I recently unearthed an Ellery Queen mystery, or more precisely a mystery about EQ, which will not be solved easily if at all. The September 2002 issue of Radiogram, a magazine for fans of old-time radio, includes “In the Studio with Ellery Queen,” a brief memoir by Fred Essex, who was a producer-director for the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency in the early 1940s when one of the programs the agency brought to the air every week was The Adventures of Ellery Queen.

   At this time Ellery’s creators, the cousins Fred Dannay and Manny Lee, were working out of an office in mid-Manhattan but asked the agency not to disturb them while they were in the throes of creation. “[T]he boys in the mail room who would deliver two mimeographed copies of the finished script each week were instructed not to enter the office…but to throw the fat envelope through the transom above the door.”

   At the time in question, Essex recalled, “Carleton Young played Ellery….” We know that Young took over that role in January 1942, when the series returned to the air after a 15-month hiatus, and kept it until August or September 1943 when he was replaced by Sydney Smith. Essex occasionally directed an EQ episode, and in his memoir described a segment where the murder “was committed in a radio studio that was supposedly rehearsing a crime program.”

   Essex recalled that the guest armchair detective that evening was radio comedian Fred Allen, and that he failed to solve the mystery. What’s wrong with this picture? Simply that The Sound of Detection, my book on the Queen series, lists no episode during Young’s tenure where Ellery solved a crime in a radio studio and no episode at any time where Fred Allen was the armchair sleuth!

   Either Essex misremembered radically or there’s still some information on the Ellery of the airwaves that hasn’t been unearthed. I hope to live long enough to find out which.

   Anyone in the market for another EQ mystery? As most mysteryphiles know, roughly between 1960 and 1966 Manny Lee was suffering from some sort of writer’s block and unable to collaborate with Fred Dannay as he’d been doing so successfully since 1929.

   Ellery Queen novels and shorter adventures continued to appear during those years, with other authors expanding Fred’s lengthy synopses as Manny had always done in the past. We know who took over Manny’s function on the novels of that period but not on the short stories and not on the single Queen novelet from those years.

   â€œThe Death of Don Juan” (Argosy, May 1962; collected in Queens Full, 1965) is set in Wrightsville and deals with the attempt of the town’s amateur theatrical company to stage a creaky old turn-of-the-century melodrama.

   Could this be a clue to the identity of Fred’s collaborator on the tale? In his graduate student days Anthony Boucher had worked in the Little Theater movement, and on his first date with the woman he later married the couple went to a creaky old-time melodrama.

   This is hardly conclusive evidence but, if I may borrow a Poirotism, it gives one furiously to think. Between 1945 and 1948 Boucher had taken over Fred’s function of providing plots for Manny to transform into finished scripts for the EQ radio series. Might he also have performed Manny’s function a dozen or more years later?

   The first publisher of the hardcover Ellery Queen novels and anthologies was the Frederick A. Stokes company, with whom Fred and Manny stayed from their debut in 1929 until 1941. A few months before Pearl Harbor they moved to Little, Brown and stayed there through 1955.

   After a few years with Simon & Schuster (1956-1958) they moved to Random House and the aegis of legendary editor Lee Wright (1902-1986), who among other coups had purchased Anthony Boucher’s first detective novel and the first “Black” suspense novels by Cornell Woolrich.

   What was behind their earlier moves from one publisher to another remains unknown, but when I interviewed Wright more than thirty years ago she explained why Queen left Random House. The year was 1965, a time when Manny was suffering from writer’s block and Fred called most of the shots for the two of them.

   He left Random, Wright told me, ”literally because Bennett Cerf didn’t invite him to lunch. His feelings were hurt….I said: ‘Fred, Bennett isn’t your editor. I am. You’re sort of insulting me. My attention isn’t enough for you, it has to be the head of the house, is what you’re saying.’”

   Fred tended to be hypersensitive to any hint that mystery writers were second-class literary citizens, while Manny over the years had come to hate the genre and his own role in it, to the point that he described himself to one of his daughters as a “literary prostitute.”

   That he and Fred could have disagreed about this and everything else and still have collaborated successfully for so long is nothing short of a miracle.

   When I was ten years old, for no particular reason I began squirreling away the weekly issues of TV Guide as my parents threw them on the trash pile with the week’s newspapers. The result is that today my bookshelves are weighed down by a week-by-week history of television from the early Fifties till the end of 2000, a goldmine of information unavailable elsewhere.

   One such nugget is buried in the listings for Thursday, June 14, 1956. One of the top Thursday night programs broadcast that season was the 60-minute live dramatic anthology series Climax!

