Sometime in the late '60s /early '70s there was a seismic shift in American television series. Westerns were "out" and detectives were "in". There may have been an input from the cinema where Clint Eastwood had made the transition from gunfighter to cop with the Dirty Harry films. Even John Wayne tried to change genres, if not persona, in "McQ" and "Brannigan".
In the early days of American comic books there was an avalanche of brightly coloured superheroes onto the newsstands. According to Jim Steranko's "History of Comics" many of the young artists working in what amounted to studio sweatshops tried desperately to come up with unique looks and costumes to give the characters they created some staying power. Said costumes were often referred to as "funny hats" by their disdainful creators. I would imagine that much the same principle applied to the production companies churning out detective series. Each one had to have its own, particular selling point.
"Cannon"(portly, middle-aged detective), "Kojak"(bald detective), "Matt Houston" (redneck detective), "The Rockford Files" (ex-con), "Harry O" (ex-cop), "Baretta"(streetwise detective), "Police Woman" (female detective), "Cagney & Lacey"( 2 x female 'tecs), "Ironside" (disabled detective), "Charlie's Angels"(3x female 'tecs), "Longstreet" (blind detective) and "Barnaby Jones"(senior citizen detective) : these are only the first that come to mind without resort to references. Overshadowing them all was the plethora of shows which appeared under the banner "NBC Mystery Movie".
"Columbo" was clearly the king of this royal family of detective shows but I loved two of the less well-remembered scions.
"'Hec' Ramsey" combined the Western and detective genres and had a great star in Richard Boone, who had earlier starred as Paladin in "Have Gun Will Travel". There are several hints in the show that Ramsey, a man trying to introduce forensic science to the Wild West, and Paladin are actually the same character in different stages of his life.
"McCoy" starred Tony Curtis and utilised his knack for comedy in playing a reformed con artist who was someting of a Robin Hood. I always felt that it cashed in on Curtis' earlier film "The Great Impostor" which rarely shows up on TV schedules nowadays. I'd love to get a chance to compare it with the far more recent (and very good) "Catch Me if You Can".
What got me started blogging about TV 'tecs though was a British series made in the early '70s: "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes". (It was based on the anthologies of the same name edited by Sir Hugh Greene). I now have DVD sets of both "seasons" of the series and enjoy savouring each episode. It's interesting to think that the aforementioned deluge of detective was mirrored nearly 100 years before in the wake of the success of Conan Doyle's stories in the Strand magazine.
The particular episode which I watched the other evening featured the wonderful, English character actor Charles Gray who was habitually cast as a cad or bounder. So good (or bad ?) was he in those roles that I grew up thinking that if you were to look up the word "louche"(: "Disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way") in a dictionary then the entry should feature a picture of Gray in character.
He was an actor with a distinctive voice and accent. When the great Jack Hawkins had to undergo a laryngectomy as part of his treatment for throat cancer Gray stepped in to provide convincing "voice-overs" for his last few film appearances. Strangely, in the TV episode I watched Gray was playing the French detective Eugene Valmont which meant that much of his vocal distinctiveness was lost. There was also a fascinating scattering of other character actors throughout the production; many familiar faces, but the names were elusive and sent me to the IMDB database to do some detective work of my own. I fully intend to follow up on this as I watch further episodes over the Christmas break.
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