(narrator) Crime dramas remain one of television's most popular genres, retelling age-old stories of good and evil, crime and punishment.

(Mike) The shows that were successful is where the audience really said, "Get that no good son-of-a--" You know, "Get him, I can't stand him."

(Angie) A woman policewoman?

A woman cop?

Nobody thought it would be a hit.

The whole idea was to make it ordinary.

The end of the show, the good guys win, the bad guys lose.

And the ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

(Barbara) We never shot anybody ever.

-Ever.

-I admired it and I thought it would be interesting to do all these various characters.

(Stefanie) Little did I know I was gonna make television history.

(Peter) By golly, they were well done.

I consider that a very fortunate thing to have done in a career.

(dramatic music) (narrator) Together they took a familiar genre and brought it to life for a new generation in a form we know as the television crime drama.

♪ They are the Pioneers of Television.

♪ (Columbo) Oh, listen, one more thing.

It'll just take a second.

(narrator) They created the characters we loved to watch.

Peter was so charming, and you saw him just taking all these bad guys right down.

You loved it.

♪ (Mike) Well, about eight out of 10 times, I'd rent a room and the guy would step from behind the door and hit me on the back of the head.

(thud) ♪ And friends and fans would always ay, "Geez, Joe, you oughta look behind the door when you get into a room."

And I'd say, "Hey, if I looked behind the room, the story was over."

You don't know where this man lives?

You have no idea how to get in touch with him?

(narrator) They developed new ways to tell stories, capturing our attention week after week.

(Joe) 7:48 p.m., Frank and I pulled Miller off the job at the coffee shop and took him downtown to the office.

Give us something to go on, Miller.

(Joe) Now you either come up with a solid story we can check on or you're gonna be resting your back in Main Jail.

What was really great about him was that he was one of a kind.

(Joe) Police offers, get your hands up.

-What's going on?

-Stand still.

-What's the beef?

-I'll check 'em, Joe.

(Joe) Put 'em down.

-Get 'em up.

-It was fresh when it came on the air, but it was like startling to see people doing this kind of work.

(recording) This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.

Good luck, Jim.

(smoke hissing) When I read the script, I said, "Now why are we ending up in this crazy thing?

And how are we gonna get there?

Wow, this is ingenious."

We played mind games.

And it wasn't an action adventure show at all, it was a puzzle.

It's the writing.

Without the writing, you're going nowhere.

(gunshots) (man) 290 out of a possible 300, Pepper.

Not bad for a lady cop.

(Pepper) Thanks, I try.

We were groundbreakers, and that's fun to know that.

(suspenseful music) The story you are about to hear is true.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Brought to you by Fatima.

The difference is quality.

(narrator) 1949, June 3rd, 9:30 p.m. A turning point for the crime drama as an obscure new radio program premiers on NBC.

♪ (man) You are detective sergeant.

You are assigned to homicide detail.

A 38-year-old woman disappears.

She leaves her sister and four children behind.

There's evidence of foul play.

Your job: find her.

♪ (Friday) It was Monday, June 3rd.

It was overcast in Los Angeles.

We were working the day watch on a homicide detail.

My partner is Ed Jacobs, the boss is Thad Brown, Chief of Detectives.

My name is Friday.

♪ (man) So do you have any idea... (narrator) This series takes a radically different approach.

The script has no gunshots, no fist fights, and no romance.

Instead, the program follows real stories of actual police detective work.

It's not glamorous but it's authentic.

(woman) I don't know what she does when she goes off on those things.

I don't want to know.

Gets drunk, I suppose.

(Friday) What about last Tuesday, the night she disappeared, did you notice if she'd been drinking then?

Yeah.

I had her four kids to raise, you know.

(narrator) The ratings were awful, but the critics loved it.

And NBC kept it on the air.

Gradually, audiences began to warm to this new approach.

(woman) Cashed the check that night and said she was gonna keep-- (narrator) And they'd stick with it for decades.

(woman) We argued and I killed her.