   That particular evening’s offering was “To Scream at Midnight,” in which a wealthy young woman breaks down and is placed in a sanitarium after being thrown over by her lover. Her psychiatrist becomes suspicious when the man reappears and claims he wants to marry her.

   Heading the cast were Diana Lynn (Hilde Fraser), Dewey Martin (Emmett Shore), Karen Sharpe (Peggy Walsh), and Richard Jaeckel (Hordan). John Frankenheimer directed from a teleplay by John McGreevey which, according to TV Guide, was based on something by Highsmith.

   But what? I can recall no novel or story by her from 1956 or earlier (or later either) that remotely resembles this plot summary, but I am no authority on Highsmith. Joan Schenkar, author of the Edgar-nominated The Talented Miss Highsmith (2009), has read every word her subject ever wrote, including hundreds of thousands of words in her diaries.

   When I sent her a photocopy of the relevant TV Guide page, she too couldn’t connect the description with any Highsmith novel or story.

   That makes three mysteries about mysteries in one column, all of them probably unsolvable. If any readers have suggestions I’d love to see them.

   Breaking News! My chance encounter last Thanksgiving with that website devoted to William Ard has borne fruit. Ramble House, a small publisher with which every reader of this column should be acquainted, has arranged with Ard’s daughter to reprint a number of her father’s novels of the Fifties, probably in the two-to-a-volume format pioneered by Ace Books back when Ard was turning out four or more paperback originals a year. More details when I have them.

    It must have been sometime around ten years ago that I discovered Rosemary Herbert’s excellent encyclopaedic work The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing (Oxford University Press, 1999), loaded with a myriad of cross-references and ‘see also’ footnotes. For me, this book opened numerous avenues of further exploration within genre literature as well as being something of a mini education in various genre elements and associations.

    With a child-like sense of wonder, perhaps, it also induced me to visualise a television Crime & Mystery genre version. An exploration of the TV genre shaped in the book’s fascinating cross-reference format and structure. Instead of author entries, overviews of genre TV series.

    I went on to spend months compiling an outline and a book proposal. During this time I indulged in an almost fanatical research programme (rather prematurely) which, ultimately, resulted in several large cartons of documentation. But it also enriched my life with marathon viewings (via VHS/DVD) of previously unseen genre series.

    When the book proposal and chapter outline were complete, I pursued various possible media publishers. However, I soon discovered that these ‘media’ publishers (at least the London-based ones) seemed to barely have a grip on aspects of cinema history. That Television — genre television, at that — was considered not even a footnote in the grand scheme of things exploitable.

    Fortunately, Steve has very graciously allowed me to put some of this research and enthusiasm to use as an occasional series of observations on popular cycles and phases in the history of the TV Crime & Mystery genre.

    I intend to call it Prime Time Suspects (Crime & Mystery Television). For this on-line format I have revised (and greatly shortened) the draft of my original Introduction:

    It is a dangerous — and perhaps insane — undertaking to attempt to compress into a series of installments the history of a television genre as prolific and for the most part as rewarding as the Crime & Mystery. A genre that has enjoyed viewer popularity for over 60 years.

    The only thing that may be possible here is something of a bird’s eye view of the various TV forms and phases. My interest here will be to share a discussion of the series and programmes in this history, both in their relationship to their sources (literature, of course, as well as radio and cinema) along with the general evolution of the medium and its developing culture.

    There was a time when the approach to genre television tended to be structuralist, often dismissive. For instance, Tom Ryan, writing in Sight & Sound in 1976, noted that “Kojak, Columbo, Police Woman, Joe Forrester, S.W.A.T., Streets of San Francisco, and the others are seen to merge into each other, distinguishable only in terms of the different stars in each of the series.”

    Rather uncomfortably, this crude opinion sounds somewhat like the once held, blinkered view of the “Hollywood production factory” of cinema — until it was noticed (originally by French Cahiers critics, later exemplified by Andrew Sarris) that there were significant differences within the genres.

    One of the earliest writers to observe and evaluate aspects of television was Jack Edmund Nolan in his pioneering TV column in the pages of Films in Review magazine (running from around the mid 1960s).

    Nolan was perhaps the first to apply Sarris’ auteur theory to television, observing and analysing the small-screen work of directors ranging from Stuart Heisler to Sam Wanamaker (and, in one instance, even considered Roger Moore’s directorial excursions during production of The Saint series, ITV 1962-69).

    There can be no doubt that, taken in bulk, the genre series which concern us regularly tend to perpetrate distortions and omissions which have proved extremely galling to this writer’s critical generation. My contention, ultimately, is that many of the short-run, lesser-known series can be richer in nuance, in tension, in character and intricacy of plot, than they have been given credit for in the past.

