Killed in the Ratings: “Karen Sisco”

(The 14th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

 

Title: Karen Sisco

Starring: Carla Gugino, Robert Forster, and Bill Duke

Original Run: 2003-2004 (10 episodes), ABC-TV

Premise: Taking on a character created by novelist Elmore Leonard and previously portrayed by Jennifer Lopez in the 1998 film Out of Sight (trailer here), Sarasota-born actress Gugino played Karen Sisco, a feisty, sexy, and independent young U.S. deputy marshal working out of Miami, Florida. Sisco spent most of her time locating and apprehending well-armed but often not terribly bright fugitives who tried to hide out in the glitzy, glamorous environs of South Beach, or elsewhere in the southeastern Florida district. And she was extremely good at her job, though some of her male colleagues needed to be taught that through experience--oftentimes to their embarrassment. Although she didn’t have much luck with men on a social basis, she was backed up professionally by two able males: her boss, U.S. Marshal Amos Andrews (Duke), and her father, an ex-Miami police officer turned private eye with the unlikely name of Marshall Sisco (Forster of Banyon and Nakia fame), who frequently served as her confessor. Speaking with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel back in 2003, Gugino--who had co-starred with Michael J. Fox in the first season of Spin City before launching a big-screen career--said: “I wasn’t looking to do a series. But I wanted this character. ... She’s very much a woman yet functions a lot like a bachelor. She has an incredible relationship with her father, which is one of the things I also found to be so great.” The show’s opening episode, “Blown Away,” was based on Elmore Leonard’s 1996 short story, “Karen Makes Out,” which first introduced the Sisco character.

Developed for television by Jason Smilovic

Additional Notes: Karen Sisco seemed to have everything going for it when it debuted on October 1, 2003. It was spun off from a popular theatrical release, it boasted a most photogenic former model as its star, and Danny DeVito (who had previously brought two other Leonard properties to the silver screen--Out of Sight and Get Shorty) was one of the program’s executive producers. In its 2003 Fall Preview edition, TV Guide called Sisco “easily the season’s coolest new show. Wry, ironic, sexy.” Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker struggled to keep from salivating even harder over this series, writing:

“Karen Sisco” is an old-fashioned crime show, which I intend as a compliment--a welcome alternative to the new-fashioned, is-that-a-bloodstained-rug-fiber-or-are-you-just-glad-to-magnify-me crime shows. “Sisco,” by contrast, is a hunt-the-bad-guys series with a heroine who’s stubborn, charming, bourbon-drinking, and occasionally in need of help from her irascible father and his ex-con friends. Indeed, it’s a lot like “The Rockford Files,” except I doubt James Garner’s gams ever looked this good.

Carla Gugino (“Spy Kids”) plays Miami federal marshal Sisco, taking over Jennifer Lopez’s role from director Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 movie “'Out of Sight” ... Lopez was very good, but a bit too steamy to get on [Elmore] Leonard’s wavelength, which is one of ice-cold serenity. Gugino, however, has that tone down. She’s simultaneously calm and dogged in her pursuit of a bank robber or a German cop killer who likes to look for songs featuring the names of women he admires (he works hard to come up with one that includes “Karen”). ...

It’s fun to watch Gugino, who used to snuggle up to Michael J. Fox on “Spin City,” hold her own on a show in the company of big guys like [Robert] Forster and Bill Duke, the formidable actor-director who plays her boss, Amos. In the two episodes I’ve seen, she’s flirted with Patrick Dempsey (“Once and Again”) and Peter Horton (“Thirtysomething'”) yet managed to maintain her soft-on-the-outside, steel-on-the-inside persona. When still another date (Carlos Ponce), a tad unnerved when he finds out what she does for a living, asks Karen how many men she has killed, she just sighs and asks him to kiss her. “See?” she murmurs, coming out of the clinch. “I’m just a girl.” ...

If you’re looking for the season’s smartest, most comfy and engaging new thriller, “Sisco'” is it.

Yet this series disappeared from the prime-time schedule almost as swiftly as a previous show based on one of Leonard’s novels, the abundantly quirky Maximum Bob (1998). ABC, which had hoped Karen Sisco could take a much larger bite than it did out of the audience for its chief Wednesday-night rival, Law & Order, canceled Gugino’s series in November 2003 after running only seven episodes. Three more installments that had been shot as part of the first-season order weren’t broadcast until Sisco was re-aired on the USA Network during the spring of 2004. Ever since, fans of this show have been waiting for a DVD release, but so far without satisfaction.

Above: The write-up about Karen Sisco from the September 13-19, 2003, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The show’s opening title sequence, which employed an edited version of the 1969 Isley Brothers funk anthem, “It’s Your Thing,” as its theme.



(The TV Guide spread about Karen Sisco was provided by Brian Sheridan. It’s part of the collection in the Communication Department at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. It is used with permission.)

REQUIRED READING: In the blog Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot, copywriter-critic Marty McKee has reviewed--individually--all 10 episodes of Karen Sisco. You’ll find that whole set here.