(Friday) Yeah, well, I'm sorry, ma'am, we'll have to go.

(narrator) The creator of this new kind of drama was Jack Webb.

His radio series was called Dragnet.

(man) You've been listening to Dragnet, the documented drama of an actual crime, produced in cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department.

You've traveled step by step with the law through an actual case transcribed from official police files.

(soft music) ♪ (narrator) In 1951, Jack Webb added a television version of Dragnet.

The series now had pictures.

(dramatic music) But the unique rhythm was unchanged.

-Now where are your pals?

-What pals?

Cliff Small and George Schumm.

We know you're running with 'em.

(Julius) Well, if you know that, then you know where they are.

-How old are you?

-18.

-What's your name?

-Julius Carver.

It was totally disassociated from any kind of acting reality.

It was--and that's the way they wanted it.

They wanted it flat, they wanted it-- And they wanted that kind of delivery that suggested there wasn't any acting going on.

It was semi-documentary style.

(dramatic music) (narrator) Many actors found the Dragnet cadence challenging.

But Jack Webb knew how to get what he wanted.

(Stephen) Jack, in front of the whole crew, he says, "Cut!

What are you doing?"

And this poor actor goes, "Well, Mr. Webb, I'm doing the dialogue."

He says, "No, you're not doing the dialogue, you're making a ham sandwich.

Bring it down, bring it down."

So, Jack says, "Anybody got a newspaper?"

So somebody hands him the LA Times.

And he hands it to this guy and he says, "Read that."

And this actor goes, "Huh?"

"Read that."

(quirky music) "Dateline, Paris at 6:00 this after--" "That's what I want!"

(laughing) So if you were playing a murderer, you might say, "Yeah, I killed 'em, I think there were seven of 'em, yeah.

No, I shot three of 'em and stabbed the rest.

And, yeah, that's all I-- I don't know, no, did I know them?

No, I didn't know them."

You know, just, you know.

(laughing) You wanna tell us how you committed the robbery?

Yeah, I'll tell you.

Isn't much to tell though.

Pretty simple.

I went in and held the place up.

Took the money.

That's about all there is to it.

Were you armed when you went into that grocery store?

-Yeah, yeah, I had a gun.

-What kind of a gun?

.32 automatic, had eight bullets in it.

Where's the gun now?

-Threw it away.

-Where?

One of the ponds up in Fern Dell.

You mean Griffith Park, huh?

Yeah, just a little up the canyon there.

-You wanna show us where it is?

-Sure.

(mysterious music) (narrator) Jack Webb's insistence on deadpan delivery meant he would be among the first to adopt this new technology called the teleprompter, which allowed actors to read their dialogue as they were acting.

Well, I didn't know that Dragnet was all done by teleprompters.

I mean, everything was on a yellow strip of paper and then it would just sort of go.

And Jack Webb read everything.

So he says to me, "You're not reading it off of the tele-- you know, you're supposed to be reading it."

And I said, "Oh, well, I know my lines, I learned them."

He goes, "Our show-- you read it off of the teleprompter."

So, I started saying the lines, but of course my eyes were going back and forth as I'm looking at this tele-- He goes, "It looks like you're reading it."

I said, "Well, I am reading it.

You just told me to read it."

So he says, "Forget it.

Just do what you were doing."

So I said, "Okay."

And Harry Morgan comes over to me.

He goes, "You're the first person that has ever been on this show that's been able to get away with memorizing their lines."

♪ (narrator) Teleprompters had another advantage Jack Webb liked.

They saved money.

Because actors no longer had to memorize their lines, production could move much more quickly.

An episode that previously took up to five days to shoot could now be done in just a day and a half.

And the innovations didn't end there.

(suspenseful music) ♪ Watching an old Western, Webb realized that big movie panoramas didn't work on the tiny TVs of the era.

♪ Webb's answer was one of the great innovations of early television: the close-up.

-Sergeant.

-Yes, ma'am?

That was Johnny just then.

He wanted to make sure I was gonna meet him.

-When?