    For instance, Ralph Meeker’s laconic military police investigator in Not for Hire (syndicated, 1959) and Roddy McMillan’s Glasgow private eye in The View from Daniel Pike (BBC, 1971-73) are more than equal to the acclaimed NCIS (CBS, 2003- ) and Baretta (ABC, 1975-78), respectively.

    It may be easy enough to summarize an epoch by selecting the most distinguished series, and concentrating thereon. But the manifest conveniences of this process have confirmed one of the principal distortions of TV criticism. The impression is conveyed that run-of-the-mill series never say anything, that vivid or insightful remarks or situations are a monopoly of a few prestigious individuals (the Stephen Bochco or Lynda La Plante productions, for example).

    Ranging from world-wide counter-espionage to the mean streets of the private investigator, the television law keeper is impelled by an almost idealistic world-view and a belief in justice, a commitment to order, and, at times, a sense of chivalry. The quest for justice underlies all of these activities; the plots follow a pattern of murder, corruption, and the establishment of a governing system to solve a puzzle and to return a sense of order to its citizens.

    Even though the genre has a strong tradition of unique conventions and the programmes themselves have been popular from the early days of broadcast television (the mid 1930s) to the present, a lack of attention may be the result of a certain confusion over precisely what comprises the TV genre. It has been described so narrowly as to include the police detective procedural exclusively, and so broadly as to encompass virtually any TV series featuring a crime.

    I would like to think that the occasional chapters that follow will take steps toward what may be an original definition of TV Crime & Mystery, emphasising the importance of the formal TV crime puzzle and its attendant characterisations and codes of behaviour.

    The TV genre includes not only police detectives but also similar related crime and mystery forms, such as adventurers, spies and investigative science experts. One of my central aims will be to demonstrate just how rich and rewarding these programmes can be in their own sub-divisions. I concluded eventually that only a mapping of the various sub-genres existing within the larger field could provide the overview I was looking for.

    Future installments will have me looking at, for example, the late 1950s Private Eye cycle (Peter Gunn, 77 Sunset Strip, etc.), the Prohibition Era Mob (The Untouchables, The Lawless Years, etc.), the New Age of Agatha Christie (UK television period 1980 to 1992), among many other genre cycles and forms.

       — Tise Vahimagi is currently the TV Database Editor for the British Film Institute.

ROCKY KING, DETECTIVE. (Original title: Inside Detective.) DuMont Television Network, January 14, 1950 – December 26, 1954. Cast: Inspector Rocky King: Roscoe Karns; Mabel King: voice of Grace Carney; Announcer: Ken Roberts; Sergeant Lane: Earl Hammer, 1950-1953; Sergeant Hart: Todd Karns (Roscoe’s son), 1953-1954.

   There once was a TV series about a befuddled homicide detective who wore an old raincoat he refused to replace and had a wife the audience never saw; that detective was Rocky King.

   Rocky King, Detective was a live half hour police mystery series on the DuMont network. Few remember DuMont, one of the original four TV networks (1946 to 1955 (or 1956)). Its lack of stations to reach enough viewers and a radio network to draw talent and dollars doomed the network to producing low budget, little seen programs.

   Perhaps the network’s most popular series, only a few episodes still exist on kinescope copies. The four episodes reviewed here are available to view for free at various websites such as Classic TV Archives. (See below.)

   Roscoe Karns, a veteran movie co-star, finally got his chance to play the lead. Rocky’s never seen wife Mabel was the scatterbrained female type. Each episode would feature a scene with Rocky at home talking to Mabel, often about their never seen or heard son, Junior. The show always ended with Rocky in his office calling Mabel. He hang up the phone and say, “Wonderful girl, that Mabel.”

   The domestic scenes were played for laughs and reportedly written by Karns who received a screen credit for “additional dialog”.

   The music by Jack Ward is a major distraction with over the top organ music more fitting for a bad melodrama.

   Considering its network limitations, Rocky King is a far better show than it should have been. The live broadcasts had the expected number of mistakes, but it didn’t stop the talent from taking risks and having fun.

   Live in the camera tricks such as split screen and creative dissolves between scenes were common. While the mystery and suspense was played straight, the writers and cast occasionally let less serious moments slip in, even breaking the fourth wall.

   In “One Minute For Murder,” Karns was sick and Earl Hammer as Sergeant Lane took over the mystery and scenes with Mabel. At the end Sergeant Lane reassured the viewers Rocky would be OK and would be back next week.