Killed in the Ratings: “Mancuso, FBI”

(The 13th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Mancuso, FBI

Starring: Robert Loggia

Original Run: 1989-1990 (20 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: Character actor Loggia’s tough-guy face has to be one of the most familiar in American television history. He claims a curriculum vitae that runs on and on ... and on. During the mid-1960s Loggia starred as a circus performer and cat burglar turned bodyguard in T.H.E. Cat, and before that he appeared in a 10-part Walt Disney Presents TV serial based on the real-life experiences of 19th-century western lawman-politician Elfego Baca. He’s guest-starred in everything from Route 66 and The Name of the Game to Mannix, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, Murder, She Wrote, Magnum, P.I., The Sopranos, and most recently, Men of a Certain Age. Then there are his numerous theatrical film roles.

Given how comfortable TV viewers must be with Loggia, it’s surprising that Mancuso, FBI wasn’t more of a success. His character, federal investigator Nick Mancuso, was introduced in 1988’s six-part NBC miniseries, Favorite Son, based on a 1987 novel of that same name by Steve Sohmer. The miniseries centered around a mediagenic young senator from Texas (played by Harry Hamlin), who after surviving the assassination of a Central American contra leader, was chosen as the running mate of the current U.S. president, Sam Baker. Only later did Baker discover that his new vice-presidential pick was also “a fascist and a militarist, ready to turn the Americas into an armed camp for the greater honor and glory of the United States.” Mancuso was assigned to find out who had snuffed the contra leader, a task at which some folks in the government would have preferred he fail.

Loggia played Mancuso as a gruff, world-weary, and plainspoken agent on the cusp of retirement, whose outward cynicism regarding the modern political scene and the ethical drift of his nation contrasted with his privately held hopefulness about America’s future and his faith in the FBI. Loggia scored enough plaudits with his portrayal, that NBC decided to try his fedora-topped character out in a regular Friday-night series of his own. Writing about Mancuso, FBI in their 2007 book, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh explained:

As the press releases put it, [Mancuso] had “a passionate love affair with the United States Constitution.” His politically oriented superiors dismissed him as “a lonely misanthrope with no respect for authority,” but it’s not easy to get rid of FBI agents so he got to continue his one-man crusade against corruption and murder in high government places in this action-filled series.

During Mancuso’s run, Loggia’s agent got mixed up with political smear campaigns, international drug dealing, plutonium theft, judicial corruption, and even an IRS scam.

Additional Notes: With the long-established CBS prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest and ABC’s “television newsmagazine,” 20/20, as its competition on Friday nights between 10 and 11 p.m., Mancuso fought an uphill battle for ratings. Critics debated what was going wrong with the new show, and many determined that what had really made the miniseries Favorite Son a winner was not Loggia’s crotchety investigator, but rather Hamlin’s appearance as a guileful senator. They charged that, on his own, Nick Mancuso couldn’t draw the same sort of audience numbers. It didn’t help this new series, either, that as The New York Times reported, Loggia had just turned 60 years old, and was “already demanding lighter work schedules.” After carrying 20 episodes of Mancuso, FBI, NBC finally decided to let the agent retire as he’d wanted to do for so long.

Above: The write-up about Mancuso, FBI from the September 9-15, 1989, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: That show’s opening title sequence, with theme music composed by Doug Katsaros.

An Extra, Then an Ending

Way back at the beginning of September, as America’s new fall TV season was just getting under way, I promised to write posts about 13 prime-time crime dramas, all launched in previous falls, that “viewers were expected to like, but didn’t.” Shows that received big send-offs, but were soon dumped due to mediocre ratings.

Well, I lied. Instead of 13 such shows, you’re going to get 14.

In the end, I simply couldn’t drop one of the programs I had toyed with leaving out of this month-long series. It really belonged, and my ambition got the better of my good sense, and before I really thought about it, I’d gone ahead and penned the post. So, given that this is the final day of The Rap Sheet’s “Killed in the Ratings” series, you will see two new entries go up on this page. Would you care to guess which crime dramas they’ll cover? OK, here are a couple of hints. One program was a spin-off from a successful TV miniseries, the other was inspired by a theatrical film starring George Clooney. One featured a veteran character actor with an ostensibly gruff demeanor, while the other showcased a short but comely former model who can do both comedy and crime fiction.

But before we get to those last “Killed in the Ratings” selections, let’s recap the other dozen U.S. series I’ve addressed thus far. In reverse order of posting, they are:

• McClain’s Law (1981-1982)
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1996)
• Paris (1979-1980)
• Griff (1973-1974)
• Get Christie Love! (1974-1975)
• The Delphi Bureau (1972-1973)
• Nakia (1974)
• The Devlin Connection (1982)
• Gavilan (1982-1983)
• Joe Forrester (1975-1976)
• Leg Work (1987)
• Serpico (1976-1977)

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this series as much as I have relished writing it. And I’ll be curious to know, once it has reached its conclusion this afternoon, whether you think I have missed any short-run shows that deserved mentioning. Comments are always welcome.