-5:30 in Lake Park.

Which side, Miss?

(narrator) Unlike any previous series, Dragnet's cameras went close in on the actors' faces for the whole show.

Suddenly, emotion was visible on even the smallest screen.

It was a technique that quickly became a staple of television for decades to come.

(dramatic music) ♪ By 1953, Dragnet was a cultural icon, burned into the national consciousness.

Jack Webb didn't popularize his most famous line.

Instead, that honor goes to satirist Stan Freberg.

(Stan) Jack Webb walks over to me and he says, "Freberg, I was wondering when you were finally gonna get around to me."

(record crackling) (dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) Freberg had approached Webb to ask permission to do a Dragnet parody record.

Webb agreed, and the record immediately topped the charts, the fastest selling single of the era.

I happened to use the line, "We just want to get the facts, ma'am," you know?

'Cause I had heard in one episode of Dragnet that he used that line.

(man) No, ma'am, I didn't say that.

Just routine, ma'am.

We just want to get the facts.

(Stan) "We just want to get the facts, ma'am."

Webb said to me, "Freberg, I only used that in one show.

Now, because of you, I have to put it in every show," about the facts-- "Just get the facts, ma'am."

(soft music) (narrator) Jack Webb's success in television lasted nearly 30 years in three major series.

Webb's shows focused on the effects of crime, not the crime itself.

That meant Webb's characters almost never used their guns.

It was a stark contrast to most other crime dramas.

(man) Don't watch the man stop that razor.

Watch the man in the chair.

He'll never be shaved.

In 10 seconds, he will be dead.

(tense music) Five, four, three, two, one.

(gunshots) (dramatic music) ♪ (lively music) (narrator) Eliot Ness was an American hero, the FBI man who put mobsters in jail.

One entertainment executive thought the Eliot Ness story would make great television.

The executive's name was Desi Arnaz.

The project was The Untouchables, the most violent TV show of the era.

(gunfire) (soft music) Desi Arnaz was well-known to Americans as the star and producer of I Love Lucy.

What most didn't know was that Desi's best friend in school was Sonny Capone, Al Capone's son.

After Eliot Ness wrote his memoir, Arnaz bought the rights and created a show -that outraged many.

-Starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness.

(debris clattering) (narrator) Every episode of The Untouchables was saturated with gun fights, car explosions, and lots of dead bodies.

(gunfire) Critics decried the violence.

There was even a congressional investigation.

But the audience loved it.

(grunting, gunfire) (dramatic music) It was reflective of what went on.

It wasn't gratuitous violence.

We're talking about the Chicago mobs.

I remember Lewis Charles and I were beating someone up.

(grunts) (scuffling) (grunts) It was very violent because you never saw him.

You just saw our faces and our bodies, and you never saw what was happening to the person.

(grunting) ♪ To me, that's far more violent than what-- some of the things you're seeing today which are so graphic.

♪ (narrator) To produce The Untouchables, Desi Arnaz promoted an editor from I Love Lucy named Quinn Martin.

It was a tough job.

Martin knew the show's violence was the key to good ratings, but his writers soon ran out of ways to kill people.

His memos revealed the problem.

("Quinn") I wish you could come up with a different device than running the man down with a car, as we have done this now in three different shows.

I like sadism, but I hope you can come up with another approach to it.

(narrator) After two seasons of The Untouchables, Quinn Martin left the series to strike out on his own.

But the studio, Desilu, pushed on successfully without him.

In 1967, Desilu premiered what would become one of the longest-running crime dramas of the era.

(lively music) Mannix, starring Mike Connors.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (gunshot, glass shatters) (gunfire) ♪ Mannix was produced by Bruce Geller, whose first contribution was speeding up the pace of the television crime drama.

(tires screeching) Bruce told me, he says, "You know," he says, "over the years I've been watching commercials."

And he said, "A commercial in like 30 seconds tells you a whole story."

The way they do that is, they don't spell everything out.

(woman scat singing) (mellow music) ♪ (man) Sun Country, a new air freshener with the outdoor scent your man will really go for.