   The episodes reviewed:

● “Murder Scores a Knockout.” Aired July 13, 1952. Written: Carl Abrams. Directed: Lee Polk. Guest cast: Pete: Kem Dibbs; Edward: William Sharon; Viola: Henrietta Moore/ A magician is murdered as the three suspects search for a missing object.

● “The Hermit’s Cat.” Aired August 31, 1952. Written: Ed Morris. Directed: Wesley Kenney. Guest cast: Mark: Ed Peck; Norton: Frank Campanella; Mildred: Virginia Low. Millionaire who had refused to leave his home is found dead on a nearby highway.

● “Murder, Ph.D.” Aired December 14, 1953. Written: Frank Phares. Directed: Wesley Kenney. Guest Cast: Gerhart: Somer Alberg; Bartender: John Anderson; Alice: Anne Roberts. Mysterious phone caller repeatedly taunts Rocky that he is the real killer not the man about to be executed at midnight.

● “One Minute for Murder.” Air date unknown. Written: Carl Abrams. Directed: Wesley Kenney. Guest cast: Nora: Barbara Joyce; Mike: Steven Gethers; Helen: Mary Jackson. Blackmailing columnist is murdered in the leading lady’s dressing room during a performance.

   All four are included on one DVD easily available from Amazon, Oldies.com and other well-known online outlets.

   For those interested to learn more about Rocky King, Detective or the DuMont Television Network, I recommend two websites:

Classic TV Archives: http://ctva.biz.

Charles Ingram’s DuMont Television Network Historical website: http://www.dumonthistory.tv/index.html

The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon. Premiere episode (of 12) for the CBS TV series Tucker’s Witch, 6 October 1982. Cast: Rick Tucker: Tim Matheson; Amanda Tucker: Catherine Hicks; Ellen Hobbes: Barbara Barrie; Marcia: Alfre Woodard; Lt. Fisk: Bill Morey. Guest cast: Danny: Ted Danson; Babs: Alexa Hamilton. Created and written by William Bast and Paul Huston. Director: Peter H. Hunt.

   Husband and wife PI’s Rick and Amanda Tucker hunt for the person who is strangling married women in high-rise elevators. Want to guess how it ends?

   The gimmick for this series is an odd one. Amanda is a witch. However this is no PI Bewitched. Amanda is trying to learn to control her special powers, special powers that is public knowledge.

   The acting, especially Catherine Hicks, is the only thing going for this series, and some would claim the occasional cheesecake views of Hicks is the only reason to watch.

   Before the opening credits we watch the killer in action. What follows is not some Columbo-like mystery, but instead a cliche-filled, lazily written romantic comedy mystery that fails in nearly every way possible.

   Need to find a clue? Let the witch have a hunch about something and you have your clue or if she is wrong you have your comedy.

   Feature a Los Angeles police department that accepts hunches from an unreliable witch, as well as does not notice all the victims were members of the same video dating service. A video dating service that gives all its members a pointless charm for no reason other than the writers need a clue for their witch to find.

   Nearly every TV mystery cliche is in this one episode. Rick does not want to talk about the case because he wants to go on vacation (no signs they are packed to go anywhere). Seconds later they get a call that a client wants to hire them for this mystery. Rick tries to convince the paying client to drop case. Flighty sweet Amanda’s Mother who lives with them.

   Wacky neighbors. Understanding stupid cop friend. Woman overhears them discuss the murders in first person and misunderstands. PIs break the law stealing personal property to find out who did it. They are so obvious about it the killer finds out. Killer tries to kill Rick in a car by cutting the brake line. Spend screen time watching the “out of control” car run over things.

   Killer decides to make Amanda the next victim. Rick rushes to her rescue (though Amanda does hold her own vs the killer). Episode ends with cute bit where the loose ends are summed up during adorable characterization action.

   You know you are watching bad 80’s network TV when the smartest character is Dickens, Amanda’s cat who uses the phone answering machine to let Rick know Amanda is with the killer. Top that, Lassie!

   Reviewed from YouTube videos: Part One.

REMINGTON STEELE. Season One: NBC, 1982-83. Created by Robert Butler and Michael Gleason. Cast: Laura Holt: Stephanie Zimbalist, Remington Steele: Pierce Brosnan, Murphy Michaels: James Read, Bernice Foxe: Janet DeMay.

   This endearing but lightweight series was at its best in Season One in every way but ratings.

   The premise of a female PI creating a fictional male boss so people would accept her as a PI was a timely one. While female PI’s had existed for a long time, even mystery readers were then adjusting to the new independent female PI such as Kinsey Milhone (Sue Grafton) and V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky).