Killed in the Ratings: “McClain’s Law”

(The 12th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: McClain’s Law

Starring: James Arness and Marshall Colt

Original Run: 1981-1982 (16 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: Former Gunsmoke star Arness played Jim McClain, a veteran detective with the police department in San Pedro, California, who had retired after being injured, then spent a decade and a half working on a fishing boat. But when his fishing partner is murdered, McClain--long known as a rule-breaker who prefers to conduct his investigations “by the gut”--pushes for reinstatement on the force in order to solve that homicide. Afterwards, he remains on active duty, much to the dismay of his new boss, Lieutenant Ed DeNisco (George DiCenzo), as well as his 30-year-old, by-the-book partner, Detective Harry Gates (Colt), who McClain doesn’t particularly like, but who seems destined to learn a lot from the elder lawman.

Created by Eric Bercovici

Additional Notes: According to TV Guide, “NBC bought this series without a pilot or even a script. What they had was a Living Legend and a Concept.” Sadly, that wasn’t good enough to make McClain’s Law a hit. Maybe Arness should have found more excuses to get out of his car and up into a saddle, where viewers expected to find him.

Above: The write-up on McClain’s Law from the September 12-18, 1981, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge it.) Below: The program’s opening sequence, with an episode preview.

Killed in the Ratings: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

(The 11th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Starring: Scott Bakula
and Maria Bello

Original Run: 1996 (13 episodes, including pilot), CBS-TV

Premise: Other than its title and the fact that it was also a romantic comedy of sorts, this Mr. & Mrs. Smith had little in common with the better-remembered 2005 Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt film. CBS’ Friday-night series focused on a couple of globetrotting young spies, the pseudonymous Mr. Smith (Bakula) and Mrs. Smith (Bello), who were employed by a super-secret private security agency known as “The Factory.” Together they conducted covert operations under the guise of a married couple--a humorous thing, since neither knew much of anything about the other, not even their partner’s true identity. As the Smiths shared--or more likely lied to each other about--their traits and trails through life, and bickered with a frequency not uncommon to truly-weds, they managed to complete hazardous missions involving high explosives, stolen currency, missing missiles, assassination plots, and (as part of their cover) suburban get-togethers. The pair took their assignments from an equally cloaked boss, Mr. Big (Roy Dotrice). The sexual chemistry that was cooked up by the Smiths’ involuntary but not entirely displeasing association was supposed to remind television viewers of either the private-eye series Moonlighting or the Thin Man movies, or maybe both.

Created by Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar

Additional Notes: Executive producer Lenhart told TV Guide why he liked the anonymity of his two lead characters. “Having worked on Remington Steele, a fun thing was that you never knew who Remington was, but you know who [private eye] Laura [Holt] was. This is like double fun because you’re really not sure who either one of them is.” Certainly, that mystery offered opportunities for some surprises, as one partner would suddenly demonstrate talents or knowledge that the other didn’t know he or she had. More interesting, however, was the evolving relationship--professional and personal--between Bakula (who was then best known for his years flipping through time on Quantum Leap) and Bello (whose appearance in Mr. & Mrs. Smith proved to be her breakout role). Bakula’s Smith seemed rather too wholesome and naïve to be an espionage agent, but the alternately sassy and sultry Bello came off as clever and audacious enough to thrive in that shadowy trade--and to benefit, if begrudgingly, from Bakula’s less seat-of-the-pants professionalism. If anyone, she really sold this show. Unfortunately, critics weren’t buying it. Commenting on the September 1996 pilot film, which was shot in Seattle and found Mr. Smith first meeting Mrs. Smith (who then worked for a competing “rent-a-spy company”), The New York Times said that Bakula “seems to be sleepwalking as Mr. Smith,” while Bello played her part “as if she were auditioning for the role of a Bond-girl understudy.” The newspaper called this program “so banal it makes life-threatening espionage combined with sexual tension seem dull.” Ouch! Even as a 9-10 p.m. bridge between the popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and Don Johnson’s Nash Bridges, Mr. & Mrs. Smith couldn’t find an audience. CBS yanked it after broadcasting just eight or nine of its 13 episodes; the remainder were only shown overseas, according to Wikipedia.

Above: Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s write-up in the September 14-20, 1996, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The series’ opening title sequence.



READ MORE: “A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1996)” (Mystery*File); “Home of the Forgotten: TV Spies,” by Michael Shonk (Criminal Element).

Killed in the Ratings: “Paris”

(The 10th entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Paris

Starring: James Earl Jones

Original Run: 1979-1980 (13 episodes), CBS-TV

Premise: Woodrow “Woody” Paris is a particularly sharp and dogged, but also compassionate Los Angeles police captain, an African-American man in his 40s who commands a mixed-race team of impulsive rookie detectives responsible for solving violent crimes. Led by Sergeant Stacy Erickson (Cecilia Hart), that team also features officers Charlie Bogart (Jake Mitchell), Ernesto Villas (Frank Ramírez), and Willie Miller (Michael Warren). When he isn’t off pursuing felons and getting to the bottom of murder cases, Paris teaches criminology to classes of young men and women who might one day replace him and his band of young investigators. In between it all, he gets some exercise (and maybe takes out his aggressions) punching a body bag in his home and enjoys the company of his independent-minded wife, Barbara (Lee Chamberlin), a nurse who’s not above questioning her husband’s crime-solving assumptions.

