Created by Robert Blake (1933-2023) You want to know how much moolah Robert Blake made for ABC during his run in Baretta? Here's a hint: when Baretta ended, NBC--no doubt sniffing a cash cow--was willing to air not one but several pilots for a hard-boiled private eye series Blake had concocted, and gave him carte … Continue reading Joe Dancer
Tag: Television Pilot
Larry Dean & Chip Bronx (Two for the Money)
Created by Howard Rodman (1920-85) Young patrol officer CHIP BRONX (played by Stephen Brooks) is shot while on duty, and learns he won’t be fit for active duty when he recovers. So his partner and best friend, LARRY DEAN (played by Robert Hooks), quits the department to become a private investigator, and urges Chip to join … Continue reading Larry Dean & Chip Bronx (Two for the Money)
A. Dunster Lowell (The Boston Terrier)
Created by Blake Edwards & Tom Waldman Blake Edward must have really liked this idea. After failing to interest any of the networks in his 60-minute pilot, The Boston Terrier, about the adventures of suave, Harvard-educated (and presumably dogged) private eye A. DUNSTER LOWELL in 1962, Edwards tried again the next year with a revamped thirty-minute version—in … Continue reading A. Dunster Lowell (The Boston Terrier)
Kate Bliss
Created by William Bowers, John Rester Zodrow Right after wrapping up her role as Emily on the popular The Bob Newhart Show, actress Suzanne Pleshette, still riding high, lit out for the territories, popped up in a string of TV pilots, all of them unsuccessful. In the 1978 rom com Kate Bliss and The Ticker Tape Kid, … Continue reading Kate Bliss
Mike Hercules (Alias Mike Hercules)
Created by Herbert Margolis Hugh Beaumont, the affably bland fifties actor mostly known as the persistently perplexed dad, Ward Cleaver, on TV classic Leave It to Beaver (1957-63), had an earlier career as a sort of utility player, appearing in numerous films and television series. His resumé included several crime flicks, including roles in The … Continue reading Mike Hercules (Alias Mike Hercules)
Michael MacGruder (Cagney and Lacey)
Created by Steven Brown Intended as a possible spin-off from Cagney & Lacey, Orion Productions had high hopes for "The Bounty Hunter," an unsold pilot disguised as an episode in the popular show's third season. BrianDennehy starred as MICHAEL MacGRUDER, a tough guy manhunter from Michigan on the trail of a bail jumper, who's wanted in New … Continue reading Michael MacGruder (Cagney and Lacey)
Harry McGraw (The Law and Harry McGraw)
Created by Peter S. Fischer HARRY McGRAW first showed up as a recurring character on Murder, She Wrote, a slightly shady working class gumshoe from Boston who earned the respect of Cabot Cove's very own mystery novelist/amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) for his detective skills and his not-quite-hidden heart of gold. As played by … Continue reading Harry McGraw (The Law and Harry McGraw)
Not Quite Ready for Prime Time
Pilots That Didn't Fly & Spin-offs That Didn't Spin Television has always been a battlefield when it comes to getting a show actually on the air, and the P.I. genre has had it as rough as any other genre, although the nineties were particularly brutal. Some of these aired and nobody bit, and some of … Continue reading Not Quite Ready for Prime Time
Lucius Crane
Created by Blake Ritchie Pseudonym of Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts LUCIUS CRANE was a corpulent, harpsichord-playing gourmet and private detective hired by the friends of a murdered women to find her killer in the failed 1959 TV pilot The Fat Man: The Thirty-Two Friends of Gina Lardelli. Crane was played by "hefty, beetle-browed character … Continue reading Lucius Crane
B.T. Brady (This Girl for Hire)
Created by Barbara Avedon, Barbara Corday, Barney Rozenweig, Terry Louise Fisher, Steve Brown, Clifford Hoelscher and Jean Hoelscher "Just like in a Dick Powell movie, a gigantic black hole opened up at my feet and I dived right in..." -- B.T. Brady, in voiceover How many people does it take to write one of these things, anyway? In … Continue reading B.T. Brady (This Girl for Hire)