What's on TV? Tuesday, November 12, 1968

I've mentioned this before, but you might not be aware that not only was 60 Minutes not always on Sunday evening, it wasn't always a weekly program. When it started, earlier in 1968, it was on bi-weekly, and aired on various nights of the week even after it became an every-week series. Fortunately, the highlight of the day doesn't conflict with the CBS show; it's the KCRA matinee movie, All the King's Men, which is not only one of the greatest political movies ever made, it's a timeless meditation on the ability of power to corrupt even the most well-intentioned people. If you haven't seen the original (don't bother with the Sean Penn remake from a few years ago), I strongly urge you to do so. And thank this week's Northern California edition for bringing it to your attention.

This week in TV Guide: November 9, 1968

As the nation recovers from the tumult of last week's presidential election, something comforting is definitely in order, and what could be better that starting off with two of life's simpler pleasures: comfort food and Johnny Carson, combined in Richard Gehman's article on how "You too can be a chef" by watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. You see, Carson makes a perfect companion for the hungry view (and Gehman finds himself, for some unknown reason, starved every time he watches Carson). Forthwith, Gehman's complete late-night supper, made during a recent episode of Tonight.

Start with the small potatoes, which can be prepared for boiling during Carson's commercial for a new spot remover. You can do the whole thing from your easy chair while Don Rickles comes on and insults everyone in sight. While Rickles continues, it's time for you to separate slices of chipped beef, which you've brought to your easy chair along with the spuds. As Ed McMahon shills for Alpo, take the separated beef to the kitchen, toss the potatoes in a pot for boiling, and while you're there put an eighth of a pound of butter in a frypan which has been preheated to 300°. Turn up the TV while Sergio Franchi is singing, so you can hear him while toasting two slices of bread and opening a can of peas. With the next commercial, you can drain the potatoes and toast a couple more slices of bread. The next guest, possibly George Jessel, allows you to chop a fresh green or red pepper.

When the show pauses for a station break, that's your chance to add two tablespoonfuls of sifted flour to the sizzling butter, stir with a whisk, and add a half teaspoonful of salt, a couple of pinches of dried parsley, a very small dash of oregano and some pepper, preferably fresh-ground. You can add a half-cup of water while the next singer (probably named Connie) warbles away. Add the chipped beef to the mixture when shills for a sewer-cleaning device, along with a half-cup of milk, stirring until the mixture bubbles, at which time you include the drained peas.

This whole thing should take you to within about ten minutes of the end of Carson's show. During the next-to-last commercial, add a tablespoonful of capped black pitted olives, and as Carson interviews his final guest (Mary Martin, Mary McCarthy, Mary Healy, or maybe Mary Queen of Scots), you can serve your creamed chipped beef, either on the toast or the potatoes you've put on the side. Turn off the set. Eat heartily.

I don't know. I don't think I can eat that heavy a meal right before bedtime.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled guests: singers Tom Jones, Vikki Carr and Jimi Hendrix; comedians Wayne and Shuster, and Scoey Mitchell; the Chung Trio, instrumentalists; and Valente and Valente, balancing act.

Palace: Host Mike Douglas presents Polly Bergen, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, Donovan, comics Hendra and Ullett, juggler Rudy Schweitzer and the Solokhins, balancing acrobats from the Moscow State Circus.

This week's summary is going to take a little explaining (as Desi might say to Lucy), and the explanation itself could make for a feature article. What you see above is, in fact, what was scheduled for the November 10 show. However, a strike by the American Federation of Musicians, which eventually lasted 28 days*, forced the cancelation of the episode, to be replaced by a repeat of the September 29 show, which featured performances by Jefferson Airplane, Diana Ross and the Supremes,  Red Skelton, actors Sergio Franchi and Virna Lisi (interviewed on location in Italy during filming of The Secret of Santa Vittoria, a movie in which Ed played a cameo role), and The Berosinis, Czechoslovakian balancing act. (Some sources also suggest that a clip from the Beatles' movie Yellow Submarine was shown.)

*Ed returned with a live show on November 24, which featured pre-recorded music.