Created by Steven Bochco

Additional Notes: This police drama was the first TV show in which James Earl Jones served as the series lead. (He subsequently starred in Gabriel’s Fire and Under One Roof). And while it wasn’t the earliest program created by Steven Bochco (later to achieve renown for Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue), it was apparently only the second one on which Bochco served as executive producer. (The short-lived Rockford Files spin-off, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, was the first.) Critics were generally complimentary of Paris, and the show earned an Emmy Award nomination in the category of Outstanding Music Composition for a Series. But it was unable to survive its dismal time slot, beginning on Saturday night at 10 p.m., especially as it was originally counter-programmed against a promising new ABC series called Hart to Hart. One good thing came of all the work actor Jones put into Paris: Two years later after it was cancelled, he married co-star Cecilia Hart, and they’ve been together ever since.

Above: Paris’ write-up in the September 8-14, 1979, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s opening title sequence. Theme music by Fred Karlin.



OTHERS HAVE NOTICED: The folks over at Omnimystery News delivered a nice mention of The Rap Sheet’s “Killed in the Ratings” series earlier today. It reads, in part:

Thirteen shows have been selected to be featured, of which (as of this morning) nine have been posted: Serpico, Leg Work, Joe Forrester, Gavilan, The Devlin Connection, Nakia, The Delphi Bureau, Get Christie Love!, and Griff. All of the posts include detailed background information as well as videos of the opening credits.

We’ve been watching crime dramas since way back when, but we have to admit, some of these are new to us! How many do you remember?

Thanks for the generous tout, guys.

READ MORE: “Random TV Title: Paris,” by Marty McKee (Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot); “Remembering James Earl Jones as ‘Paris’ (1979) and Louis Gossett, Jr. in The Lazarus Syndrome (1978),” by Emmanuel Akitobi (Shadow and Act).

Killed in the Ratings: “Griff”

(The ninth entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Griff

Starring: Lorne Greene and
Ben Murphy

Original Run: 1973-1974 (12 episodes, plus pilot), ABC-TV

Premise: After 14 years of playing patriarch Ben Cartwright on the western series Bonanza (a show that had been canceled just nine months before the debut of Griff, with less than two days notice), the 58-year-old Greene was saddled with a much different job as a private investigator. He played Wade “Griff” Griffin, described by publicity materials as a former Los Angeles police captain who “had become a legend in the department prior to being forced into early retirement.” He had moved into the gumshoe game after his private-eye son was murdered; he started out by solving that mystery, then took over the junior sleuth’s private practice. Griff, viewers were told, would get “emotionally involved in cases and was young enough to have appeal for women.” (Perhaps to reassure himself of that latter capacity, he lived in the “swinging, youth-oriented Westwood section of Los Angeles.”) His 31-year-old partner was Mike Murdoch (former Alias Smith and Jones co-star Murphy), the son of one of Griff’s colleagues--who’d been killed in the line of duty--and even more devastating to the opposite sex than his new boss. The two worked out of antiques-filled offices, shared a secretary-receptionist, Gracie Newcombe (Patricia Stich), and had a reliable LAPD contact they could summon for assistance, Captain Barney Marcus (Vic Tayback).

Created by Larry Cohen

Additional Notes: In an era when cop, private-eye, and lawyer series were epidemic on television, critics dismissed Griff as carbon-copy material. It didn’t help that the series concept--an older detective takes over his son’s private-eye firm after the younger man is killed--sounded an awful lot like the premise of Barnaby Jones, which had begun its run earlier in the same year. As he made the media rounds, and before the final casting decisions were announced, actor Greene was asked more than once by impish reviewers which former Miss America would be hired to play his secretary on the show (an allusion, of course, to Lee Meriwether’s participation in the Buddy Ebsen series.) TV Guide’s Cleveland Amory had assorted other complaints. He described Wade Griffin as “fatherly and bulldoggy, but besides being that and looking rather like a bulldog--he has a kind of bit-it-off and spit-it-out approach to characterization anyway--we just don’t learn enough about him to make him interesting.” Amory also condemned Griff’s plots as “strictly old hit. In an early show, a woman’s husband is murdered on a yacht--all aboard wished him dead. When have you last seen that one? Not since last night, right? In another episode, Griff’s secretary is besieged by phone calls from an unknown psychic. Again, say when. No, please don’t. In still another, Griff has to thwart the potential killer of a Middle East potentate--à la Day of the Jackal. It was the jackal, yes, but hardly the day of.” Surprisingly, Steven Bochco was one of the executive producers behind this short-lived Saturday night series, the pilot for which wasn’t broadcast until a year after Griff had bitten the dust.

Above: Griff’s write-up in the September 8-14, 1973, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: A scene from the episode “Countdown to Terror,” guest-starring Ricardo Montalban as a hostage-taker with a bomb strapped to his torso.



Although I couldn’t track down the main title sequence from Griff, I did at least find its theme music, composed by Elliot Kaplan. The version below was performed by John Gregory & His Orchestra.