   Remington Steele, named for a typewriter (yes, it was that long ago) and a football team, was originally meant to remain fictional. NBC insisted the part be cast, and a romantic comedy mystery with the roles reversed developed.

   Writing for the series was at its best during the first season. Experienced showrunner Michael Gleason lead a staff destined to create their own series. Joel Steiger (Jake & the Fatman) won the Edgar award for Best Episode in a TV series for “In the Steele of the Night”. Other writers included Glen Gordon Caron (Moonlighting) and Lee David Zlotoff (MacGyver).

   The characters were never more believable. Why wouldn’t a con man and a thief (think Cary Grant in It Takes A Thief) give up that life to have fun chasing Laura and accidentally catching bad guys?

   Laura’s reaction to the mystery man was what many young women were going through in 1982 as they chose between a career and marriage. Bernice the secretary meant there was someone in the office to deal with clients while everyone else was off solving mysteries. (This would not be true in coming seasons.)

   The acting from stars Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan to the guest stars was of the high quality one expected from an MTM Production (Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, etc).

   The relationship between Laura and Remington usually featured them battling each other to see who solved the mystery first. Whatever chemistry between the two worked best during this season.

   This was the season I developed a crush on Laura Holt, identified with Remington Steele, enjoyed the comedy mysteries, and saw the potential for another special TV series from MTM Productions. While next season’s move from Friday to Tuesday and NBC wanting more slapstick action made the series a hit, it was at the cost of much of what made Remington Steele special during season one.

   Oh, if you decide to view an episode of Remington Steele, watch for the MTM kitty salute to a famous detective at the end.

FATHER & SON. ITV1 (UK), June 7 through 10, July 2010. Dougray Scott, Sophie Okonedo, Ian Hart, Stephen Rea, Reece Noi, Wunmi Mosaku, Simon Delaney. Written by Frank Deasy. Director: Brian Kirk. (Previously shown on RTÉ (Ireland), 29 June through 20 July 2009.)

   This was another of those stories spread over successive evenings that seem to be the vogue over here nowadays. This was in four parts — Monday to Thursday, one hour each, less adverts.

   Set in Manchester, a city that has acquired a small reputation for gang violence, this concerns Michael Connor, a former criminal who has retired to a new life (and a new wife) after the murder of his first wife. He returns to Manchester when his estranged teenage son — who lives with his mother’s sister, a policewoman — is arrested and accused of shooting another teenager in a gang related killing.

   The story involves several strands with a prisoner and former colleague of the father keeping an eye on the son while attempting his own escape, and the involvement, possibly criminal, of the police both in Manchester and in Ireland.

   There are some discrepancies and anomalies — would a fifteen year old, accused but not convicted of a shooting, be placed in a cell with a hardened adult criminal, and would a Manchester criminal, now living in Ireland, have an accent that ranges over most of the British Isles? — but the story twisted and turned and managed to hold my attention throughout

“Sleight of Hand.” An episode of The Rockford Files (Season 1, Episode 15). First air date: 17 January 1975. James Garner, Noah Beery, Joe Santos, Tom Atkins, Lara Parker, Pat Delany, Allan Miller. Teleplay by Stephen J. Cannell & Jo Swerling Jr., based on the novel Thin Air by Howard Browne.

   Stop me if you’ve heard (or seen) this one before.

   Private eye Jim Rockford is coming back to LA after a vacation trip with Karen Mills, his current girl friend, a vivacious young divorcee with a three year old daughter. He stops at her house, she leaves to open the front door, he carries the girl up to her bedroom and tucks her in, and goes downstairs to find Karen’s open purse on a counter — and no Karen. He was only a few feet behind her when he went in — and she has disappeared.

   When the police are called (Joe Santos as Sgt. Becker), they find the body of Karen’s next door neighbor lying on the ground next to her house. Do the police (Tom Atkins as Lt. Diel) believe Rockford’s story? Well, what do you think? (Would you believe such a story?)

   Or in other words, Rockford’s on his own in solving this one, except for his dad, Rocky, who catches the one clue Rockford misses.

   The novel has been reviewed earlier on this blog, and from Gloria Maxwell’s description, the story line of the TV show is almost exactly the same, at least the beginning. While I’ve read the book, I couldn’t tell you now if the ending is the same, nor how closely they followed the plot when the story was used again as the basis for an episode of Simon & Simon in 1982.

   I have to tell you, though, as entertaining as the story is on this mid-season episode of The Rockford Files, if you allow yourself the time to think it about carefully, and maybe only casually and not even that carefully, the whole thing is adroitly administered hogwash, a heap of impossibilities disguised as a stack of highly unlikelies.