Now, if that wasn't enough, let's go back again to that scheduled lineup—which, you'll notice, included the Jimi Hendrix Experience. As it turns out, even had the show aired as scheduled, Hendrix wouldn't have been on it, for reasons explained in this article from the Jimi Hendrix website, which offers a tantalizing look at what might have been—and what certainly would have been one of the great all-time moments of the Sullivan show:

An appearance by The Experience on the Ed Sullivan Show was proposed by Sullivan’s son-in-law, Bob Precht; unfortunately, the event was snubbed before ever making it off the ground. In John McDermott’s Hendrix: Setting The Record Straight, [Hendrix's manager] Bob Levine recalls, "Sullivan Productions really wanted to have Jimi on. Ed Sullivan had to get him one way or another, so Sullivan, [Bob] Precht [Sullivan's producer and son-in-law], [Michael] Jeffrey [Hendrix's UK manager] and I sat down to talk. Sullivan wanted to have the Vienna Ballet dance to his music, with Hendrix in front of a big orchestra, done on location in Europe. Jeffrey figured out the money he would need and agreed to the concept verbally. He left the meeting to speak to somebody—I don’t know who—and when, a day or so later, I told him he was supposed to follow up with Bob Precht her replied, ‘We aren’t going to do it.’ I asked if he had spoken to Jimi and he said, ‘No, I am not going to let Hendrix do that. I’ve got my reasons.’ Jimi would have loved to have done it."

After all that, I'm not sure I even want to look at what The Hollywood Palace offered, but I suppose we must. And you know what? It's a very pleasant show and all, but I think I'm going with Sullivan this week, no matter what show aired.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

Every once in a while, television tries something a little different. Not often, but occasionally. What's not different, though, is the result, which usually takes about thirteen weeks to play out, thirteen being an unlucky number, but the traditional number of episodes a series would run before getting canceled. The history of television is littered with such noble failures (Cop Rock, anyone?), and this week, Cleveland Amory takes a look at one of them: ABC's That's Life, a comedy-variety series with a regular cast and continuing story. It is, Amory says, more like "a long musical comedy—with each act lasting an hour and each intermission a week." 

That's Life stars Robert Morse (Tony winner for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) and E.J. Peaker as a young couple headed for marriage; Morse, Amory admits, "is not our favorite actor. But he is, bar none, our favorite re-actor—in fact, he is perhaps the best in the business," even though he sometimes tries a little too hard. Peaker took a while to grow on Cleve ("ABC is supposed to have interviewed over 3000 girls before deciding on her, and our feeling was, after the first time we saw her, they should have seen a couple more."), but by the fourth episode, "we were ready, if not for marriage, at least to go steady." It's always nice to see Our Critic fess up to his mistakes.

One of the highlights of each week's episode is the guest star, and Amory points out that the show is often written to take advantage of the guest, rather than the regulars. And with a cast of guests including George Burns, Jackie Vernon, and Tim Conway, the show succeeds more often than not. A particular highlight is the show in which Kay Medford and Shelly Berman appear as Peaker's mother and father, an episode that also features Robert Goulet and Alan King. "This was," Amory writes, "by all odds the best single episode of any series we have seen so far." That's Life could actually be considered a success as far as these "different" series go, running for 32 episodes. Cleve's much more bullish on the show, though: "When That's Life is good, it's very, very good—good enough to pay money for on Broadway. And even when it's bad, it's never, never horrid."

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Returning to something of a sense of normalcy, Saturday's highlight is the network television premiere of To Kill a Mockingbird (9:00 p.m., NBC), which won Oscars for Gregory Peck (Best Actor) and Horton Foote (Best Adapted Screenplay). Alone among most, I've never been particularly impressed by Peck's performance; Peter O'Toole was far more deserving of an Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia. But there's no questioning the status of this movie as one of the most powerful of the 1960s; Judith Crist praises not only Peck but Mary Badham and Phillip Alford as Peck's children, who steal the scenes at every opportunity. "The story may seem slightly sentimental today," she concludes, "but its stature and lasting substance stem from the beautifully portrayed relationship between father and children and from the youngsters’ perceptions of the world around them." And we could certainly use more movies like that today, and perhaps fewer superhero fantasies. Also on Saturday, NET Journal (9:30 p.m., KQED) presents "Politics '68—An Artist's View," a thoughtful, and occasionally poignant, review of the presidential campaign that showcases artist-reporter Franklin McMahon's drawings, sketches, and paintings of Robert Kennedy, George McGovern, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney; Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and George Wallace, accompanied by audio segments from the campaign, and McMahon's commentary.

