines so you’d expect lots of spectacular stunt driving in this episode. There is some, but it’s not as impressive as might have been hoped. A routine episode.

Michael has to prevent the assassination of a South American political leader in Forget Me Not. His best lead is a ditzy blonde who has the vital information he needs but after falling off a cliff she can’t remember it. It’s not brilliant but this is another competent and reasonably enjoyable episode.

Hearts of Stone puts Michael in the middle of a war between rival gun-running gangs and then he kind of loses $240,000 of the Foundation’s money so he’s in a pretty stock situation. An average episode, and enjoyable enough.

Give Me Liberty… or Give Me Death involves deadly shenanigans behind the scenes at an alternative energy car race. An OK episode.

The Topaz Connection is an attempt by a girlie magazine publisher to re-establish himself as a serious investigative journalist but the big story he’s working on, which he’s code-named Topaz, is a potentially deadly story. Another decent enough episode.

A Nice, Indecent Little Town is one of the better first season episodes. Alpine Crest is the most perfect town in America. It has virtually no crime. It’s so wholesome it’s scary. So what is a notorious criminal like Ron Austin doing there? And why is the CIA interested in Alpine Crest? The actual plot is not dazzlingly original but the subtle slightly odd atmosphere in the town is interesting. It’s also about the only episode in which someone gets the better of K.I.T.T.

Chariot of Gold involves the Helios Society, which is kind of like Mensa on steroids except with a whole lot of added creepiness and geekiness. Devon has applied for membership but much to his chagrin they accepted Bonnie instead. One of the Helios Society members involved in an archaeological dig has died in very suspicious circumstances. There’s also Aztec gold and nuclear war survivalism involved, as well as brainwashing. And we find out that a car is like a dog. It only has one master. This episode works by going over the-top, and Knight Rider is always at its best when it goes over-the-top.

White Bird is about a woman who has been set up by the crooked lawyer she works for and now the Feds are railroading her. The complication for Michael is that the girl in question is the girl to whom he was engaged to be married just before he got his face blown off. Now he has a new face and a new identity so naturally she doesn’t recognise him. But he hasn’t forgotten her. This is actually a very good episode. There’s a nice mix of action, suspense and romance and the romance angle is handled with surprising subtlety.

Knight Moves is a trucking saga. Independent truckers in New Mexico are being driven out of business by hijackings but it’s obvious there’s something more behind the hijackings. This is one of those episodes (you see a lot of similar episodes in The A-Team) about the little guy, the honest working-class guy, getting a rough deal from the big guy with the money. Lots of 80s CB radio nostalgia in this one! A fairly good episode.

Nobody Does It Better really lays on the 80s nostalgia extra thick. It’s all about video games! Somebody is stealing video game software. Unfortunately there’s a lady private eye involved in the case and while she can’t be faulted for her enthusiasm her competence is another matter. She thinks it’s just another divorce case. The plot isn’t very challenging but anyone with fond memories of 80s video games is going to be in seventh heaven. And it’s typical Knight Rider – it has enough energy and glitz to make up for any deficiencies in the script.

In the final episode of the first season, Short Notice, Michael gets mixed up with a woman who is mixed up with a biker gang and she has a kid and it’s the sort of situation that he should just stay right away from but of course he doesn’t and he thinks he can rescue her and even K.I.T.T. knows he’s crazy but he’s going to do it anyway, and since this is a TV show then maybe he really will be able to save her even though she would cheerfully have sacrificed him for her own ends.

Summing Up
Knight Rider is corny and it’s formulaic and it’s often predictable but it’s executed with enthusiasm and it’s unfailingly entertaining. The special effects may not entirely convince but they’re enjoyably outrageous. K.I.T.T. and Michael are a likeable team. It’s a formula that works. It doesn’t matter that you can’t take it seriously because you’re not supposed to.

For all its faults Knight Rider is thoroughly enjoyable television. It’s cheesy and trashy but in a totally good way. Highly recommended.

Thriller – If It’s a Man, Hang Up/The Double Kill (1975)

Brian Clemens had a major success with his anthology series Thriller, made by ITC and running from 1973 to 1976. The stories were psychological thrillers, very much in the style of the psychological thrillers made by Hammer Films from the early 60s to the early 70s. In fact the immediate inspiration for the series was probably a film Clemens had written in 1970, And Soon the Darkness.

