As promised last week, here is round one of the Battle of the 80's Crimefighters, with more detail about the 42 contenders than will be found in subsequent rounds.
Magnum, P.I. vs.
Matt HoustonTom Selleck's
Magnum, P.I. debuted on CBS in December 1980, setting the precedent for the 80's action show in multiple ways. And the show delivered year after year for eight seasons, ranking in the top 10 for three seasons before running into the brick wall that was NBC's
The Cosby Show in the fall of 1984 and seeing its ratings decline precipitously. Even after that, however,
Magnum, P.I. survived another four seasons. In its heyday,
Magnum was a very strong series, relentlessly fun and chock full of well-produced action sequences and amusing character interaction. The show hung around about three seasons too long and started to get quite maudlin in its post-Cosby era, but nonetheless stands out as a worthy pioneer of the 80's action show format.
Matt Houston, starring Tom Selleck lookalike Lee Horsley, was a very blatant ABC clone of Magnum that lasted three full seasons, mostly due to ABC's commitment to convincing viewers that it was a good show. The evidence was mixed.
Houston had its moments of entertainment value, but never really separated itself from the pack of 80's action shows and never really performed in the ratings despite a plum Sunday night time slot in its first season back in the fall of 1982. That's why few seem to remember it a generation after its premiere.
Round One goes to
Magnum, P.I.
Simon and Simon vs.
Crazy Like a FoxCBS owned Thursday nights in the early-to-mid 1980's by pairing the aforementioned
Magnum, P.I. with fellow detective series
Simon and Simon. While S & S didn't have as dynamic of a look or as creative of storylines as Magnum, the chemistry between the polar opposite brother detectives, as played by Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker, made the show, along with a steady stream of well-executed action scenes and competent detective show scripting. A top-10 hit for three seasons,
Simon and Simon also lasted eight seasons yet managed to hold up better creatively in its later seasons than did Magnum.
Rather than diametrically opposed brother detectives, CBS's mid-80's semi-hit
Crazy Like a Fox featured a bickering father and son detective team, as played by John Rubinstein and Jack Warden. I only watched this series in passing, but the series was such a blatant hybrid of
Simon and Simon and
Hardcastle and McCormick that it failed to carve out its own identity. The series premiered to boffo ratings in January 1985, scheduled after the freshman CBS hit
Murder, She Wrote on Sunday nights. However, CBS overreached by moving the series to a more difficult Wednesday night time slot in early 1986, sucking all the oxygen the series had and proving it didn't have the chutzpah to be a stand-alone hit. It was cancelled after the second season. I'd kind of like to see
Crazy Like a Fox again to remind myself of how strong of a series it actually was, but the evidence suggests that CLAF is not in the same league as
Simon and Simon.
Round Two goes to
Simon and Simon.
Hart to Hart vs.
Scarecrow and Mrs. KingHere's a stellar matchup of first-rate adventure shows featuring husband and wife. Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers'
Hart to Hart actually kicked off in the late 70's on ABC, running five strong seasons on Tuesday nights. While the predicaments that the uber-wealthy Harts aimlessly stumbled into got a little far-fetched, the action flowed and the creativity was steady year after year. One of my early favorites as a pint-sized lad and a top-20 hit for ABC in its heyday. Bonus points to a high-adventure theme song very fitting of the show's format.
Scarecrow and Mrs. King, featuring Bruce Boxleitner and Kate Jackson as a secret spy and a divorced housewife recruited into the spy trade, had a more rigid structure than
Hart to Hart, and the hard-core spy show format lent to some exciting and creative storylines. The series was a solid top-20 hit for CBS in its first couple seasons, and survived four seasons until S and MK eventually married. Both HTH and SAMK had their advantages, and the outcome is as close to a draw as I'm likely to come in this tourney. So ultimately, it has to come down to theme song, for which I gave HTH bonus points, and for which SAMK did not stand out.
Round Three goes to
Hart to Hart.
Remington Steele vs.
