Here’s your Thursday topic, a quick and simple one:
I’ll bite…honestly, the detective shows weren’t a big staple in our household growing up, but I can name a few that I did enjoy throughout the years:
Jessica Fletcher – Murder, She Wrote
I couldn’t tell if Fletcher came to your town to bake you cookies or get you life in prison. It was the way in which she was so trustable, even to the conniving, and how she so matter-of-factly solved the mystery and delivered the final decision with the same aura of a 7th grade Algebra teacher showing you how to solve linear equations.
Lenny Briscoe – Law and Order
There have been several detectives in the Law and Order franchises, but, to me, it’s hard to beat Lenny Briscoe. Matter of fact, quick with a great one-liner, and resolute in each case, Briscoe got the job done and was human enough to sometimes relate with the deeper cases. I liked his partners Mike, Rey, and Ed, too. Always a great on-screen chemistry.
Jim Rockford – The Rockford Files
I liked the theme song and the car. I also though he was pretty badass. Just a personal preference.
I’m sure there are many, many more, but I’m throwing a few out I liked a lot as a kid and adult…so how’s about you? Who’s your top TV sleuth?
Russ Cole. Time is just a flat circle. I’ll take a sixer of Old Milwaukee or Lone Star, nothing snooty.”
“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself… We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self…”
Danny Reagan … pushing the limits of the line. He is a complex character even now in Boston Blue after Blue Bloods.
Thomas Magnum. Hands down.
As a teen, I would hear that answering machine and hear, “$200 a day plus expenses” and think, “sweet! Dude’s making BANK!”… and the sweet Pontiac!
Sheriff Andy Taylor & chief detective Barney Fife.
Who loves ya, baby?
https://i.redd.it/5trnz1o788qc1.jpeg
We had detective shows on all the time in my house—McCloud, The Name of the Game, Mannix, Rockford Files, you name it. One trend late 60’s/early 70’s was the series with the disabled detective–Ironside with Raymond Burr (wheelchair bound) Longstreet (a blind gumshoe) Cannon (lard-ass). They could be corny, but they were entertaining time-passer’s in the pre-internet,pre-smart phone era.
It. Columbus. “Just one more thing, if you don’t mind. “
Columbo. Damn, I hate spellcheck.
Grew up watching Quincy, M.E. (Jack Klugman: coroner, action star & all around ladies man???) and Perry Mason (only lost 1 case to the delightfully named Ham Burger, that he later won on appeal); and then Magnum PI.
I was only 11 or 12, but I remember watching “Did you see the Sunrise?” and sitting in stunned silence by a TV show for probably the first time.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0639640/
Yeah, that was powerful one. Hitting on themes of trauma and the brutality of the Vietnam War that hadn’t necessarily been explored before on TV, but the fact that Magnum went from smiling, rugged ladies man to a shell of himself and shooting the Russian was definitely one that made your jaw drop.
I think the only thing that compares is the utter silence in a packed movie theater at the end of American Sniper. There wasn’t a sound in there as everyone filed out, and must’ve been an audience of 200 plus.
Columbo will always be my favorite. Like most all old ones. Perry Mason wasn’t exactly a detective, but Della and Paul made it fit. Barbara Hale was one classy lady!!
Agreed about Columbo, and I like McNulty and Bunk on The Wire, and Pembleton on Homicide. The whole group from Brooklyn 99 was fanta6
When I have trouble sleeping, I find an episode of Murder She Wrote. Works everytime.
My biggest problem with MSW. Cabot Cove was a small town in Maine that had to have would was the highest murder rate per capita of any place in the US in the 1980’s. Why was this not a bigger story? The news media should have been all over it instead of doing story after story about America’s crack problem in the inner city and the rise of gansta rap … Also, how did Jessica Fletcher have any friends in any other place in the world? Surely they didn’t need the internet to know that friends and acquaintances of hers are regularly wacked and/or accused of murder. If you knew Jessica and she said she was coming your way, I am baffled anyone would be happy to see her. Jessica Fletcher was the she-demon of death.