   It may be that 50 minutes or so just isn’t enough running time to make the parts fit together so they make sense, but in all honesty, they don’t.

   But did I say that this was one of the most entertaining episodes so far this first season? I did and I didn’t, but it was. It also comes the closest to true noir, albeit in a slightly ham-fisted way. As private eye Jim Rockford, James Garner lets his feelings show more than usual on this one.

“Night of the Gun.” An episode of Tightrope! (Season 1, Episode 17). First air date: 29 December 1959. Mike Connors as Nick Stone. Guests: Mike Kellin, Whit Bissell, Barbara English, Paul Langdon. Teleplay by Frederic Brady. Directed by Paul Wendkos.

   Policeman Paul Langdon explaining why a detective roughed up undercover cop Nick Stone (Michael Connors):

   Tightrope! ran for a single season in the 1959-1960 television season for 37 episodes and featured the adventures of undercover cop Nick Stone, as played by Michael Connors. Stone was a cross between Peter Gunn and James Bond, plying the mean streets in first person-narrated tales of crime, murder, betrayal, about a man on the tightrope as a undercover policeman.

   Created by Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, Tightrope was a fast paced half hour show that moved like the bullets that frequently flew from Connors’ gun. A typical episode featured beautiful sexy women, bizarre villains, twisty plots, and enough violence for three other series.

   Opening each week with Connor’s patented fast draw, the series had only one continuing character, Stone, and found him each week in a new city with a new assignment.

    “Night of the Gun” is perhaps the best of the series, a tough and dark little tale that finds Nick helping the local police to find a witness on the run (Whit Bissell). Also hunting for Bissell is Larry Maddox (Mike Kellin), a club owner who sidelines as a killer for hire.

   It’s Kellin and his performance as Maddox that raises this above the rest. Maddox is an effeminate sadist, one part hipster, one part Liberace, who lives for trouble and pain: “Beautiful, beautiful.”

   Nick knows the best way to find Bissell is to follow Maddox to him, so he attracts his attention, then befriends the bizarre hood who sees a kindred spirit in Connors. For a show from 1959 the homo-erotic content of these scenes is pretty obvious, and though a couple of pretty girls are thrown into the mix, it’s clear that Kellin’s bizarre hit man isn’t interested in them all that much.

   I was reminded a bit of Lee Marvin and Earl Holliman’s homo-erotic hoods from Joseph L. Lewis The Big Combo and George Sanders as the strange forger and thief from John Larkin’s Quiet Please, Murder!, but Kellin’s character is even more outlandish.

   The opening scene where he kills a frightened and desperate witness is as sadistic a display as you ever saw on the small screen.

   This kind of show lived or died on the shoulders of the hero, and here Connors, in his first series, shines. Nick Stone is tough and smart, but he is also haunted by his job. He’s not always sure that there is a purpose to what he does, and longs for the comradeship of his fellow officers, a good woman, and a nine-to-five life, even as he wears expensive clothes and hangs out in the fanciest nightclubs. Each show features at least one scene of Nick alone in a crowd on a busy neon-lit street in a large city, alone even among the throng.

   As Connors gets closer to Kellin we begin to see just how crazy his Larry Maddox is, and it is a great bizarre performance, a mix of beatnik and hood, flamboyant and equal parts sadist and masochist.

   Finally when they go to meet Whit Bissell — who thinks Maddox is helping him to get out of town — Maddox figures out Connors as Nick is a cop and gets the drop on him, but didn’t figure on that patented fast draw.

   Connors went on to fame and fortune as Mannix, and Kellin had a long career as a character actor, including right after this a turn as the Chief Mate on The Wackiest Ship in the Army.

   Whit Bissell was in a little bit of everything from his role as the General in The Time Tunnel to his essay as the mad doctor in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein ( “I know you have a civil tongue in your head, I put it there!”).

   An attempt to revive the character of Nick Stone and series with Christopher George was a failure, but Stephen Cannell’s legendary Wiseguy with Ken Wahl owed a lot to this.

   Tightrope! isn’t available on DVD, but a few episodes are around, and well worth catching even if they are in less than pristine condition. It was a smart well written and directed series mindful of Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond’s early Secret Agent X-9 with its lone hero living a lonely and dangerous life without friends or allies.

   Tightrope! was a solid entertaining cop series with a bit more meat on the bone than usual. If you have never seen any of these you are in for a treat, and if you recall them but haven’t seen them for a long time you will be surprised just how good they were.

FIVE DAYS. BBC-TV (UK), March 1 through 5, 2010. Shaun Dooley, Steve Evets, Shivani Ghai, Bernard Hill, Suranne Jones, Matthew McNulty, Aaron Neil, Anne Reid, David Morrissey. Teleplay: Gwyneth Hughes. Director: Toby Haynes.