On Sunday, the Apollo 7 astronauts, Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham, Meet the Press (5:30 p.m., NBC), discussing last month's critical flight, and the prospects of the American moon program. It's easy to overlook the importance of Apollo 7 sometimes, given that it was soon followed by the famed Apollo 8 flight around the moon, but Apollo 7 was the first manned mission following the disaster of Apollo 1, at which point the success of the entire space program was thrown into doubt. Had this mission not been a success, the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade may well have gone unreached. In prime time, our heroes of The FBI (8:00 p.m., ABC) take chase after an embezler on the run with the loot. The embezzler's name is "Frank Converse," which is also, of course, the name of the star of Coronet Blue, N.Y.P.D., and Movin' On. In tonight's episode, Frank Converse is played by William Windom, adding to the confusion. No word as to whether or not Frank Converse ever played a character named William Windom.

Monday's episode of The Avengers (8:00 p.m., ABC) serves as a showcase for Patrick Macnee, who plays five parts in this story of a plot to bomb an international peace conference by using plastic surgery to turn an assassin into Steed's double. Will Tara King be able to identify the real Steed? What do you think? Ian Ogilvy, who will go on to succeed Roger Moore as The Saint, guest stars. And speaking of multiple roles, NBC's "World Premiere" telemovie Now You See It, Now You Don't (9:00 p.m.) stars Jonathan Winters in some of his best-known roles, including an Air Force general, a farmer, and a cranky old man. Tune in for Winters, stay for Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, and the luscious Luciana Paluzzi. And in an unintentionally ironic episode of Firing Line (8:00 p.m., NET), William F. Buckley Jr.'s guest is New York Senator Charles Goodell, who was appointed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to serve the remaining term of the late Robert F. Kennedy. Two years hence, Goodell will lose his reelection bid to WFB's brother, Conservative candidate James Buckley.

Judith Crist singles out the Tuesday night movie The Jokers (9:00 p.m., NBC) for special notice. The crime drama stars Oliver Reed and Michael Crawford (yes, the future Phantom of the Opera) as British brothers planning the crime of the century "just to show how smart they are." It is, says Crist, "not only a brilliantly satiric plot but also a shrewd comment on today’s young affluents." You can prepare yourself for it with Merv Griffin's primetime special, Sidewalks of New England (7:30 p.m., KPIX), a "musical tour of New England," with Aretha Franklin, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and singer Jimmy Helm. Conversely, you can opt for The Jerry Lewis Show (7:30 p.m., NBC), with Jerry and his guests Jane Powell, Judy Carne, and the Osmond Brothers. And on the aforementioned That's Life (10:00 p.m., ABC), the guests are Alan King, Morey Amsterdam, Peggy Cass, and Hines, Hines & Dad—one of the Hines's being, of course, the fabulous Gregory Hines.

One of the things we've lost in our modern world, I think, is a sense of wonder. How many times do we really look around at the natural marvels that surround us, instead of looking down at our phones and further engaging in our own dehumanization? The special The Sense of Wonder (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., ABC), narrated by Helen Hayes, takes an hour to slow down and look at "nature's bounty," from the cold coast of Maine to the giant redwoods of California, to the insects that serenade us on summer evenings and the birds making their outposts in high-rise cities. It's based on the books of naturalist Rachel Carson, and includes interviews with photographer Ansel Adams and Dorothy Freeman. Can't we have something like this on television today? Or better yet, just get your eyes away from electronic devices and discover them for yourself. And on The Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC), Steve Allen looks at life in the year 2001, with Julie Harris, Shelley Berman, Bill Dana, and singer Lynn Kellogg. I wonder how many of Steverino's predictions came true?