Moonlighting
Future James Bond Pierce Brosnan was introduced to mass audiences in the fall of 1982 on NBC's
Remington Steele, playing the title character, who was a man of mystery who assumed the identity as the head of a detective agency run by Stephanie Zimbalist. RS was a fun show where the chemistry between Brosnan and Zimbalist helped the series overcome a fairly boilerplate litany of detective show plotlines, particularly early on. The series developed most of its identity in the later seasons. NBC was desperate for a hit in the early 80's and stuck with
Remington Steele and a number of other shows despite mediocre ratings, and were ultimately rewarded when nearly all of these series became huge hits by their second or third seasons. Steele rose into the top-25 in its third season heyday, but never quite reached super-hit status. The bottom fell out quickly in the 1985-86 season, when audiences reached a saturation point of crimefighters and many legendary action shows were felled. The series was revived for three TV-movies that constituted a brief fifth season, ultimately delaying Brosnan's ability to become the new James Bond.
Moonlighting became a top-10 hit for ABC in its mid-to-late 80's heyday despite being one of the silliest series of its time. I enjoyed the first few episodes of the Bruce Willis-Cybill Shepherd romantic detective show, but eventually found the increasingly cartoonish tone of the series to be insufferable. I'd like to revisit
Moonlighting as an adult to see if the banter that I found so annoying as a child would make more sense to me as an adult, but I'm skeptical that this overrated series would ever rise to the upper ranks of 1980's crimefighter shows. The series loses more points for being so incompetent at producing new episodes even as it was its network's biggest hit. After its six-episode first season in the spring of 1985,
Moonlighting fell drastically short of fulfilling its 22-episode commitment to ABC in the following four seasons, producing respective totals of 18, 15, 14, and 13 episodes in the later seasons, and producing a grand total of 66 episodes over five years. Pathetic!
Round Four goes to
Remington Steele.
MacGyver vs.
The WizardAnybody who's followed this blog knows my highly revered feelings towards the ABC action-adventure series
MacGyver.
MacGyver was one of the longest-running crimefighter shows of the decade, despite never being a bona fide hit in the ratings. The series' creativity was consistent throughout its seven seasons and the stories always rose above the genre's boilerplate. The charisma of leading man Richard Dean Anderson brought the character to life, particularly in the series' early and middle seasons when its energy shone brightest. While many criticize the more heavy-handed dramatic and political themes the series took on in its later seasons, the series' ongoing evolution helped keep it fresh and interesting for most of its run. The series wasn't without underlying flaws, but its long life and ability to survive brutally competitive timeslots, an indifferent network that refused to promote it, and the late 80's crimefighter purge to become the last action show standing among an ocean of sitcoms and reality shows in the early 90's speaks volumes about its quality.
The Wizard came out in the fall of 1986 on CBS, starring David Rappaport as a midgeted inventor whose inventions helped him escape sticky situations. The series was an obvious takeoff on
MacGyver, which premiered a year earlier, targeted towards younger viewers, but had its own distinctive fingerprint and charm aided by supporting characters (namely Doug Barr of
The Fall Guy). Unfortunately, CBS shuffled it around from one kamikaze timeslot to another through the course of its' one-season lifespan and the series never found any traction. Nonetheless, if only one series could survive the 1986-87 season, I'm glad it was
MacGyver instead of
The Wizard.
Round Five goes to
MacGyver.Murder, She Wrote vs.
Matlock
In 1984, Angela Lansbury inadvertantly sired a troubling genre.....the soft-core, gray-haired crimefighter. Lansbury's
Murder, She Wrote was a novel mystery show concept early on and was actually quite enjoyable....for a couple of years. The premise grew weary and the show grew quickly stale, yet continued to survive for another decade, spanning 12 seasons and turning itself into a laughing stock among viewers younger than 65.
Of MSW's many imitators, Andy Griffith's
Matlock was the most entertaining. While the series was far from the best crimefighter show of its era, the content justified its nine-season run (on two networks) more than other shows catering to viewers of that age demographic. Ultimately, I'd be more inclined to watch a
Matlock rerun on cable than a
Murder, She Wrote rerun.