   It’s become quite fashionable over here to run a drama over five successive nights. We have had several in recent years and this is the second to be called Five Days (though this one doesn’t use the characters from the first, first seen in 2007).

   In these we see five key days (but not successive days) of the investigation. The story starts with a train hitting a body falling from a bridge. On the train is PC Laurie Franklin (played by Suranne Jones), taking her mother to a hospital consultation about her dementia.

   Meanwhile a young baby is found abandoned in the hospital toilet and it is suspected for a while that the baby is connected to the body.

   I found the first episode rather underwhelming and, though it picked up over the remaining episodes, it was overall rather unsatisfactory. Firstly there were just too many issues covered. I’ve already mentioned dementia, terrorism and multi-cultural relationships but there were many more.

   Another problem was that everyone had to have a deeper part in the story even though this lead to some unbelievable coincidences. A lot a work had gone into this production and it was a good cast; it’s a pity that script wasn’t much tighter.

PETER GUNN. Pilot: “The Kill.” NBC-TV, 22 September 1958. Craig Stevens, Lola Albright, Hershel Bernardi, Hope Emerson. Guests: Gavin McLeod, Jack Weston. Written & directed by Blake Edwards. [The series: 1958-1960, NBC; 1960-1961, ABC.]

GUNN. Paramount Pictures, 1967. Craig Stevens, Laura Devon, Ed Asner, Sherry Jackson, Albert Paulson, M.T. Marshall, Helen Traubel, J. Pat O’Malley, Regis Toomey. Screenplay by Blake Edwards & William Peter Blatty. Directed by Blake Edwards.

PETER GUNN. TV-movie/pilot, ABC, 22 September 1958. Peter Strauss, Barbara Williams, Peter Jurasik, Pearl Bailey, Charles Cioffi, Jennifer Edwards. Written & directed by Blake Edwards.

   Some ideas are just too good for one telling. Roy Huggins novella “Appointment with Fear,” a Stuart Bailey private eye tale, was the basis for the films The Good Humor Man and “State Secret,” the pilot for 77 Sunset Strip (and at least two episodes), and the pilot for City of Angels. So Blake Edwards, with variations, used “The Kill,” the pilot for Peter Gunn, as the basis for the 1967 feature film and the 1989 refit with Peter Strauss.

   The basic story, as outlined in “The Kill,” is that an aging gangster is killed by two assassins dressed as cops in a phony cop car. Peter Gunn owed the old time mobster his life and won’t leave his death alone.

   An ambitious gangster (Gavin McLeod — called Fallon here, Fusco in the movie) wants to take over and blows up Mother’s, the jazz bar run by Hope Emerson where Peter Gunn’s chanteuse girlfriend Edie sings, as an example of how his extortion racket will work. Gunn figures it out, puts pressure on Fallon’s top man (Jack Weston) and sets him up as a target for the two phony cops.

It wasn’t as if borrowing was new to Blake Edwards. He began his career creating singing detective Richard Diamond for Dick Powell on radio, then moved into screenplays and television. He updated Richard Diamond as a smooth non-singing private eye played by David Janssen for television, then he also wrote and directed a pilot with Brian Keith for a Mike Hammer series.

   Peter Gunn was very much a cross between the cool hip buttoned down and laid back Richard Diamond and the tough violent jazz themed world of Mike Hammer.

   Peter Gunn, for the uninitiated, is a private eye in a riverfront town that is never named but always seems a bit wet and foggy. He operates out of Mother’s, a smoky bar where his girl friend Edie is the singer, and he stands at the bar and exchanges hip humor with the owner, Mother. His chief ally on the police force is Lt. Jacobi, a human, dogged, world weary policeman.

   Peter is aided by a small army of informers and snitches, all colorful, eccentric, and prone to theatrics. The closest literary equivalent to Peter Gunn was likely Henry Kane’s Peter Chambers who has a similar jazzy offbeat quality — and ironically (or not), Kane wrote the only novelization of the television series.

   To add to the cool dialogue, complex plots, and moody noirish look the series was blessed with perhaps the most recognizable theme in television history, Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme.

   What the Monty Norman/James Bond theme is to spy fiction, the Gunn theme is to crime. It is simply unforgettable (little wonder, in addition to Mancini, at the time his orchestra included legendary John Williams.) Even people who never heard of Peter Gunn know that iconic theme.