READ MORE: “Griff--Robert Weverka,” by Randy Johnson (Not the Baseball Pitcher); “Death Follows a Psycho,” by Marty McKee (Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot).

Killed in the Ratings: “Get Christie Love!”

(The eighth entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Get Christie Love!

Starring: Teresa Graves and Charles Cioffi

Original Run: 1974-1975 (22 episodes, plus pilot), ABC-TV

Premise: Inspired generally by Dorothy Uhnak’s 1970 novel, The Ledger, but certainly influenced by “blaxploitation” films of its era, this show starred former Laugh-In regular Graves as the first African-American female undercover cop on the Los Angeles police force, working to bring down drug dealers and other high-risk malcontents. The big-’fro’d, bare-midriffed Ms. Love had a smile to melt hearts, but she could also protect herself in dangerous situations, whether with a few karate chops or several well-aimed swings of her capacious handbags. And she rarely failed to deliver her signature line when apprehending criminals: “You’re under arrest, Sugah.” Her initial LAPD supervisor was the perpetually concerned Lieutenant Matthew Reardon (Cioffi), replaced in later episodes by former Maverick co-star Jack Kelly as Captain Arthur Ryan.

Additional Notes: According to Wikipedia, this show grew out of a well-received ABC teleflick of the same title, shown in January 1974. But the subsequent series was “financed on a meager budget and [was] heavily sanitized to conform to Graves’ religious morals (she had become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses since the making of the TV film).”

Above: Get Christie Love!’s write-up in the September 7-13, 1974, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: A 1974 promotional spot for Graves’ series, plus its original main title sequence (with a theme sung by Luchi De Jesus).





This third video clip is the final version of the series’ opening title sequence, made after Jack Kelly joined the cast. The new theme music was composed by Glen A. Larson and Stu Phillips.



READ MORE: “She’s a Cop, Oh Yeah!”: Get Christie Love!, by Hal Horn (The Horn Section).

Killed in the Ratings: “The Delphi Bureau”

(The seventh entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: The Delphi Bureau

Starring: Laurence Luckinbill

Original Run: 1972-1973 (7 episodes, plus pilot), ABC-TV

Premise: Glenn Garth Gregory (Luckinbill) is a very unusual sort of spy. In fact, he’s not really a spy at all. He’s just a good-looking guy with a photographic memory (maybe “just” isn’t the proper word to use there), who works for a vaguely defined U.S. government agency that ostensibly does research for the president. OK, so he’s an intelligence operative, but not in the super-suave, lady-killer, James Bond sense. Even Gregory is not very clear on some things, like exactly what his employer, the Delphi Bureau, does, or where it’s based, or who his bosses are. All he thinks he knows for sure is that his liaison with the Bureau is an enigmatic Washington, D.C., socialite, the flirtatious Sybil Van Loween (Anne Jeffreys). She lets our reluctant hero know when he’s needed--and he’s needed a lot, it seems. Unlike Agent 007, explains TV.com, Gregory “doesn’t use secret weapons, and would rather not use a gun (though he does on occasion), preferring instead to rely on his photographic memory, powers of observation, and ingenuity to solve cases.” Sometimes that’s not enough, though, which is when he calls on Van Loween for help. After all, Gregory insists, “All I do is research.” Yeah, right, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell you, cheap ...

Created by Sam Rolfe

Additional Notes: The Delphi Bureau was one of three series broadcast under the umbrella title The Men; the other two were Assignment: Vienna, starring Robert Conrad as an international spy, and Jigsaw, which put James Wainwright into the role of a California investigator specializing in missing-persons cases. As I recall, Luckinbill (who later married Lucie Arnaz) pretty much nailed the role of somebody who didn’t always know what he was doing or what to expect next, but was less credible as an espionage agent. “Critics and journalists,” recalls TV.com, “generally dismissed the show as being gimmicky and scraping the bottom of an already tired genre (spies), because of the photographic memory angle, but it had some very creative, clever plots (at least for the time).” Maybe so. We just didn’t get to see many of them, as The Men vanished from the airwaves after one short season.

Above: The write-up about The Men, including The Delphi Bureau, which appeared in the September 9-15, 1972, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: A scene from the series’ March 1972 pilot, guest-starring Joanna Pettet. If you really need to see it, a very mediocre version of this show’s opening title sequence can be found on YouTube.



READ MORE: “A TV Review: The Delphi Bureau: The Merchant of Death Assignment (1972),” by Michael Shonk (Mystery*File).

Killed in the Ratings: “Nakia”

(The sixth entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Nakia

Starring: Robert Forster

Original Run: 1974 (14 episodes, plus pilot), ABC-TV

Premise: Perhaps inspired partly by Tony Hillerman’s series of Navajo mysteries (which were just beginning to appear in bookstores at the time this show debuted), Nakia focused on the exploits of Nakia Parker (Forster), a full-blooded Navajo Indian in his mid-30s, who’s also a deputy sheriff working the small towns and dusty, rutted backroads of fictional Davis County, New Mexico. Parker often came off as an inscrutable character, voicing proverbs suffused with tribal wisdom (“The bear steals the honey, then complains to the Great Spirit because the bee is unkind.”). And he would struggle to find middle ground between what his heritage and culture taught him was right and the laws he’d sworn to uphold. There was no mystery whatsoever, though, about this man’s determination to protect his fellow Native Americans from racial injustice as he investigated criminal, domestic, and other cases in which they had a stake. That resolve incited opposition from some of Parker’s more narrow-minded white neighbors, and even from his boss, Sheriff Sam Jericho (Arthur Kennedy).