Round Six goes to
Matlock.
Mike Hammer vs.
HunterStacy Keach played the chauvinist, rough-edged P.I. with salvo back in the mid-1980's, despite being sidelined by a year and a half from Keach's cocaine possession conviction in England early in 1985. Despite middling ratings, CBS revived the series in the fall of 1986 once Keach got out of the pen.
Mike Hammer was more hardboiled style than substance, but it was still a fun way to spend an hour on Saturday nights with some well-played action scenes.
The character Hunter wasn't so much a "chauvinist" as was the actor who played him, former football player Fred Dryer, or at least that was the storyline forwarded by the women connected with the series and the reason cited by co-star Stefanie Kramer for leaving the series in 1990. Almost cancelled after its low-rated first season,
Hunter went on to become a solid hit for NBC in a difficult Saturday time slot. Hunter didn't really rise above the cop show genre and was one of Stephen J. Cannell's less ambitious efforts. I would have much rather seen any number of other Cannell shows survive seven seasons than
Hunter. Nonetheless, the series provided a welcome action-show presence, particularly in the later seasons when the genre was waning. And a billion Chinese, who have elevated the series to demigod status, can't be all wrong. Still, give me Mike Hammer over Rick Hunter.
Round Seven goes to
Mike Hammer.
Lady Blue vs.
Sledge Hammer!
At a time when censors were raising alarm bells over the amount of violence on primetime television, ABC really had some cajones when it debuted
Lady Blue in the fall of 1985. Often described as "Skirty Harry" or "Dirty Harriet",
Lady Blue referred to a fiery, redheaded female street cop who carried a big gun which she shot first and asked questions later. The body count averaged four per episode, and protagonist "Katy" was always the one squeezing the trigger that produced the kill shots. Perhaps this series was catering to some sort of male fantasy of a gratuitously violent hot chick gunning down bad guys on the streets with unforgiving ferocity, but audiences quickly lost interest as the series lasted only 13 episodes.....but not without making plenty of headlines at the time for getting censors' panties in a tighter wad than what
The A-Team and
Miami Vice had already accomplished.
While
Lady Blue took itself seriously,
Sledge Hammer!, which premiered the following season on ABC, was done as a biting satire of the over-the-top crimefighters of the day. Little-known character actor David Rasche played the role with deadpan flawlessness as a lunatic cop who talked to and slept with his massive 44 Magnum and drove around with an "I Love Violence" bumper sticker on his car. Reveling in the most violent solution to every problem, Hammer surprised everyone by surviving two seasons on ABC despite very low ratings in the suicide slots it was placed in. While the joke got a little stale in the second season, there were more than enough laughs in both seasons to make
Sledge Hammer! an infinitely more enjoyable series than
Lady Blue.
Round Eight goes to
Sledge Hammer!
The Dukes of Hazzard vs.
RiptideI was probably the only young boy in America who didn't get into
The Dukes of Hazzard in the early-to-mid 1980's. Even at age six and seven, the show just seemed corny to me. I've watched it a number of times since and still haven't quite been able to get what made this series the holy grail of the 80's action show format for so many of my contemporaries. With that said, the series had a style all its own and nobody ever even attempted to imitate its campy style, at least with any recognizable success. But the nadir of this once #2-rated series was when the network thought stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat could be replaced in season five. Schneider and Wopat returned for seasons six and seven, but viewers never returned in the numbers they did as the show became increasingly familiar.
As I said, there were no clear
Dukes imitators among 80's crimefighter shows, and suggesting that the Joe Penny-Perry King action show
Riptide is thematically similar to TDOH is a stretch. But even though
Riptide was not necessarily a clone of
Dukes, it was an imitator of just about every other show of its era. Don't get wrong.
Riptide was an entertaining series, and the robot and pink helicopter made for some striking action show visuals, but few other successful 80's action shows suffered from an identity crisis as much as
Riptide did. The stories came right off the Stephen J. Cannell assembly line, the leading characters were uninspired drones who served merely to advance the plot as effortlessly as possible, and memories of the series tend to run together with every other series of the time.