Thriller went into production just before Euston Films revolutionised the look and style of British television with Special Branch and The Sweeney. Thriller belongs very much to the previous era of British television. Its in colour but has a shot-in-the-studio shot-on-videotape feel to it. The production values are not overly high. There is very little location shooting. That particular era of British TV relied very heavily on the quality of the writing, which fortunately tended to be rather high. Clemens certainly had an illustrious track record as both writer and producer thanks to The Avengers. Thriller, perhaps deliberately, has absolutely no resemblance to The Avengers in either content or style.

Clemens wrote most of the forty-three episodes himself.

If It’s a Man, Hang Up kicks off the fifth season. It went to air in Britain in early 1975. In common with many of the other episodes it has an imported American star, and one who is very much of the second rank. Carol Lynley is very attractive and that’s about the best thing you can say about her as an actress. Fortunately in this episode she plays a model and we don’t exactly expect sparkling wit and intellectual sparkle from models.

Suzy Martin (Lynley) is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. When she starts getting heavy-breather telephone calls she probably should have taken the matter a bit more seriously. A young pretty woman who is a minor celebrity and lives alone should perhaps be a bit more aware of the importance of taking at least some very basic precautions to protect herself.

Suzy does the sorts of things you’d expect a model to do. She’s having an affair with married middle-aged photographer Greg Miles (Gerald Harper). She’s dumped the photographer who established her reputation, Terry Cleeves (Paul Angelis), because now she’s a big name and she doesn’t need him any more.

She does have the sense to call the police about the phone calls but all she gets out of that is a few visits from a couple of not very bright constables. Being a celebrity she might have been wise to make more of a fuss and demand to talk to an inspector at least.

As you might anticipate the situation starts to escalate, the heavy breather moves on to making vague threats. And then something happens that convinces Suzy that she is in real danger.

There are lots of men around who are anxious to play the white knight and rescue this damsel in distress. There’s Greg Miles, there’s Terry Cleeves, there’s Terry’s Sicilian friend Bruno (Tom Conti), there’s the caretaker who thinks Suzy is a kind of goddess and there are the two young police constables. The problem of course is that one of these would-be white knights is the psycho killer who is stalking her, and Suzy’s judgment when it comes to men is just a little questionable at the best of times. She seems to have a knack for making decisions that she hasn’t really thought through and this is going to place her in very great danger indeed.

Thriller is a series that can be just a little clunky at times, just a little stilted, probably mostly due to the very studio-bound production methods. The acting can also be rather variable.

What matters here though is that Clemens muddies the waters with considerable skill, misdirecting us and encouraging us to go after the red herrings that he has deployed. It’s not an incredibly complex plot but Clemens was a pro and he keeps us guessing. Every single character is a totally plausible suspect.

Carol Lynley might not be a great actress but she does succeed in doing the one thing that she has to do. She manages to make us care about Suzy. She has her flaws and she’s not all that bright but Suzy is basically a sympathetic character and she doesn’t deserve to be terrorised. Tom Conti gives a nicely relaxed performance while Gerald Harper and Paul Angelis manage to make their respective characters just creepy enough to make them plausible suspects.

If It’s a Man, Hang Up is a generally very successful episode.

The Double Kill opens with an odd encounter between a home-owner and a burglar. It gives us a hint that some kind of game is being played, possibly a dangerous game, but at this stage we have no idea what the game is.

We’re introduced to married couple Hugh and Clarissa Briant (played by Gary Collins and Penelope Horner). Their relationship is tense to say the least. Clarissa is extremely wealthy. She collects things. She collects paintings, silverware, antiques, jade, pretty much anything that’s expensive. One assumes that her purchases include her husband. They live in a rather palatial home stuffed with treasures and protected by – well actually they’re not protected by anything at all. There is no security. And the fact that the house is filled with outrageously valuable trinkets is no secret. Hugh never stops talking about how worried he is by the lack of security. He talks about it everywhere.

There is another odd encounter with another burglar and we start to see the game that is being played. It’s a nasty clever little game but that’s only the beginning. Other people can play games as well. All sorts of unexpected people play games in this story. You can easily find that the game you’re playing is not the one you thought you were playing.

Gary Collins is another of those second-tier American stars who feature so heavily in Thriller but he’s a pretty good actor and does an effective job. James Villiers (as Hugh’s friend Paul) has long been one of my favourite British actors of this era, always at his best when he’s being a bit morally ambiguous. Peter Bowles is another favourite of mine. He plays Superintendent Lucas, who knows a thing or two about games. Stuart Wilson is nicely ambiguous and unpredictable as Max Burns. This really is a very fine cast.