(Mike) He said, "I wanna do that with our show."

The average show would have maybe 30 setups a day, he would have 50 setups a day.

So we were able to get more story in in a day's shooting, and it seemed like the show moved.

And that was all Bruce's thinking on that, he was a very innovative guy.

He was a terrific producer.

(mellow music) (narrator) The Mannix character was a break from the unflappable, all-business crime solver of Dragnet or The Untouchables.

♪ Mannix had emotions.

I maybe shed more tears than the average private eye.

(chuckles) (slaps) I hired you to find a murderer, not to dig up a whole lot of dirt.

(somber music) ♪ It goes with the job, Mrs. Kovak.

(Mike) And I think that set Mannix off a great deal from the old-time TV shows.

People say, "You know, this is very real.

There's something very real about this show," and I think that's what made it catch on.

(narrator) But Mannix didn't catch on right away.

After low ratings for the first episodes, the series was set to be cancelled.

(soft music) Once again, it was a Desilu executive who would dictate the future of a major crime drama, but this time it wasn't Desi, it was Lucy.

(Mike) She said, "I would like to give it a little more time."

Well, she happened to be their biggest star, and what Lucy wants Lucy gets.

♪ (narrator) Given a second chance, Mannix went on to become an eight-year success for CBS and producer Bruce Geller.

But it wasn't Geller's biggest hit.

He was simultaneously producing one of the most innovative crime dramas TV had ever seen, and one of the biggest hits ever for Desilu studios.

(bright music) Lucille Ball was the chief executive of Desilu Studios in 1966.

That meant she could pick any script she wanted and CBS would fund the pilot.

But which one?

Lucy couldn't decide.

Her options included an unconventional project from Bruce Geller, a crime drama that played out like a con game.

Lucy said she didn't understand it, but she gave the green light anyway to Mission: Impossible.

(recording) This recording will self-destruct in five seconds.

Good luck, Jim.

(smoke hisses) Lucille Ball, who put the show on at Desilu when we first went on the air, I remember a conversation I had with her.

She said, "I don't understand the show."

And I said, "Well, do you watch it?

I mean, do you go to the ladies room or do you answer the phone?"

She said, "Yeah, why?"

I said, "You can't do that with this show."

And so I said, "Why don't you just watch one through without bouncing around the room?"

And about six months later, she said to me, "I understand it now."

I said, "It's because you probably stay seated."

And she says, "Yeah."

(mellow music) (narrator) Lucille Ball never second-guessed any of Bruce Geller's decisions, except one.

Lucy wanted to approve the actress who would play Cinnamon Carter.

(Barbara) I walked in, she took a look at me, She looked at me head to toe.

"Looks okay to me," she said.

(laughs) That was it.

(laughs) So I looked okay to her and walked out of there with the role.

(Jim) Well, the State Department has been alerted to give you the VIP treatment when you arrive.

This is your invitation to the Foreign Ministry Reception.

(man) All right.

(Jim) Well, that's it then.

The crew of the B-52 made it safely across the border.

We're keeping them under wraps while we bring back the pilot to be captured.

(man) Good luck, Jim.

(suspenseful music) (narrator) Mission: Impossible was different on many levels.

Character development was minimal.

The intricate plots were everything.

(intense music) And there was no humor allowed, not even a smile.

I remember the very first mission I did, as we conquered the villains, I let the slightest smile just crease one side of my face.

The next day, Bruce Geller was down on the set saying, "Don't editorialize."

How's that?

(laughs) Walk away.

Do the deed, walk away.

Hm, okay, that's done.

He was very clear about what he was doing, and that was an incredibly comforting feeling to know that.

♪ That, in essence, we were in good hands.

Wonderfully, it was a con game.

Our job was to convince our opponents to do what we wanted them to when we wanted them to, how we wanted them to, but make 'em think it was their idea.

That's it in a nutshell.

Try writing it.