On Thursday, everyone's in for a surprise on That Girl (9:00 p.m., ABC), when Don goes in drag top research a story on police units who hunt muggers in Central Park. Guess who he runs into: Ann's father Lew! Someone's got some explaining to do. . . oh, wait, I already used that line this week, didn't I? On the anthology series Journey to the Unknown (9:30 p.m., ABC), David Hedison trades his submarine command for the ink-stained fingers of journalism, as a man convinced he sees the same group of bystanders at the site of various accidents and natural disasters. According to his psychiatrist, "of course they exist . . . the question is, do they exist in reality or only in your mind?" And The Dean Martin Show (10:00 p.m., NBC) rounds out the evening, with Dean's guests David Janssen, Minnie Pearl, Lainie Kazan and comics Stu Gilliam and Stanley Myron Handelman. An unlikely gathering, to be sure, as witnessed in a sketch in which "Dean and David become the objects of Minnie's country-style courting." Being a fugitive has its advantages, right?

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau returns Friday night (7:30 p.m., ABC), with a study of the whale, narrated by Rod Serling and always worth a look. And while we remember Robert Young as the wise Jim Anderson on Father Knows Best, or the kindly family doctor Marcus Welby, M.D., we're reminded this week that Young is a fine actor not above showing an edge in his work. On The Name of the Game (7:30 p.m., NBC), he plays Herman Allison, "an ultraright fanatic who's building a private army" to guard against the growing race problem. Glen Howard (Gene Barry) enters the scene while investigating the death of an investigative reporter, and runs into a cast of characters that includes an influence-peddling former senator, a washed-up actress, a restaurateur, and another murder.

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The week's football is kind of a meh, but Stanley Frank provides a fascinating look behind the scenes at what happens in the television control booth. The focus is on CBS's coverage of the season opener between the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers, where announcers Frank Gifford and Jack Whitaker go through the preparation for the week's game with the production team, producer Bill Creasy and director Chris Erskine. Gifford runs through each team's tendencies, gives insight on key players, and advises the team on what to look for.  (Bobby Walden, the Pittsburgh punter, has "been known to pass from kick formation.")

Covering football has changed dramatically over the years. There are five color cameras assigned to the game: three near the 50-yard line, one on the sidelines, one behind an end zone. (By contrast, the average game today uses at least twice as many, and NBC has 40 for its Sunday night broadcasts.) CBS gets off to a rough start; despite Gifford's warning that Steelers running back Dick Houk had the capability of throwing on the option play, the cameras miss his 62-yard pass on the game's first play. Later in the first half, Erskine cuts to the field-level camera as Giants quarterback Fran Tarkenton unleashes an 84-yard pass to Homer Jones; the ground shot "projects the speed and power of the players but loses a panoramic view of the field," blowing the live shot. An instant replay showing the completed pass doesn't make up for Erskine's frustration at missing the original play.

The game continues through to a 34-20 victory by the Giants, a dull affair that, as Frank notes, proves the truism that "false excitement cannot be pumped into an event." Despite the early glitches, the broadcast goes well, and Gifford's tip about a fake punt means the cameras are in perfect position when Walden does, in fact, opt for the pass in the fourth quarter (which was dropped). It's particularly interesting to note how commercials were treated back in the day: under the current agreement, CBS can ask the officials for a commercial time-out "if there has been no natural break in the action during the first seven minutes of a quarter." The referee misses the network's initial fourth quarter signal, and Creasy nixes a commercial during a first-down measurement. ("We can't interrupt a drive.") The network is eventually bailed out by Giants kicker Pete Gogolak, who obligingly kicks two field goals to provide natural breaks for the spots.

Televising a game is tough work for everyone; as Creasy says after the game's end, "I feel as though my eyes are falling out of my head, and they pop out a little farther every week."

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And speaking of popping, on the cover this week is Barbara Feldon in marryin' garb, and inside is a layout of Feldon in the year's smartest outfits. The hook is the upcoming wedding of her Get Smart character, Agent 99, to Don Adams' Maxwell Smart, but it's clear that there's more to Feldon than meets the eye—or the secret agent, as it were.

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Finally, it's just another indication of the sign of the times, as we can see in a Letter to the Editor from Doris Mathews of Checotah, Oklahoma. Miss Mathews writes in praise of a recent special called Soul, which could have been any one of a number of specials but was probably a public broadcasting series of the same name. In the letter, she says "The Negro 'Soul' special was fabulous. More shows like this should be aired so that the whites can see all the talent among the Negro people." Wince-inducing to modern ears perhaps, but this is a time not far removed from the infamous interracial kiss on Star Trek, which caused NBC so much trouble in the South.