OK, you can see one of the plot twists coming but in a way that makes it more fun – it adds a delicious touch of anticipation as you can see characters making wrong moves but there’s nothing they can do about it since they don’t know that the rules of the game have changed. And there are plenty of twists that you won’t see coming.

The Double Kill is a superb episode.

Season five certainly gets off to a terrific start with If It’s a Man, Hang Up and The Double Kill. Great stuff. Highly recommended.

I’ve previously reviewed Night Is the Time for Killing and several other season four episodes of Thriller.

Sweeney 2 (1978) – the movie

The Sweeney, possibly the best television cop show ever made, spawned two spin-off movies and both of them are slightly odd. The first of them was Sweeney! and it really bore very little resemblance to the TV series, being pretty much a generic 70s political/action thriller. Sweeney 2, which followed in 1978, is closer to the feel of the series but it has a script that loses its way badly at times.

Which is surprising, since the scriptwriter was Troy Kennedy-Martin who had a pretty good track record in both film and television (and whose brother Ian had created The Sweeney TV series).

While the first film tried to deal with political intrigue Sweeney 2 very sensibly sticks to the kind of subject matter that made the TV series so successful. Regan (John Thaw) and Carter (Dennis Waterman) are on the trail of a gang of blaggers (bank robbers). The gang has a couple of very distinctive and very puzzling trademarks. They always steal almost precisely the same amount of money, equivalent to US$100,000. Any money over and above that amount they leave behind in the getaway car. And one of the blaggers carries a sawn-off shotgun, but it’s not just any sawn-off shotgun, it’s a gold-plated Purdey (the Rolls-Royce of shotguns) worth a small fortune. What kind of person would saw the barrels off such a work of art?

The gang’s methods are particularly ruthless. It’s not that they go around shooting innocent bystanders or anything like that. But they have such an overwhelming determination not to be caught that they take suicidal risks, like driving straight into police cars at a road-block. And if a member of the gang is injured in a robbery they leave him behind, but they first make sure he’s dead (a shotgun blast to the head makes this a certainty).

These are obviously not your usual run of villains. They’re disciplined as well as organised and they appear to be operating to some kind of master plan.

Regan’s old boss Jupp (Denholm Elliott), the former chief of the Flying Squad, is now serving a lengthy term of imprisonment for corruption but he does have an important clue to offer Regan. The clue takes Regan and Carter to Malta. That’s where these blaggers actually live. They have a compound there, which is a kind of hippie commune if you can imagine a hippie commune run on paramilitary lines. This is where the weaknesses in the script start to become apparent. The blaggers claim to have abandoned England because they believe England is finished but we’re never really told exactly what the gang’s motivations are. Are they left-wing political extremists or right-wing political extremists? Are they a kind of religious cult? Are they part of the counter-culture or are they fleeing from the counter-culture? One assumes that Troy Kennedy-Martin had some vaguely coherent idea in mind but it seems to have gotten lost in the final script.

It’s a pity since the basic idea of bank robbers with plans to build their own society is definitely potentially interesting.

Another major problem with the screenplay is the bomb sub-plot. This comes out of nowhere, it goes nowhere, it has no connection with the rest of the movie, it makes no sense and it serves no purpose. It’s unnecessary padding and it’s a problem since this is already a movie with a few pacing problems.

Like the first movie Sweeney 2 tries to take advantage of the less restrictive censorship film censorship environment and as in the first film this backfires. Sweeney 2 has much more graphic violence than the TV series and the extra violence adds nothing of value, there’s some outrageously gratuitous nudity that is totally unnecessary, and worst of all there’s a much more pronounced atmosphere of sleaze. Regan and Carter in the TV series are a long way from being Boy Scouts but in this movie they’re drunken lecherous louts. The sleaze is pushed much too far and the characters become mere caricatures.

The supporting cast is interesting, with Denholm Elliott as the corrupt former Flying Squad commander and Nigel Hawthorne as his replacement Dilke. And yes, Dilke does come across as being remarkably like Sir Humphrey Appleby!

There’s some location shooting in Malta which looks nice enough. Although the Malta scenes give us some hints as to the motivations of the villains one can’t help wondering if the expense of sending a film crew there was really justified.