(chuckles) (mellow music) (narrator) Mission: Impossible even developed its own language called "Gellerese" on the set.

The goal was to make the enemies seem Soviet but to never say that outright.

We had a Russian reporter on the set one time.

He was a Russian.

He was a journalist from Pravda.

And he said, "Why are you using-- always you're not naming but you're using Russian accent?

What is this you're doing?"

"I have a 12-year-old son who's very big fan of your show.

And I let him stay up Sunday nights to watch your show.

But it's very embarrassing."

"Why always have to tell son that bad guys are like me?"

"You are teasing us," or, "You are aggressor," or something.

I said, "I don't know anything about that.

That script said that we were in Ruritania.

Now, the accent might be similar, I don't know.

So, we had fun with those things.

(item clanging) (tense music) (narrator) In the height of the Cold War, many saw Mission: Impossible as an idealized view of American know-how, a fantasy that may have drifted closer to reality than anyone knew at the time.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (Barbara) I'm not sure I'm free to talk about this.

(laughs) I'm really not, but I have been approached by many a person who asked me, let me put this with some intelligence, who asked me how I knew about something.

♪ It changed a bit once the young kids disapproved of the Vietnam War and so forth and thought we were meddling in places where we should not.

And that scared the network.

And they said, "Okay, next, we gotta stop going to foreign countries and doing tricks on them.

We can't do that anymore.

That's not nice."

And so it was decreed that the next season we would only fight organized crime in the United States, and that's what we did.

And when I felt the scripts started to lose some of their power.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (narrator) For an actor, Mission: Impossible may have been TV's best playground, an opportunity to put on a new face, literally, and play a different character every week.

(Martin) Older, younger, different dialects, you know, German.

As so, you know, you play a German and then next week a Russian, a Russian fellow who talks like this.

Or a gangster, you know, hey, Charlie, you know, you never know what the heck you're gonna be singin' and how you're gonna say it, you know what I mean?

So it gave you a kind of field day as an actor.

Mission: Impossible was minimal dialogue, lots of visual explanation of the plot.

And I admired it, and I thought it would be interesting to do all these various characters.

I realized that it was the exact opposite of my Star Trek experience.

Playing Spock had been all about my internal life, and I could live with that and work with it.

And as an actor, it was great material to deal with.

I had none of that on Mission.

It was all superficial.

Once I got the dialect down right and we got the makeup down right, it was done, it was over.

People--in many of the shows that I was in, people didn't even realize I was in the show because I was hidden behind so much makeup, you know?

The fun of it was that I got to play somebody different each week as well as Jim Phelps.

I had the best possible role for a young actress on television.

I got to look great, wear wonderful clothes, and then be thrown in a prison camp and beg for my life.

♪ What do you want?

Let me out of here!

(mellow music) ♪ People were always kind of doing that when they met me.

I said, "Is that really you?"

You know, and-- 'Cause I had a particular way of peeling it.

I didn't do that, I sort of lifted it from the side.

♪ (narrator) Mission: Impossible was just one of a raft of spy-themed crime dramas in the mid 1960s.

Most were just good fun.

(energetic music) The picture changed in 1969 with the premiere of Hawaii Five-0.

♪ Shot on location on the islands, Hawaii Five-0 featured many people of color, Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese, playing both the bad guys... ♪ ...and the good guys.

(Kono) I'll call in.

Tell the boss a guy in a clothing store identified Franklin.

He must be holed up in a block somewhere.

(Chin) Hold it, Kono.

Over there.

Name's Tato.

He's (indistinct) barker.

(Kono) What's he doing here?

(Chin) Well, let's find out.

♪ (narrator) At the center of Hawaii Five-0 was Jack Lord, an experienced actor with a reputation for taking the role of Steve McGarrett very seriously.

I would say, "Look, Jack, we can put a little box here, help you get over-- climbing over this wall."

He says, "I want it to look hard," you know?

And he would say, "McGarrett is scared, this guy is trying to kill him and he doesn't know where he's coming from," you know?