Additional Notes: Hollywood seemed determined during the early ’70s to turn actor Robert Forster into a big-name, small-screen leading man. Before being cast in Nakia, he’d starred in the equally short-lived TV series Banyon (1972), a much-better-than-average private-eye yarn set in 1930s Los Angeles. But it took some less-celebrated film parts in the 1980s and his Oscar-nominated performance as bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown (1997) to really make Forster’s face familiar. What critical notice Nakia received at the time of its original broadcast frequently focused on its perceived relationship with the 1971 film Billy Jack. It is now remembered best, if at all, for its ground-breaking cultural slant. As the blog A Shroud of Thoughts put it, Nakia represented “one of the few times that a [TV] series set in the present day actually attempted to deal with issues facing Native Americans.”

Above: Nakia’s write-up in the September 7-13, 1974, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s opening title sequence.

Killed in the Ratings: “The Devlin Connection”

(The fifth entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: The Devlin Connection

Starring: Rock Hudson and
Jack Scalia

Original Run: 1982 (12 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: Brian Devlin (former McMillan & Wife star Hudson) was a highly valued military intelligence agent before settling into civilian life as the head of a prosperous private detective agency. After selling that business, he moved into a dramatically different role as director of the Los Angeles Cultural Arts Center, a position that gives him ample excuses to wear tuxedos and hobnob with entertainment “royalty.” But his once-peaceful existence has been upset by the unexpected appearance of Nick Corsello (Scalia), a 28-year-old son Devlin never knew he had. (Shades of Faraday and Company.) And what do you know--Corsello’s a private eye, too, though he’s quite a bit more rough around the edges than his old man, and he supplements his P.I. income with work as a racquetball pro at a local health facility. With the best of intentions, but mostly on the sly, Devlin uses his connections in L.A. and elsewhere to help his son make it as a sleuth. He even (reluctantly) assists Corsello on some of his cases, living a sort of double life in which he alternates between the highbrow crowd and low-order criminals. Corsello initially chafes at this interference, still being resentful of the fact that Devlin was nowhere to be seen when he was growing up. However, the two slowly make the “connection” of this show’s title, discovering they have more in common than anyone expected.

Created by John Wilder

Additional Notes: The Devlin Connection was originally supposed to be part of NBC’s new prime-time line-up for the fall of 1981. But Hudson’s health problems--culminating in emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery in November 1981--delayed the series’ debut for a full year. After it finally did start running, critics were quick to dub it McMillan & Son, drawing conceptual and storytelling comparisons between this series and Hudson’s earlier NBC Mystery Movie hit, and remarking on the reappearance of Hudson’s mustache, which had been so prominent during McMillan’s freshman year. Despite strength in Devlin’s screenwriting department--both Cliff Gould (who’d written for The Streets of San Francisco) and Howard Rodman (the creator of both The Man and the City and Harry O) worked on some of its episodes--the show failed to justify NBC’s patience in finally getting it on the air.

Above: The Devlin Connection’s write-up in the September 11-17, 1982, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) TV Guide’s previous description of the program, in the fall of 1981, can be found here. Below: The show’s opening title sequence, with theme music by Patrick Williams.

Killed in the Ratings: “Gavilan”

(The fourth entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Gavilan

Starring: Robert Urich

Original Run: 1982-1983 (10 episodes broadcast, three unaired), NBC-TV

Premise: A year after cashing out of Vega$ and three years before he joined the Glocks-and-galoshes gang in Spenser: For Hire, actor Urich slipped into a wet suit and rubber flippers for this high-adventure crime drama, set in Malibu, California. He played Robert Gavilan, a former intelligence operative who has gone to work for an oceanographic research organization. Here’s what The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, has to say about Gavilan: “His years as a CIA agent had made Robert Gavilan a little bit cynical, but not enough to stop him from fighting for what was right and just. In his current capacity, as inventor and consultant to California’s DeWitt Institute of Oceanography, Gavilan helped rescue people in trouble, worked on underwater projects, and occasionally got involved with exactly the type of espionage activities that had caused him to leave the Agency. He shared his Malibu beach house with Milo Bentley [Patrick Macnee of The Avengers fame], a suave, conniving travel agent who regularly helped Gavilan on his adventures. Mrs. [Marion] Jaworski [Kate Reid], Gavilan’s boss at the Institute, was impressed by his talents but bothered by his tendency to get into dangerous situations. He did, it must be said, have to deal with more than his share of evil despots and foreign agents, as well as a never-ending stream of beautiful women, in this formula adventure.”