   One more element came into play: perfect casting. If there was a better choice than Craig Stevens to play Peter Gunn I can’t imagine him. Stevens was a minor B-actor whose biggest role was probably that of a shell shocked soldier in Since You Went Away and by the time of Peter Gunn had fallen to appearing in films like The Preying Mantis and Abbot and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

   Just before Peter Gunn he had an outstanding role as a cool gun man in Budd Boetticher’s Buchanan Rides Alone, which may well have led to his being cast as Gunn. For whatever reason, he took the part and ran with it. The result was like seeing Mike Hammer played by Cary Grant. It is simply one of the most iconic roles in television history, on a level with Lucy and Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason.

   Craig Stevens is Peter Gunn. Much of the character and mood established with nothing more than a raised eyebrow or a his cat like walk. Craig Stevens is Peter Gunn the way Sean Connery was James Bond or Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes.

   For American audiences, Peter Gunn and Stevens were the transition from Mike Hammer to James Bond.

   The rest of the cast included Lola Albright as the sexy somewhat melancholy Edie who knows her man is only her man in a limited way:

   Hershel Bernardi was cast as Lt. Jacobi the world weary cop and veteran Hope Emerson was Mother, an imposing presence even on the small screen. Veteran character actors like J. Pat O’Malley and Regis Toomey were semi regulars as colorful informers.

   The series ran only three seasons on NBC and then ABC. When it went off the air it found new life in syndication, and in 1967 Edwards decided to try again as a feature film. Stevens was back, but Lola Albright was replaced by Laura Devon as a rather wan Edie. Ed Asner was good as a tougher version of Jacobi and Helen Traubel played Mother. O’Malley and Toomey again appeared as informers.

   The plot was expanded from “The Kill” with some fine variations — at least one borrowed from Mickey Spillane’s Vengeance is Mine. Albert Paulson was “Fusco,” the Fallon character from the pilot, M. T. Marshall had a standout role as Daisy Jane, a madam who ran a floating whorehouse, and Sherry Jackson appeared as a beautiful and mysterious kook who shows up naked in Gunn’s bed.

   The world had changed in six years though Gunn hadn’t, and the whole thing is faintly anachronistic, but it is done with such style that hardly matters. It’s a superior effort all around, with at least three outstanding set pieces, including a shoot out in a mirrored bedroom, a confrontation on a racket ball court (taken in part from “The Kill”), and the finale, a bloody brawl that may well be one of the most violent scenes filmed to that time.

   Craig Stevens commands the big screen as he did the small one, but the time for Gunn was gone and though it did well, the critics weren’t kind and Gunn disappeared again. Stevens had several other series that ran varying lengths of time — Man of the World, Mr. Broadway, The Invisible Man, did a pilot for a “Thin Man” series, Nick and Nora (notoriously bad), and probably had his last big role in Edward’s S.O.B.

   By 1989 Blake Edwards had moved onto bigger things, but he trotted out Peter Gunn yet again with a new actor in the role, Peter Strauss, then still fresh off his star-making role in Rich Man, Poor Man.

   Again a gangster has been killed and a gang war threatens. Peter Gunn caught in the middle has to find the killers and stop the bloodshed.

   As a private eye film this is not bad, but as Peter Gunn it just isn’t right.

   Strauss makes his first appearance in a dinner jacket with a white silk scarf and looks like Michael J. Fox wearing his father’s suit. Edie has almost nothing to do and is largely replaced by a scatterbrained secretary (in the original series Mother’s was Pete’s office) who has far too much screen time. Peter Jurasik plays Jacobi as a petulant and cynical typical cop. Pearl Bailey has little to do as Mother.

   Frankly it’s all tired and hackneyed. Not bad, but not Peter Gunn, not by a long sight. Peter Gunn in a turtle neck just didn’t fit somehow. That said, the film has it’s moments, with a nice variation on the shootout from The Big Sleep at the end. One nice touch, Lt. Jacobi acquires a first name — Hershel.

   Strauss might have been good as a private eye. Just not Peter Gunn. As made for television private eye films go, this isn’t bad. If you had never seen Craig Stevens and the original you might even have been impressed.

   But it’s Diet Coke, not the Real Thing.

      The plot varies even more from “The Kill” than Gunn did, but there are enough similarities you won’t have any trouble recognizing where the idea came from. Charles Cioffi is the gangster this time.

   In the years since Peter Gunn projects have come and gone. John Woo had one at one point. It would be nice if by some miracle everything came together and we got one more great Peter Gunn, but it seems unlikely. Gunn is very much of its time, an attitude, an actor, and a handful of people he interacted with, and very much one of the best themes ever written, bar none.

      Not that we will be, but perhaps, just this once, we should be grateful for what we have.