So he had a lot of good stuff, but he also had a stage so the trade winds were blowing into his face, not blowing his hair up from the back.

(lively music) (narrator) Before Hawaii Five-0, Jack Lord had starred in a long list of feature films and TV Westerns, often playing tough, intense characters, foreshadowing the role that would make him famous.

I'm an eyewitness to the whereabouts of a person wrongfully suspected of murder.

Now what difference does it make what country it is?

Look, Lieutenant, she's innocent.

She needs somebody to stand up for her.

♪ Jack Lord was also an accomplished painter, licensed pilot, and experienced sailor, a wordly résumé that brought authenticity to his characterization of Hawaii Five-0's Steve McGarrett.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (gunshot) ♪ Get up the hill, both of you!

Go!

♪ (gunfire) ♪ (soft music) (narrator) Jack Lord's reputation as a workaholic and perfectionist grew even stronger when series creator Leonard Freeman passed away in 1974 and Lord took greater control over day-to-day production.

Lord demanded everyone's best work, right up to the very last episode.

He took it very seriously.

Now, this was the last show.

How many years had that been on?

Boy, you'd think it was the first show.

You would have thought it was the pilot.

He was into it.

♪ You're under arrest for murder.

Book 'em, Danno.

(lively music) (narrator) When the series first premiered, Hawaii had been a U.S. state for only nine years.

Audiences enjoyed getting a glimpse of the exotic locations that very few mainlanders had seen before.

♪ While guest stars were flown in from Hollywood, most of the shows performers were Hawaiians, a first for American television.

(Chin) The assistant dean of women confirmed the vic's identity, Mira Bai.

Chin, get over to the women's dorm and see how many friends of the victim you can find.

(narrator) Despite the many roles for people of color, Hawaii Five-0's progressive casting didn't extend to women.

This was a nearly all-male show.

Breakthroughs for women would have to come from elsewhere.

♪ In Honey West, Anne Francis became the first woman to have the leading role in a TV crime drama.

(mellow music) A few months later came The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., starring Stephanie Powers.

When I look at them, they all look like cartoons today, but they were-- they were kind of fun.

(narrator) A spin-off from the popular Man from U.N.C.L.E.

series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

took a more campy approach closer to the style of Batman.

But NBC didn't like the lighter tone and wanted Stephanie Powers to play it straight.

(Stephanie) NBC kept sending notes down to us to say, "They oughta take this more seriously."

(quirky music) I sent them a photograph of me hanging upside down in a harem costume with my hands tied behind my back while they dripped oil on my feet to torture me, saying, "Speak, speak," you know... (laughs) We're supposed to take that really seriously.

(funky music) (narrator) One way The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

made an impact was on fashion.

Stephanie Powers' mod outfits were the forerunners of a major new trend.

(Stephanie) I was spending a lot of time in England, very well accustomed to the lifestyle in London on Carnaby Street shops.

I brought a lot of clothes back from Carnaby Street, so I wore a lot of those clothes on the show.

My little boots and my little caps and all these silly things, which was very much not on television at the time.

(narrator) Neither The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

or Honey West caught on with audiences.

Both lasted just one season.

It would be seven more years before a woman would again headline a TV crime drama.

This time, audiences were ready.

(soft, tense music) ♪ Police Woman was an immediate hit when it premiered in 1974.

But Angie Dickinson was no newcomer.

She was an established star who had paid her dues, starting back in her hometown in North Dakota.

I lived in the plains of North Dakota, and we were so poor we didn't even have sand.

(laughs) (lively music) (narrator) In her early 20s, Dickinson wasn't sure what to do with her life until she won a contest that led to her first TV appearance.

(Angie) I entered a beauty contest.

Out of that came a job to be on a show.

And what opened my eyes was this environment.

I thought, "This is where I want to be.

At last I know where I want to go in my life.

I want to be in this business."

I mean, I was not stupid.

Anybody else would have done the same thing, seeing Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante rehearsing a song.

It was The Colgate Comedy Hour, which was on every Sunday.