Additional Notes: I have to admit, what I remember most clearly about this series were its multiple boat chases (only Miami Vice might have eventually outdone Gavilan in that department) and lots of tanned, bikini-clad flesh--which probably tells you more about where my mind was at the time than it does about the scope of Gavilan’s storytelling. While there were dangerous situations aplenty in the show, it also bore a welcome edge of humor. The underwater scenery was captivating and exotic (much better than Sea Hunt ever offered). And Macnee served as a splendidly eccentric, good-life-loving roommate for Urich’s oceanographer. Fernando Lamas was originally cast in the series as what TV Guide called “a roguish Latin aristocrat forced into exile” and living with Gavilan, but illness caused him to pull out of the venture after filming several episodes, which were reshot with Macnee. Lamas died shortly before Gavilan premiered in October 1982.

Above: Gavilan’s write-up in the September 11-17, 1982, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s opening title sequence, which would have been so much better without the singing.

Killed in the Ratings: “Joe Forrester”

(The third entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Joe Forrester

Starring: Lloyd Bridges

Original Run: 1975-1976 (22 episodes), NBC-TV

Premise: This is one of three spin-offs from the highly acclaimed NBC crime-drama anthology series, Police Story (Police Woman and the far less memorable David Cassidy: Man Undercover being the other two). In a special 90-minute episode of Police Story, titled “The Return of Joe Forrester” and shown in May 1975, former Sea Hunt hunk Bridges was introduced as plainclothes policeman Forrester, a man chary of advancement to a desk job, who returned to uniform duty on his old Los Angeles beat after a gang of robber-rapists began terrorizing that area. The series kept Forrester in snappy uniform blues, walking--and frequently running--the mean streets he’d known so well for so long as he struggled to maintain peace in abundant cheap hotels, groggeries, and pawnshops, and pursue arsonists, runaways, bank robbers, and drug pushers. Committed to helping the people along his beat, he sometimes overlooked minor infractions of the law, and it wasn’t uncommon to find him attracting trouble to himself as he sought to bail others out of danger. Fortunately, Forrester could call on his police buddy, watch commander Sergeant Bernie Vincent (Eddie Egan), and his girlfriend, cocktail-lounge hostess Georgia Cameron (Pat Crowley), when he needed assistance.

Developed for television by E. Jack Neuman

Additional Notes: It seems that opinions of Joe Forrester have improved somewhat over time. At the start of that program’s run, in September 1975, New York Times TV critic John J. O’Connor remarked that the show “is competently put together. It is not particularly memorable, but it is also not blatantly insulting. Joe Forrester prompts only one question: Does TV, at this stage, need another cop show?” After just one year, NBC decided the answer was “no,” and relieved Bridges of his badge and night stick, leading the disgruntled star to state that he’d never again return to series TV. (A promise he didn’t keep.) Since then, though, Joe Forrester has often been compared favorably with programs such as Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, and classed as a slightly different kind of police drama, boasting greater personality and heart than was common of such small-screen series at the time. It has also been applauded for its uncommon authenticity. In a Web forum called The Firing Line (“The leading online forum for firearms enthusiasts”), one poster wrote, “I liked Joe Forrester for the reality of equipment. I still remember his LAPD clamshell holster. In one episode Joe was in foot pursuit and his revolver fell out. Reality.” Given that its series source, the more popular and longer-running Police Story, isn’t yet available in DVD format, it’s anybody’s guess how much more time will have to pass before Joe Forrester itself reaches the market.

Above: Joe Forrester’s write-up in the September 6-12, 1975, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s opening title sequence.

Killed in the Ratings: “Leg Work”

(The second entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Leg Work

Starring: Margaret Colin

Original Run: 1987 (10 episodes), CBS-TV

Premise: Claire McCarron (Colin), the daughter of a policeman, used to be employed by the New York District Attorney’s office. But she quit to become a mini-skirted private eye. Now she wheels around the city in a Porsche 911 she can’t really afford (and which is perpetually in for repairs), solving cases and keeping her life more or less together with help from her best friend, Willie Pipal (Frances McDormand), who still works as a prosecutor with the DA’s office, and her brother, Fred (Patrick James Clarke), a lieutenant with the New York Police Department.

Created by Frank Abatemarco

Additional Notes: The Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sun-Sentinel called Leg Work “the best and brightest of CBS’ new series” for the fall of 1987. Yet a mere half-dozen episodes were shown on Saturday nights before the network abruptly canceled Leg Work, conceding the 9-10 p.m. timeslot to NBC’s pairing of The Golden Girls and Amen. Four additional installments were ultimately broadcast on the cable network TV Land. I remember thinking at the time that this show deserved better treatment, and that’s apparently not my opinion alone. Joe Meyers, an entertainment reporter with the Connecticut Post, opined earlier this year that Leg Work was “an extremely well-written and well-acted series. Because it was produced in Manhattan, the show was able to draw on the city’s theater acting pool. Up-and-comers Lisa Banes, Marisa Tomei, John Pankow, and Angela Bassett were just a few of the actors I had already seen in plays and was pleased--and surprised--to see on TV. ... The writing [was] as sophisticated as anything on HBO or Showtime right now, and one of the episodes CBS didn’t air--‘Life Itself’--[dealt] with the AIDS crisis in a way that Hollywood wouldn’t even contemplate until Philadelphia came out six years later.” Meyers concludes: “What a shame that this fine show was never given a real chance to connect with the TV public. It was just five or ten years ahead of its time.”