Thomas J. O'Neal of New Orleans has a hilarious take on Howard Cosell, who's not quite the household name he'll become in two years, thanks to Monday Night Football, but has become plenty familiar thanks to ABC's coverage of boxing—especially Muhammad Ali. In response to an October 19 article entitled "I'm Irreplaceable" (I'm assuming Humble Howard is speaking of himself here), O'Neal writes "In musing over the word 'saturnine,' which Howard Cosell believes everyone 'ought to learn,' it occurred to me that this Argus-eyed, stentorian Palladium of narcissism should pause on his commercial odyssey, pick up his aegis, take his Antaean virtues and his cornucopia of money—and paddle down the Stygian Way to Hades. [That's "go to hell," for the rest of us.] Cosell, you are a myth!" Couldn't have said that better myself.

I'll defer to the following as the Letter of the Week, though, as it checks a number of boxes that I've written about in the past months. Karen Fiedler, of Columbus, Ohio, has CBS' new Western series Lancer in mind in her letter. "Lancer is based on the fact that Murdoch Lancer [Andrew Duggan] was shot so badly he had to send for his boys, Scott [Wayne Maunder] and Johnny [James Stacy]. Scott gets shot int he first episode, Johnny gets shot in the second, and Scott gets shot again in the third by a family trying to avenge Johnny's killing of one of their brood. Johnny is forced to shoot one of them because they shot Scott. Luckily everyone recovers quickly except the bad guys. It is certainly a joy to view the new lack of violence." Got all that straight?

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MST3K alert: The Indestructible Man (1956) On his way to the gas chamber, "The Butcher" vowed he'd return from the grave and get the three men who doublecrossed him. Lon Chaney, Casey Adams. (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., KBHK in San Francisco) When combined with the short that preceded it, part two of "Undersea Kingdom," Lon Chaney became the first and only actor to appear in both segments of a single MST3K episode. Look for a short, fatal, turn from future McHale's Navy star Joe Flynn. Your pleasure, I promise, will not be indestructible. TV

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Around the dial

Photo by Stockcake.com

Let's start this week at Comfort TV, where David takes three classics and three wasted trips into Season 3 of The Twilight Zone. No arguments from me on either list, especially when it comes to Rod Serling's disastrous track record on comedies. But, then, we can't all be geniuses in multiple genres, can we?

Let's now keep that TZ vibe going, as Jordan at The Twilight Zone Vortex asks what kind of stories would have made great episodes for an imagined sixth season of the series. This really is a great question, given the disappointment many fans have with the final season. Some of these suggestions are quite intriguing, and all of them would make great episodes of a future anthology series, if anyone out there is reading this.

Looking at the latest entry at Cult TV Blog gives me a chance to once again thank John for his terrific piece that ran on Wednesday (read it here if you haven't already), and his series on similarities between The Prisoner and Soviet Russia continues this week with "The Schizoid Man" and "The General," and you should check it out.

Staying across the pond, at Classic Film & TV Cafe Rick gives us seven things to know about The Avengers, another of my favorite imports. If you consider yourself a fan of the series, here's your chance to prove it: how many of these seven things did you know?

More from British TV: Prunella Scales, one of the stars of the all-time classic comedy Fawlty Towers, tied last week, age 93. Her career covers far more than that one program, of course, and Terence has the highlights in this tribute at A Shroud of Thoughts.

This must be my lucky week: Cult TV Lounge focuses on yet another favorite of mine, Naked City, which makes the list not only as one of the best police dramas on televisison, but one of the best drama series, period. What sets it apart? This look at season two (the first in its hour-long format) gives you a good idea.

Martin Grams gives us another book review of a classic radio moment: John Gosling's Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic. Orson Welles' immortal, much-misunderstood, always fascinating broadcast. No matter what you know about this, it isn't enough.

Remember Mike the skunk? He's the newest member of the A-Team, and at The View from the Junkyard, Roger looks at his debut in the episode "The Battle of Bel Air." Actually, that's not quite right: this episode also introduces Tawnia, the replacemenbt for Amy. 