(bright music) (narrator) In Hollywood, Dickinson's career blossomed quickly.

(Mary) Oh, Bill, right when I thought I had my life all planned and ordered.

Why did you have to come along?

♪ (narrator) Her breakthrough role came in Rio Bravo, where she played John Wayne's love interest.

At a time when most young actresses were emulating Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson had a very different persona, as a woman who could be one of the guys.

(Angie) 'Cause I did play poker, I did go to baseball games.

I liked men, and I-- and I do to this day.

People say, "You really like men, don't you?"

And I say, "Yeah, I do."

And some people don't.

I mean, they--they are-- they're not comfortable with men.

(mellow music) (narrator) By the early 1970s, Dickinson was focused on raising her daughter and had no interest in television.

(Angie) No, I didn't want to do that.

I said, "I just can't, I have a family."

And he said, "Don't you want to be a household name?"

♪ And that did it.

I did want to be.

♪ (narrator) Angie Dickinson signed to star in Police Woman, but expectations for the series were not high.

Even Dickinson's husband thought the show would fail.

(Angie) I was married to a composer at the time, Burt Bacharach.

And they asked him if he would do the song.

And he said, "No, I'm working on something else."

Well, he wasn't.

(laughs) He just didn't want to be embarrassed.

♪ Nobody thought it would be a hit.

♪ Any good?

(sighs) At what?

♪ Well... ♪ I enjoy myself.

(narrator) Police Woman played off Dickinson's alluring persona.

The writers put her in sexy situations as often as possible.

(funky rock music) ♪ (Angie) If I was a sex symbol, I was very comfortable with it because it was just what I was.

I didn't have to embellish it or work on it or change my style or anything.

It was just what I was, so I didn't have a problem.

But I was thrilled, to a point.

Then I didn't want to be just a sex symbol.

I wanted to be an actress.

(gunfire) (funky music) ♪ Officer down.

♪ (tires screech, glass shatters) It was a heroine.

I loved being a heroine.

And I loved that she was allowed to be sexy and still a hero.

♪ It's not an easy combination.

(laughs) (gunshot) ♪ We weren't out to break down any barriers.

As a matter of fact, the feminists didn't like that I didn't use my forum to be more feminist and more active, you know, be more of an activist on their behalf.

But I always said, "Well, I'm feminine, and I'm not a feminist."

♪ In '74, you still turned your head when you saw a woman in a uniform, and it--you know, "Oh, there's-- oh, look, there's a lady cop."

It still very much was out of the ordinary in '74.

♪ But I didn't, I still didn't think I was a role model.

I only thought, "I'm not gonna get home till 8:00."

(laughs) (mellow music) (narrator) Dickinson agreed to every storyline the writers came up with, except one, the one scene she would not do.

(Angie) I only refused to do one show, and that was where they had me driving an 18-wheeler.

And I said, "I just won't do it," because she couldn't, she just couldn't.

And if she could, it would be absurd.

I mean, I don't have muscles like that it would take to just steer the damn thing.

(funky music) (narrator) While the Police Woman series was innovative for putting a woman in the lead role, its scripts didn't venture far from the standard plot lines.

(Angie) Did 91 shows.

I used to run into an actor, he said, "Oh, I did one of your shows."

I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't remember.

Which one?"

"The drug bust."

I said, "Oh, no."

(laughs) No, you gotta be a little more clear about it than that.

When you do 22, 23 shows a year, you--you have to repeat.

There are just so many stories.

And that's what happens to a series like that.

It just ran out of good ideas and good steam, and you can just save the woman on the railroad track so often.

(narrator) Like most crime dramas, Police Woman's storylines followed an investigation, with the audience learning facts as the characters did.

(mellow music) But one crime drama turned the formula upside down with great success.

(Columbo) How long has this been going on?

(Dexter) First time in Vegas, huh?

(Columbo) Uh, we were supposed to come down two years ago, but my wife switched sides and voted with my in-laws, we ended up in Animal Land.

It was nothing like this.