Sweeney 2 is a movie that definitely has its problems. It has its strengths as well. Even if the ideas aren’t fully developed the screenplay does at least try to give us something more than just another series of bank robberies. And it does set up the very violent climax in such a way that it makes sense rather than just being a bloodbath for the sake of having a bloodbath. There are lots of intriguing little touches that aren’t always fully explained but that makes them more intriguing, an example being the woman (whose link to the blaggers is rather peripheral) with the Hitler obsession. Apart from overdoing the sleaze this movie captures the feel of the TV series far more successfully than the first film. There are some fine action scenes.

The Region 4 DVD offers no extras but the transfer is pretty good.

With all its flaws Sweeney 2 is rather entertaining and it’s definitely an improvement on the first movie. Worth seeing if you’re a fan of the series.

Cannon, season one (1971)

Cannon was a pretty successful private eye series which began its run on CBS in 1971. I have only the very haziest recollections of seeing a few episodes many years ago.

So far I’ve only had the chance to watch the first few season one episodes. I may return to this series at a later date.

Cannon’s biggest asset (in more ways than one) was of course its star, William Conrad. Conrad was always an enjoyable actor to watch and the role of Frank Cannon was a perfect fit.

The two-part pilot episode, perhaps surprisingly, tells us very little about Frank Cannon. We know he’s an ex-cop. In fact he had been a Detective-Lieutenant. He’s now a PI and we get the impression he’s been quite successful. He certainly seems to live a comfortable lifestyle. We assume he’s a somewhat upmarket PI.

We find out that he’s a tough guy, but he doesn’t go looking for fights (not fist fights anyway). He’s prepared to play it meek and mild if that seems the wisest course of action. He’s clearly stubborn and honest, and he has plenty of perseverance. In later episodes he becomes more of a conventional tough guy.

The pilot takes him a long way away from his usual stomping grounds (LA). An old army buddy lives in a small town interstate, or at least he did live there until he was murdered. His wife is the prime suspect and she asks for Cannon’s help. Cannon is the sort of guy who will always take on this type of case even if there’s no money in it. He wants to find his old buddy’s killer, and he seems to have a taste for rescuing damsels in distress. He immediately decides, based on zero evidence, that the wife must be innocent.

The town of Galliton used to be a happy place but it’s not like that any more. It’s been taken over by racketeering and the city government and the police have been pretty thoroughly corrupted. And Frank soon discovers that even though he’s only just arrived he’s now the most unpopular guy in town.

It’s a very convoluted plot and its twists and turns can be a little bit challenging to follow but on the whole it’s still a pretty good story.

The first actual season one episode is The Salinas Jackpot. It has cowboys and clowns, and it has psycho killers. It also has Cannon doing a MacGyver. When he finds himself without a gun he simply makes one! It’s very entertaining.

Death Chain is the next episode. It features an excellent performance by William Windom as a banker who reluctantly (but quite courageously) engages Cannon’s services to get him out of a jam. It’s a nicely twisted plot involving blackmail, robbery and an ingenious plan to launder stolen money. A very good episode.

Call Unicorn is a straight by-the-numbers private eye tale with Canon going undercover to investigate a truck hijacking racket. Everything in this story plays out exactly as you know it’s going to right from the start. Very disappointing.

Country Blues is a whole lot better. Country music star Woody Long is killed in a plane crash. There was a large insurance policy on his life and the insurance company engages Frank Cannon to investigate the accident. Cannon is pretty sure it was no accident but proving it will be a challenge. Everybody in his home town either thought Woody was a terrific guy or they don’t want to talk to nosy private detectives. There are people who stood to benefit from Long’s death but Cannon just can’t make any theory add up. The plot has some neat twists and turns, certainly enough to keep the viewer guessing.

There are also some wonderfully colourful characters and they have a bit of depth to them. They have complicated motivations. An extremely good episode.

Scream of Silence concerns a kidnapping gone wrong and a young boy unable to speak due to shock. There’s nothing wildly original here but it’s enjoyable viewing.

Fool’s Gold takes Cannon to the small town of Julian. He’s working a case for an insurance company, on the track of $900,000 in stolen money. The people of Julian are none too friendly and it’s painfully obvious they’re hiding something. Julian is a dying town but the townsfolk are convinced that’s all going to change real soon. They have big plans to revive the town. Expensive plans. Now where would the money be coming from to finance such grandiose schemes? This is a decent episode.