Finally, the classic TV director Ralph Senensky died this week, age 102. His credits are too numerous to mention, and one of the few things that can compare to his resume is his ability to write about his experiences, which you can read about at his webite. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

Policing the beat: British police and detective dramas

Jack Warner as Dixon of Dock Green

This week, I'm pleased to present to you John Berry, who we all know from Cult TV Blog. When John answered the call for guest essays and offered to give me a hand with the Wednesday pieces, I asked him if he'd be interested in writing about British police and detective series. I've always enjoyed British police and private detective (or "inquiry agent," if you prefer) series through the 1970s—the time period that we're both interested in. They have a combination of darkness, grit, and depth that make them quite fascinating to watch. He gladly accepted the challenge, and so, as an American might say, Here's John! 

by John Berry

MMitchell asked me to do a guest post on the history of British crime/detective/police TV shows, however, I'm afraid what I've done for him is far from being a systematic history. It is important to remember that thanks to the policy (of both the BBC and commercial TV stations) of wiping and reusing tapes, a huge proportion of British television before 1978 has disappeared forever. This means that the remaining TV shows are not always representative of what was actually made and broadcast, representing only what was arbitrarily selected to be archived. I've therefore decided to focus on shows that people can actually still watch and that I would recommend.

From the 1950s to the end of the 1970s TV police shows performed the function of reflecting the nature of UK policing and the public's attitude to the police. The attitude started off hugely deferential, with the famous Dixon on Dock Green (1955 to 1976), which depicts what we would now call community policing, with the titular Dixon more inclined to deal with minor misdemeanours with a clip round the ear than actually deal with serious crime. The depiction of policing was more realistic in Z-Cars (1962 to 1987) and the long run of shows in which the legendary Stratford Johns played Detective Inspector Barlow in one form or another (Softly Softly, Softly Softly Task Force, and Barlow, between the sixties and seventies) to a total of 345 episodes over multiple shows. Johns was so typecast that he even made guest appearances in other shows as his character and never really played anything else.

Patrick Mower is an actor who also had a rather typecast career in the seventies as a mouthy police officer who didn't get on with anyone else and was definitely what my mother would have called a sexy piece of work. He was in the interesting series Special Branch (1969 to 1970, 1973 to 1974) which is really two completely different shows about counterintelligence and counterterrorism. From the first block of episodes to the second, the show changed completely, becoming much less 'square' and more character-driven. It also featured the classic trope of two officers who really don't get on. Special Branch has excellent, imaginative scripts, and paved the way for the police TV of the late 1970s.

The events of the 1970s taught the public that the police were far from sea green incorruptible and this was of course reflected on TV. Perhaps the best known series along these lines was ◀ The Sweeney* (Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad, 1975 to 1978) and its more violent competitor Target (1977 to 1978, which also starred Patrick Mower) and The Professionals (1977 to 1983, which picked up on the trope of detectives who didn't really get on). These shows depicted police as corrupt, venal, frankly incompetent, violent, and positively criminal.

*Starring John Thaw (later to portray Inspector Morse in the series of the same name) as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter.  

We do also have some much more kindly TV detectives. I would highlight Inspector Purbright (played by Anton Rodgers) in Murder Most English (1977), adapted from Colin Watson's detective novels set in the eccentric town of Flaxborough, as a definitely 'cosy' approach to policing. Rodgers also played David Gradley in Zodiac (1974), probably the man least suited to be a police detective ever. You don't hate him, though, because he's just rather drifted into it after Harrow. He teams up with an astrologer (played by Anouska Hempel) to solve crime in this series.

However there is a much richer vein on British TV depicting detectives or detection outside of the police. These shows frequently either set in the 'Swinging London' culture of the 1960s or grittily portray the life of desperation on a cold, wind-swept island off the continent.

Perhaps the detective least able to get on with other people, Sherlock Holmes, was portrayed in two 1960s BBC series, Sherlock Holmes (1965) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), Holmes being played by Douglas Wilmer in the former and Peter Cushing in the latter. Peter Cushing is my favourite Sherlock Holmes just as he is my favourite Doctor Who and for the same reason: he comes across as wonderfully cerebral and I think gives an idea of what Conan Doyle's Holmes would actually have been like. Both series suffered from extensive junking but the remains of both series have been commercially released.

