From Beals and Ballet to Boston and Bikes

I was a big fan of Linda Barnes’ Boston-set series featuring statuesque, red-headed, and taxi-driving private eye Carlotta Carlyle. However, I’ve only ever read one installment in her earlier, smaller series about Michael Spraggue, a former gumshoe turned actor (introduced in 1981’s Blood Will Have Blood). So it was no surprise when I recently stumbled across the 1984 TV pilot Spraggue: Murder for Two, that I failed to recognize its debt to Barnes’ fiction.

Shot as a pilot for ABC-TV, that 90-minute drama starred Michael Nouri, who at the time was deemed to be something of a hot property, having appeared with Jennifer Beals in 1983’s Flashdance, played Charles “Lucky” Luciano in the NBC-TV mini-series The Gangster Chronicles, and been a regular cast member on Bay City Blues, a short-lived NBC comedy-drama created by Steven Bochco (of Hill Street Blues fame). In his book Unsold Television Pilots: 1955 to 1989, Lee Goldberg describes the film’s storyline thusly:

Michael Nouri is a Boston biology professor who spurns his family’s wealth in favor of living simply in the carriage house of his eccentric Aunt’s (Glynis John) mansion and riding his ten-speed to work. He also, as a hobby, solves baffling crimes—despite his Aunt’s meddling. In the pilot, he’s pitted against Patrick O’Neal, who is inducing heart attacks in his victims.

In addition to Nouri, this pilot featured James Cromwell, Andrea Marcovicci (who’d previously captivated in the second pilot for David Janssen’s Harry O), and the prolific Hank Garrett. In addition, it boasted music by the great Lalo Schifrin (better recognized for composing the themes to Mission: Impossible and Mannix). It isn’t bad for a teleflick, despite the changes made to the character of Barnes’ protagonist, but it is not exceptionl, either. It’s easy to understand why ABC passed on adding Spraggue to its weekly schedule.

At least for now, you can watch it all on YouTube.