Girl in the Electric Coffin involves a rock group, an aristocratic cosmetics tycoon, a missing girl and a dead PI. Since the dead PI was a friend Frank Cannon has a personal interest in this case. Another reasonably solid episode.

Cannon’s friends always seem to be getting themselves into trouble. In Dead Pigeon it’s a cop who has been framed for murder. The cop had been getting close to breaking a case involving na crooked lawyer, maybe too close. Cannon has to work with the cop’s less than sympathetic colleagues and he’s up against an exceptionally ruthless bad guy. A good episode even if the ideas are hardly what you’d call startlingly original.

Death Is a Double-Cross takes place partly on a train, which is promising, but sadly it fails to take full advantage of the setting. It’s still an OK story. Canon is hired to facilitate a reconciliation between a rich tycoon and his daughter. Cases don’t much much simpler than this one but the last guy assigned to the job got killed so maybe it isn’t so simple after all.

In The Nowhere Man Canon is hired to find a bookkeeper who has made off with the payroll of a chemical plant which manufactures fertilisers, only it wasn’t the payroll that the employee stole but something much nastier. That plant manufactures manufactures other things besides fertilisers, things like nerve gas.

Private detectives are often hired to find missing persons. In Flight Plan Cannon is hired not to find someone, but to lose someone.The problem is that if you lose someone too successfully what happens if you suddenly need to find them again? This is one of the more interesting episodes.

Devil’s Playground is a bit contrived. Ex-cop Jerry Warton (played by a young Martin Sheen) is convinced that an armed robber killed eight months earlier is still very much alive. He wants Cannon to help him find the guy. Cannon has his doubts and he’s also worried that Jerry is so obsessed that his judgment has become warped. Nonetheless he takes the case, which leads to a climax involving motorcycles, machine-guns and multiple explosions! It has its silly moments but it’s entertaining.

Treasure of San Ignacio has Cannon trying to recover religious relics stolen from a church in Mexico. A fairly routine episode. In Blood on the Vine somebody is trying to kill a boutique wine-maker and it’s a complicated family affair, but to my way of thinking the story just didn’t ring true.

To Kill a Guinea Pig is more interesting. Why are hoodlums taking an interest in a female medical researcher? She’s conducting clinical trials on prisoner volunteers and it seems that one of the volunteers is of great interest to those hoodlums.

The Island Caper is quite a fun story. Once a year a very large amount of money gets transferred from an island bank to the mainland. The transfer is done by aircraft, the aircraft being an amphibian as there’s no airstrip on the island. The bank is feeling just a little nervous this time so they’ve hired Cannon to beef up their security. And Cannon has run into an old friend on the island, an ex-con who used to specialise in exactly these sorts of complex heists. Cannon is sure this guy has gone straight but he sure does seem nervous. This is an episode in which Cannon’s methods are more than usually idiosyncratic.

It’s no surprise that William Conrad is terrific in this series. What is surprising is that he doesn’t play Cannon as a mere tough guy. He really plays up Cannon’s sensitive side. This is a tough guy who is a real softie underneath. I know that sounds rather ominous (sensitive heroes can be remarkably annoying) but it works. Of course if you’re William Conrad you can be sensitive without damaging your tough guy status. He’s also genuinely quite amusing at times.

Cannon might be tough but he’s also very successful and very wealthy. He’s a PI who
is quite comfortable moving in the higher social circles (as well as the lower ones more usually associated with the profession). Conrad carries this off quite convincingly. Cannon is definitely not down-at-heel – he’s rich and he enjoys being rich.

My initial impression of Cannon from these episodes (I’ve now seen the first eighteen of the twenty-four season one episodes) is that it’s a decent enough series of its type. Around this time (late 60s and early to mid 70s) there were several private eye series that can be considered as genuinely ground-breaking, series like Man in a Suitcase and Public Eye (arguably the best private eye series ever made) in Britain and The Rockford Files in the US. Even the first season of Mannix can be regarded as making at least a minor effort to push the boundaries of the genre. Cannon doesn’t do any of these things. It’s content to be a straightforward and really very conventional PI series. On the other hand it’s very competently done and the best episodes (The Salinas Jackpot, Death Chain, Country Blues, No Pockets in a Shroud) are very good.

Conforming to the conventions of the genre isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What matters is that Cannon manages to be pretty consistently entertaining. Recommended.

I don’t think this series is as good as its rough contemporaries Mannix or The Rockford Files but it’s worth a look for private eye fans.