The show which possibly best epitomises the hard-bitten private detective who is well beyond being cynical, is Public Eye ► (1965 to 1975), starring Alfred Burke as Frank Marker. I often think that to be a private eye you either have to have had something terrible to happen to you, or else if it hasn't, a few years of doing the job would make sure you never wanted to trust another person again. Marker even manages to get sent to prison at one point, which ensures that, as well as seeing all the evil of the world, the police are also against him.* The show's scripts specialise in a lot of human motivations and relationships, with complex and strong exposition as part of Marker's investigation. Public Eye is known for its grittiness, but The View from Daniel Pike (1971 to 1973) makes Public Eye look like the Magic Roundabout. The reason for Pike's utter cynicism is never made clear, like it is with Marker, and this is very much the ethos of the show: it just states the hard-boiled facts without bothering too much with motivation or introspection. To go with this, Pike is frank, verging on rude with people, and yet this isn't done in a gratuitous way; it goes with the show, and having him insult his customers just seems to fit the situation. This show has not been commercially released but is online.

*Mitchell previously wrote about Public Eye here.

There is, of course, a long tradition of policemen who leave, retire or are kicked out, for whatever reason, becoming private eyes. Of those depicted on UK television I would draw your attention to Mr Rose (1967 to 1968), who is actually retired but can't stop investigating things. Bulman (1985 to 1987) is about a policeman who has also retired but keeps on. I prefer Bulman in many ways to Strangers (1978 to 1982), the show which actually depicted Bulman as a police officer, because I feel a greater sympathy for him being out of it, but still having his somewhat problematic relationship with his former employers.

There are some lesser-known series about private detectives that I think are well worth seeking out. One is ◀ The Big M (1967) about a private detective, Treherne, who begins investigating the absolute den of iniquity which is the seaside town where he lives, after the owner of the local strip club walks into his office and promptly dies. If you try The Big M, please watch at least a few episodes, because it introduces so much stuff, it takes a few episodes for it to get into its stride. And the other I like recommending to people, which nobody has ever heard of, is The Rose Medallion (1981) about an inquiry agent (private detective) called Harry who is a complete failure with women and looks after his cousin. His cousin manages to dig up a skeleton, and the rest of the mini-series is about the identity of the skeleton. Unfortunately, The Rose Medallion suffers because some misinformation about it has got loose online, and of course, people tend to copy it from each other. Possibly more people have heard of Hazell (1978 to 1979), an excellent pastiche of film-noir detectives such as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, but it's a great show if you haven't. And of course, everyone has heard of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969 to 1970), the show in which one of the detectives has the advantage of being dead. This is also the only TV show I know of where I like its remake and reimagining of 2000 just as much as the original.

Finally, I have to make an honorific mention of a series that isn't currently available but does periodically find its way online before the copyright holder gets it taken down again (it is just plain contrary to enforce copyright for a sixty-year-old TV show while also not actually making it available). This show is an anthology show called Detective ► (1964 to 1969). Because it is just called Detective, it is, of course, difficult to find when it does turn up, and also episodes tend to get uploaded by the title of the individual episode, so it's honestly like hen's teeth. Being an anthology series, of course also the episodes are variable and won't be to everyone's taste, but they are quality adaptations of a wide variety of different detective stories by a broad range of authors and are great viewing.

In conclusion, there is a great history of police and detective shows on British television, it's just that Mitchell asked the wrong person to write a sensible history of the genre. TV

Mitchell here, and I very much doubt I asked the wrong person, John! A terrific look at the genre, and certainly some very interesting programs to check out if you've got a region-free DVD player or have a hankering to go surfing on YouTube.

Thanks again to John, and a reminder that if you'd like to see your name in lights—or, at least, on the splash page of It's About TV, leave a comment, send me a message via the contact form, message me on X or Facebook, or, if you're one of the lucky ones with my email address, reach me there!  

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What's on TV? Saturday, November 1, 1969

You'll notice that at 5:30 p.m., WCVB is airing It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which didn't air the previous week when it was shown by the rest of the CBS affiliates. (The station was showing the movie Bus Stop.) I say this because it is now November 1; Halloween was yesterday, which is a bit like showing Rudolph or Frosty on December 28; it loses something in the translation. Perhaps this is one of those cases where they should have thought twice before pre-empting The Great Pumpkin for a two-hour movie. The listings, in case you haven't already figured it out, are from the Eastern New England edition.