Riptide simply didn't stand out in the crowd, as entertaining as it could be on an episode-by-episode basis. That's the main reason why the series so abruptly flamed out in its third season, when it lost its cushy post
A-Team time slot on Tuesday nights and quickly dropped from the top-20 to the Nielsen basement when forced to stand alone on Friday nights in March 1986. While
Riptide was more my speed as an action series, I have to give this round to the
Dukes simply because of that series original style.
Round Nine goes to
The Dukes of Hazzard.
Hardcastle and McCormick vs.
Jake and the FatmanOne of my personal favorites of my early elementary years,
Hardcastle and McCormick was an underrated action show from the Stephen J. Cannell factory that worked almost exclusively because of the chemistry between actors Brian Keith and Daniel Hugh-Kelly, at least in the beginning. The dynamic between the hard-nosed retired judge and the smart-mouthed young ex-con clicked almost immediately, and helped make this series a modest hit for ABC when it premiered in the fall of 1983, even though the timeslot competition was usually quite tough. The weak point of the series, particularly in the early episodes, was a lack of distinctive plotlines. Like
Riptide, the series often seemed to churn out stories off of an assembly line. But this problem was largely corrected in the second and third seasons as H & M broadened its horizons and came up with some truly memorable stories. I also loved both of the theme songs featured on this series....the macho "Drive" that suited the series' fast cars and fast action theme....and the Joey Scarbury-sung "Back to Back" while promotes the buddy element. This is a show that died prematurely and deserved at least one or two more seasons beyond the three that it got.
Jake and the Fatman was another buddy crimefighter show that was plenty worthy, but hardly distinctive. The Hawaiian setting channeled
Magnum, P.I. and the intergenerational male bonding of
Hardcastle and McCormick, albeit without anything approaching the chemistry between Joe Penny and William Conrad as existed between Keith and Hugh-Kelly. A perfectly entertaining crime drama that survived five seasons at a time when crime dramas were going on the endangered species list, JATF nonetheless fell far short of HATM standards.
Round 10 goes to
Hardcastle and McCormick.
The Equalizer vs.
Spenser: For HireThe tone of the television crime drama grew darker in 1984 with the premiere of
Miami Vice, and the trend extended into the fall of 1985, most notably with
The Equalizer, the brooding crime drama starring Edward Woodward as a gray-haired former intelligence agent who now freelances as a shadowy vigilante on the mean streets of New York City. Don't let Woodward's hair color fool you.
The Equalizer was no
Murder, She Wrote clone, setting a new precedent for darkness in primetime television storytelling over the course of its four seasons. While the series was inconsistent, when it was on target it was dead on, producing some of the most compelling hours of television of its day.
Like fellow class of '85 alumni
The Equalizer,
Spenser lacked the sense of humor that most of its contemporaries employed. As a rule, this worked pretty well, although
Spenser was more in need of a sense of humor than Equalizer as its stories were more conventional crime drama fare from its time. A well executed series starring the always-entertaining Robert Urich as the tough-talking but literate detective,
Spenser never really found its audience, struggling for renewal year to year. Its three-season survival was not a product of the series' success so much as ABC's failure to generate any hit shows at the time. Nonetheless, the series had its own identity, largely generated by badass hitman Hawk, played with finesse by Avery Brooks, who served as an ethically flexible shadow surrogate to Spenser on a fairly regular basis. Even with Hawk, however,
Spenser: For Hire never quite lived up to
The Equalizer.
Round 11 goes to
The Equalizer.
The Greatest American Hero vs.
Manimal
"High concept TV" was all the rage in the early 80's, meaning that some crimefighter series that more closely resembled Saturday morning cartoons in thematic substance were finding their way into primetime. One of the early shows from this genre was
The Greatest American Hero, starring a young William Katt as a high school history teacher who suddenly finds himself in possession of a red costume that gives him superpowers. Producer Stephen J. Cannell originally planned a series directed towards adult audiences (hard to imagine given the premise) but network demands quickly turned the series into a lighthearted superhero adventure show shortly after its premiere on ABC in 1981. Quirky and fun, TGAH was nonetheless quite cheesy and had fulfilled its run after its three seasons on the network. Bonus points, however, for having the best TV theme song of all time..."Believe it or Not" by Joey Scarbury.