Above: Leg Work’s write-up in the September 12-18, 1987, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s opening title sequence.



READ MORE: “Make a List: American TV Series with Female Licensed P.I.s,” by Michael Shonk (Mystery*File).

Killed in the Ratings: “Serpico”

(The first entry in a month-long series about American TV crime dramas that debuted with fanfare, but are now largely forgotten.)

Title: Serpico

Starring: David Birney

Original Run: 1976-1977 (14 episodes, plus pilot), NBC-TV

Premise: This Friday night series was based loosely on journalist Peter Maas’ 1973 biography of Frank Serpico, described by the author as “the first police officer not only in the history of the New York Police Department, but in the history of any police department in the whole United States, to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systematic cop corruption-payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.” Maas’ book Serpico had already generated a popular theatrical film of the same name in 1973, starring Al Pacino. That movie was produced by Dino De Laurentiis, whose company was also behind this TV version. For the small screen, though, the title role went to David Birney, who had appeared in the 1974 action film Caravan to Vaccarès (based on an Alistair MacLean novel), but was probably best known as the co-star, with his soon-to-be wife Meredith Baxter, of the short-lived but highly rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie. Pacino had portrayed Serpico as a disillusioned and often frustrated detective, who’d earned the suspicion of his department not only because he eschewed the corruption soiling so many of his colleagues, but because he had adopted the look and been influenced by the politics of America’s Vietnam War-era counterculture. Birney’s Frank Serpico didn’t come off immediately as a policeman either, but he was less scruffy and more cultured than his big-screen predecessor. Yes, he wore “hippie clothes” and rode a motorcycle, but he also ate health foods, smoked a pipe, and loved opera. And he was well practiced at the art of disguise, impersonating laborers, ex-cons, and others in the course of bringing down felons. He even had a most cooperative police associate, Lieutenant Tom Sullivan (Tom Atkins).

Developed for television by Robert Collins

Additional Notes: TV critics made much of the tonal differences between the Frank Serpico of Maas’ book and Pacino’s film, and the one Birney intended to offer viewers every week. “The format designed for NBC takes most of Serpico’s superficial characteristics and gingerly ignores the particulars of his situation,” wrote John J. O’Connor in The New York Times on September 24, 1976. “This Serpico has no problem with police corruption. In fact, his superiors are cooperative to the point of suspicious behavior. Instead, with some minor adjustments--most of them try dramatic dilutions--Serpico is stuffed into a typical action adventure format.” Nonetheless, O’Connor concluded: “Within the context of this sort of formula, Serpico is not bad. David Birney, in beard and casual street clothes, keeps the character of Serpico on a line of low-key tension. But, once the ‘action’ begins, it’s evident that we’ve seen this one before--many times.” TV watchers evidently agreed; NBC canceled the show within four months of its highly promoted premiere.

Above: Serpico’s write-up in the September 18-24, 1976, Fall Preview edition of TV Guide. (Click to enlarge the image.) Below: The program’s tension-building opening title sequence, with theme music by Elmer Bernstein.

Killed in the Ratings

It’s September again--the beginning of the fall TV season in the United States. This new schedule brings plenty of original and returning network shows, some of which will undoubtedly be nixed from the listings within months, or even weeks. Producers inevitably anticipate tremendous success for their fresh offerings, but more often than not those shows fail to build significant audiences. That’s no more true for mind-numbing comedies and “reality” shows than it is for crime dramas. For every long-running Law & Order there’s a Today’s F.B.I. For every popular Rockford Files there’s a Bronk. Looking back through television history, it is littered with once-promising programs that failed to catch on and have now been forgotten.

As the 2010 TV season flickers into fullness, we’re going to twist the dial backwards to recall some of the American crime dramas that viewers were expected to like, but didn’t. In this series, titled “Killed in the Ratings,” we’ll confine ourselves to prime-time programs that lasted no more than a single year, and that we have not already commented on at length, and don’t expect to write much about in the near future. A few of the shows might be easily recognized, because they have since enjoyed small cult followings. Others will probably leave you scratching your head, wondering how they could have debuted and disappeared without your ever noticing. Our choices were broadcast between the early 1970s and the mid-’90s, but we’re going to list them randomly rather than chronologically. Each of the shows will be illustrated with a page out of the Fall Preview editions of TV Guide, plus a video clip from the series.

You’re encouraged to make comments about the unlucky 13 programs we have in the queue. Let us know if you remember watching them, or you deliberately tried to avoid them. And if we forget to mention your favorite failed crime drama, please bring it to our attention.

The first installment of our “Killed in the Ratings” series is scheduled to roll out later this afternoon. Others will be posted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout September. By month’s end, your memory of TV crime dramas past will have become sharper than you ever imagined. Maybe sharper than you wanted it to be.