Frank and Steve Faraday (Faraday and Co.)

Created by Ken Pettus

After spending twenty-eight years in a Caribbean jail for a crime he didn’t commit (the murder of his partner), allegedly hard-boiled FRANK FARADAY (played by the movies’ likable 40’s song-and-dance man Dan Dailey) busts out and heads back home to Los Angeles… to a family he doesn’t know anymore, on the short-lived series, Farady and Co., part of the second season of the NBC  Wednesday Mystery Movie lineup.

Turns out Frank’s detective agency is being run by his gadget-loving son, STEVE FARADAY (James Naughton); a little surprise courtesy of his old girlfriend/secretary, Lou Carson, who had taken over Frank’s detective agency after his disappearance. The firm’s new secretary was played by a pre-Cagney & Lacey Sharon Gless.

A recurring plot thread had Frank constantly trying to adjust to “modern” life, but the audience didn’t buy it, and the plug was pulled after only four episodes, despite a long list of classic seventies guest stars like Joe Flynn, Craig Stevens, Howard Duff, David Wayne, Charles Cioffi, and Jack Kelly, and Geraldine Brooks as Lou.

Not one of the great lost series, from all accounts. As Epi-Log Magazine put it, “Where do they come up with this junk?”

TELEVISION

• FARADAY AND CO.
  (1973-74, NBC)
  4 90-minute episodes
  Created by Kern Pettus
  Writers: Ken Pettus, Burt Prelutsky, Leonard B. Stern, Robert W. Lenski, Jimmy Sangster, Robert Foster, William Clark
  Directors: Gary Nelson, Richard L. Bare
  Producer: Stanley Kallis
  Executive Producer: Leonard B. Stern
  Starring Dan Dailey as FRANK FARADAY
  and James Naughton as STEVE FARADAY
  Also starring Geraldine Brooks as Lou Carson
  and Sharon Gless as Holly Barrett
  Guest Stars: Andrew Duggan, Edd Byrnes, Howard Duff, Jack Kelly, Percy Rodrigues, Joe Flynn, Craig Stevens, David Wayne, Charles Cioffi
  • “Say Hello to a Dead Man” (September 26, 1973)
  • “A Wheelbarrow Full of Trouble” (October 24, 1973)
  • “Fire and Ice” (December 12, 1973)
  • “A Matter of Magic” (January 9, 1974)

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• The NBC Mystery Movie
  The 1971-77 Television Anthology Series

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton smith. Thanks to Ted Fitzgerald for filling in some of the blanks.