Manimal still generates some guffaws today in conversations about the goofiest TV series that the medium has given us. A police detective who could transform himself into any manner of animal to suit the situation,
Manimal attempted to be dark and edgy but ended up just being goofy. It lasted only eight episodes after its premiere in the fall of 1983, and provided a temporary roadblock to NBC's efforts to restore its reputation....and its audience. More than 15 years later, a variation on
Manimal was produced for first-run syndication with the series
Sheena, starring Gena Lee Nolin as an Amazon-like hottie living in the African jungles who could also transform herself into an animal. No offense to
Manimal's Simon MacCorkindale, but if I'm gonna watch a goofy show about humans that can turn themselves into animals, I'd rather see Gena Lee Nolin undergo the transition.
Round 12 goes to
The Greatest American Hero.
V vs.
Misfits of ScienceI must confess that I never seen a full episode of the sci-fi/crimefighter series
V, featuring the "lizard ladies" who arrived on Earth to fight our crimes, which aired Friday nights for a full season on NBC back in 1984-85, so it's probably not fair for me to be standing in judgment of it. However, I have it on good authority that the 1983 miniseries, which the series was based upon, was considerably better than the series which was fairly standard-issue crimefighter TV fare with little originality and alot of stock footage from the miniseries. I can't say much else having never seen the series, other than it's kind of amazing what network programming executives thought could be successful primetime series back in the 1980's.
NBC programming director Brandon Tartikoff was big on these high concept sci-fi adventure shows, and always seemed to schedule them for Friday nights. The fall of 1985 produced
Misfits of Science, about a group of freakish but good-looking teenagers with telekinetic powers who eventually get recruited as crimefighters. One of the misfits could shrink himself to six inches tall. A young Courtney Cox got her first acting role in this series, which lasted almost a full season. Unlike
V, I did watch
Misfits of Science and found it to be a great deal of fun. Of course, as an eight-year-old boy, I was the target audience. I'd like to see an episode today to see how well it holds up, but my memories remain fond enough to pass it through this round.
Round 13 goes to
Misfits of Science.
The Fall Guy vs.
Cover-UpMy favorite show of the early elementary years was
The Fall Guy....and what was not to love. Cool and clever action sequences, exotic locales, and a GMC truck that must have had huge springs for axles given its propensity to soar over trains and makeshift dirt ramps along the highway (and goodness knows how often one runs into those) and land on its tires the way a cat lands on its feet.
The Fall Guy premiered in the fall of 1981 and the premise, a stuntman by day who moonlights as a bounty hunter, lent itself to some of the most elaborate stunts ever performed for a television series. Combining that with the show's globe-trotting storylines and
The Fall Guy certainly raised the stakes of action-adventure on television. Unfortunately, corny moments were more numerous on this series than most of its era, and certain episodes do not hold up well 20 years later. Nonetheless, TFG enjoyed five strong seasons, three of which it ranked in the Nielsen top-20 before its spectacular flameout in the 1985-86 season, where multiple changes in time slot resulted in a record-breaking loss of audience of nearly 60% that stained the series' legacy somewhat.
Cover-Up had all the makings of a hit action-adventure show when it premiered in the fall of 1984. The Glen Larson creation featured still-hot aging supermodel Jennifer O'Neill and up-and-coming young hunk Jon-Erik Hexum as a model and photographer allegedly travelling the globe for glossy photo shoots but actually travelling the globe to bust evildoers. Everything was going well until Hexum, goofing off on the stage seven episodes into the series' run, fired his prop gun at his head, producing a Humpty Dumpty effect on his skull and eventually killing him. A new actor and character were brought in to replace Hexum's "Mac", but the momentum was gone and ratings declined. The series managed to churn out a full season worth of episodes, but was not renewed. It was a fun show while it lasted, but things just didn't seem the same with the actor switcheroo. Alot of potential with the series, but it can't compete with five rockin' seasons of
The Fall Guy.
Round 14 goes to
The Fall Guy.
The A-Team vs.
The HighwaymanAnother series that lifted the 80's action show format to a new level was
The A-Team, the series that finally gave long-suffering NBC a top-10 hit early in 1983 when it premiered following the Super Bowl.
A-Team, featuring a group of renegade Vietnam vets wrongly accused of military crimes acting as soldiers of fortune to underdogs of all stripes, was lighthearted and even comedic in tone, but featured an ambitious litany of pyrotechnics and elaborately-produced gunfights with a mini-action movie effect not yet seen on television. Despite criticism for its "violent" content,
The A-Team spent three seasons in the top-10 before quickly flaming out over the course of its fourth and fifth seasons. Overall, it was a fun show with a corny tendency, but its colorful characters and aggressively-played action scenes helped viewers overcome its flaws. On the downside, the series' rigid formula created a sense of "been there, done that" after awhile, which explains the series crash-and-burn in the ratings in 1986.
The Highwayman was one of those dopey but fun shows from action-show auteur Glen Larson that was very much derivative of
A-Team. Highwayman even had its' own Mr. T in former Energizer battery spokesman Jacko, a hyperactive and cartoonish protagonist very fitting for this limited-run action show, which premiered on NBC in the spring of 1988 but only lasted 11 episodes. The premise, a band of "truck drivers" whose trailers contained stealth helicopters and every other high-tech weaponry a road warrior soldier-of-fortune needs, didn't exactly lend itself to a long run, but it would have been interesting to see what this series did with a full season. As it stands, however, the series didn't come close to the legacy or entertainment value of
The A-Team.
Round 15 goes to
The A-Team.
Knight Rider vs.
Street HawkLong-suffering NBC was in a state of desperation worse than any other network in television history back in 1982, when it debuted a slough of new series that new programming executive Brandon Tartikoff had bet the network's very existence on. When one of those series revolved around a specially designed car that talked to its driver, TV critics got very nervous. Nonetheless, the execution of the new action-adventure series
Knight Rider was clever enough to generate some early buzz among younger viewers despite its brutal time slot Fridays against then #1
Dallas. It wasn't until the next season when
Knight Rider really hit its stride, moving to Sunday nights and settling for a four-year run. While
Knight Rider was never short on cheeseball moments, it was hard to not be taken by the moment and run with the goofiness. David Hasselhoff chewed the scenery nicely and seemed custom-ready for a show as nutty as this, particulary in those episodes when he played Michael's evil twin Garthe Knight. Not the best action show of its time, solid production values, creative scriptwriting and a sense of humor about itself helped viewers look beyond all the dorkiness of
Knight Rider's premise and the bad acting.
I only remember watching
Street Hawk once during its brief four-month run in early 1985. Even though there didn't appear to be much in the way of original ideas, it was definitely a worthy entry of the 80's crimefighter genre. Ratings weren't all that bad for the series' Friday night run, but a trial run on Thursday nights killed any hope of renewal for the series when numbers bottomed out (big surprise up against
Cosby Show and
Magnum, P.I.) . The action show saturation point had been met by 1985, so it's easy to see how a show about a superpowered motorcycle could get lost in the shuffle. Nonetheless, I wish I could have another spin with
Street Hawk 22 years after its original run to see what I had missed. Still, compared to the four-year run of
Knight Rider, it's pretty clear that SH didn't have the horsepower to compete.
Round 16 goes to
Knight RiderAirwolf vs.
Blue ThunderJanuary 1984 brought TV viewers two very similar series on two different networks, both featuring supercharged ass-kicking helicopters dedicated to snuffing out all manner of criminal vermin. But there was only room for one on the small screen, and it was evident that the one would be CBS's
Airwolf, with its edgy tone and energetic style. Solid stories from the writing team of Donald Bellisario (
Magnum, P.I.) helped keep the show afloat for three seasons (four if you count the lackluster season produced for Canadian television minus Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine) even though the airborne action scenes grew tedious after awhile. But tedious or not, it was hard not to feel that blood pumping when they cranked up that helicopter and steered it out of the cave.
CBS had a hit with
Airwolf in a difficult Saturday time slot, but ABC had no such luck on Friday nights with
Blue Thunder, the other new action show from early 1984 featuring a helicopter. In fact, BT only lasted 11 dreary episodes when ABC was forced to ignite a rescue flare, realizing Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernie Borgnine were flying circles around their effort.
Round 17 goes to
AirwolfMiami Vice vs.
Houston KnightsNBC programming executive Brandon Tartikoff put on paper brain spurt in early 1984, penning "MTV cops" on a small pad. Who could have ever imagined that minor epiphany would soon generate one of the most influential crime dramas in the genre's history as the uber-glossy
Miami Vice would hit airwaves only a few months later. Things got off to a decidedly rocky start, however, as test audiences did not seem to be digging the pilot. NBC put in on the air, but scheduled it to die in a Friday night ghetto. But just before the predicted cancellation came to fruition, viewers began to notice the stunning stylized production values and hard-core (for its time) crime drama content. Ratings started to rise and would keep on going into the top-10. While
Miami Vice remained a party for the eyeballs for five seasons with its cinematic production values that raised the stakes of the genre forever, its thematic content was very erratic. Outstanding scripts were followed by paper-thin storylines unworthy of the series' high profile. Despite these flaws, it cannot be overstated how large of an impact
Miami Vice would have on TV crime dramas, both in the short-term and long-term.
THe mid-to-late 1980's brought about a half dozen obvious
Miami Vice imitators, but the only one with any legs was CBS'
Houston Knights, which featured a couple street rangers braving the mean streets of the Texas cowtown. HK made no illusion that it was anything other than an MV ripoff, but it was nonetheless an above-average crime drama with gritty stories and tight production values. After a successful abbreviated first season in the spring of 1987, CBS overreached and scheduled the series in the impossible Tuesday night slot versus
Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains and
Matlock. Houston Knights bounced all over the schedule in its second and final season, but the network was kind enough to give the series a full second season and air all 22 episodes. HK was probably more consistent than MV in producing an entertaining hour of television, but it remained a second-rate imitator in comparison to the
Vice moments that really sparkled.
Round 18 goes to
Miami Vice.Hill Street Blues vs.
T.J. HookerJust as
Miami Vice forever changed the look of TV crime dramas in 1984,
Hill Street Blues forever changed the tone when it premiered on a badly-battered NBC in January 1981. With three-dimensional characters and a deviation from the standard crimefighter formula that primetime television had been working worth for a generation, Steven Bochco's
Hill Street was a breath of fresh air and elevated TV storytelling to a new level. The gritty series took a long time to generate audience buzz comparable to its critical acclaim, but managed to become a modest hit by its fourth season and remain a staple of NBC's reclamation of primetime success until it went off the air in 1987. In retrospect, the cheese factor is unavoidable even for an acclaimed series like this as it becomes 25 years old, but
Hill Street Blues remains a powerful drama that was a definite springboard for more recent "gritty" (and often pretentiously so) cop shows to emerge, such as
NYPD Blue and
The Shield.If
Hill Street Blues was the caviar of 80's cop shows,
T.J. Hooker was the carp.....or so the storyline went during the serious four-season run (three on ABC, one on CBS).
Hooker was a notoriously cheeseball show that was on the receiving end of plenty of jokes at the time, but viewers who panned this show make the mistake of taking it seriously. The "tough cop who cares" stereotype was played by William Shatner with such over-the-top Shatneresque arrogance that it virtually begged the already hammy content to become that much more goofy. Shatner's pretty boy partner Romano, played by Adrian Zmed, has long been held up as the pinnacle of this show's cheesiness, but Zmed was very clearly in on the joke, playing Butthead to Shatner's Beavis several times per episode, and playing it well. Throw in a young Heather Locklear for some eye candy and you come up with a series that was stunning for its comedic value. And if the humor wasn't intentional, I don't want to hear about it because it would ruin this classic satire of a series. Clearly,
T.J. Hooker's comedy value can't live up to
Hill Street Blues' grit, but I nonetheless give Shatner and Zmed applause for their valiant efforts.
Round 19 goes to
Hill Street Blues.
Wiseguy vs.
Sable
The fall of 1987 brought the final push of crime dramas by network TV before the genre was all but abandoned for more than a decade, and the new wave was generally a darker and edgier batch of series than
Magnum, P.I. and
The A-Team. The best among them was
Wiseguy, starring Ken Wahl as an FBI agent who operated deep undercover within various crime families to bust them from within. The format allowed for teeth-clenchingly intense moments and the developmental of three-dimensional villains who almost managed to steal the show with their colorful eccentricities.
Wiseguy's first season, which was divided into halves, focused on the respective criminal organizations of Sonny Steelgrave, and Mel and Susan Proffitt, with a young Kevin Spacey playing Mel. It was as good of a season as ever produced for a Stephen J. Cannell action series, but also represented the series creative peak. The second season was a disappointment, and while the third season rebounded notably, it was too little too late to save the series, which struggled in the ratings, largely due to the fact that it was stuck on CBS when the network's lineup was falling apart. Despite peaking early,
Wiseguy was one of the decade's most notable crime dramas and never failed to entertain and excite even during the weakest story arcs in the second season.
Sable is not exactly a kissing cousin of
Wiseguy and can more closely be connected to the "high concept" action shows of the early 1980's. However, the mix of cartoonish folk hero with dark vigilanteism made it clear this was no
Greatest American Hero. The hero, Jon Sable, was a children's book writer by day who camouflaged his face and took to the streets as an enforcer after the sun went down. The look was dark and gritty, the stories were unique and tough-as-nails, and it all helped make
Sable one of the decade's best limited-run cult series. It only lasted seven episodes on ABC, where it was buried on Saturday nights, but it accomplished everything a series of that nature could in those brief seven weeks. While such a limited run can't possibly put
Sable on par with a classic series like
Wiseguy, the series is nonetheless deserving of its cult-classic reputation.
Round 20 goes to
Wiseguy.
Crime Story vs.
Private EyeA year before
Wiseguy premiered,
Miami Vice producer Michael Mann had already raised the stakes of darkness in the crime drama genre with Crime Story, a wickedly cool cop show set in Chicago in the early 1960's and starring Dennis Farina as Officer Mike Torello, obsessively locking horns with local crime boss Ray Luca, who constituted Torello's primary foil for most of the series' spectacular two seasons on NBC. Known for his meticulous attention to detail on the glossy-looking
Miami Vice, Mann managed to outdo himself with the dark
Crime Story, turning the clock back to the early 1960s each week. Eventually, the series changed locations to Las Vegas. While this was a welcome change of setting in some ways, it seemed to suck a little bit of the show's edge away. Some preposterous plot twists in the second and final season also serves as a slight pimple on
Crime Story's legacy. CS only managed mediocre ratings, but NBC had enough faith in the series (and in Michael Mann) to give it the benefit of the doubt when it didn't necessarily have to. Hats off to NBC for doing so and I'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to purchase the DVD sets of this series.
What
Crime Story did for a cop show,
Private Eye did for the detective genre a year later. The detective show, starring Michael Woods and Josh Brolin, was set in the 1950's and also produced by Michael Mann, had a look and feel nearly identical to
Crime Story. While the series was well done, it failed to stand out from CS and found itself slotted after
Miami Vice on Friday nights just as MV's ratings were starting to tumble. The result was an instant loss of momentum and a 13-episode run that barely pushed the series into the new year of 1988 before it quickly faded into oblivion.
Private Eye deserved better, but it clearly didn't have the narrative inspiration that
Crime Story had, a likely result of Michael Mann spreading himself too thin.
Round 21 goes to
Crime Story.