(bright music) (narrator) There was no mystery to Columbo.

Audiences knew from the opening scenes who had committed the crime.

The fun was watching criminals underestimate the seemingly disheveled and disorganized Lieutenant Columbo.

He was like a mosquito.

I mean, I thought of him as a fly or an insect that kept coming back and buzzing.

(Columbo) Oh, by the way... (narrator) The Columbo character had much in common with the actor who played him, Peter Falk.

That was the perfect marriage, Falk and Columbo.

It's true, he was Columbo.

He really--he brought himself to that role.

He looked like he was scattered.

He wasn't.

And confused and absent-minded.

He wasn't.

Ever.

It was all a persiflage, and it was the character's persiflage.

So, that was fun watching that.

We had fun on several levels watching Peter Falk play Columbo.

(jazzy music) (narrator) Falk understood that the key to playing Columbo lay in the details.

He brought the trademark trench coat from home.

He picked out Columbo's car personally.

And if a script called for Columbo to react to carrot juice... And I said, "Hey, Peter, enough of this.

Let's hit the orange juice.

It looks like carrot juice."

He said, "No, no, I can't react to that.

I have to react to the real deal."

-And I respect that.

-I'll never forget one episode I saw.

He was coming to work in the morning.

There had been like-- He was coming through a crime scene.

And he's wearing that old dirty raincoat.

The cop is filling him in on what's happened here.

And he reaches into his pocket as they're talking and he pulls out an egg.

And he takes the cop's billy club and cracks the egg on the billy club and then peels it and starts eating the egg in the scene.

I thought, "That's wonderful.

It's so human."

(chuckles) One part that I remember vividly about Columbo was... (mellow music) We were on a golf course and the scene didn't work.

And he said, "Hold it.

♪ Let's step into my trailer."

And we went into his trailer and we sat there.

And I kept looking at my watch.

And we kept fiddling with the scene, and I kept looking at my watch.

And it's like 50 minutes has gone by.

There's 65 guys standing out there.

I said, "Peter, they're waiting on us out there.

I mean, can you really--" He said, "Listen, I told 'em.

♪ If it doesn't work, I'm gonna keep at it until I do make it work."

♪ (narrator) Columbo demonstrated that strong characters are often the key to a successful crime drama.

Viewers like seeing their favorite heroes week after week.

But one crime drama redefined the hero.

In fact, the lead character wasn't really heroic at all, and that's what made him interesting.

(energetic music) Stephen J. Cannell had a problem.

ABC had an extra hour to fill, and Cannell had to come up with a new one-episode crime drama fast.

The genesis of The Rockford Files was probably the strangest creation of a television series that I was ever involved with, and I've done 43 of 'em.

(narrator) Cannell's boss, Roy Huggins, realized the first step was to come up with a catchy name.

(Stephen) We get back to his office, he gets behind his desk, he takes out the universal phone directory, and he starts to read the names in the directory.

I'm thinking, "What's this guy doing?

We're in major trouble here.

He's reading the phone directory."

He says, "Tom Rockford.

Do you like that name?"

It was a guy in the Grip and Electric Department at Universal.

I said, "Yeah, why?

Yeah, it's fine."

He says, "Well, this thing is called The Rockford Files."

(mellow music) (narrator) Given free reign by Huggins, Cannell decided to have some fun.

He'd create a crime solver with all the flaws of a normal person, an anti-hero who avoided conflict, lived in a trailer, and worried about paying his bills.

(Stephen) So we go to ABC, we send the script over.

They absolutely hated it.

They said, "You can't have a hero that quits every time he's threatened.

You can't have a hero who runs credit checks on the client.

You can't have a--" You know, his own father thinks he's a jerk for being a private eye.

You know, "Take all that out and we'll shoot it."

(funky music) (narrator) The Rockford Files might have died right there, except that Cannell had the support of producer Roy Huggins and the lead actor, who loved Cannell's script.

James Garner.

Hey, he's a writer, I'm not.

There's a lot of actors that could learn that lesson, I think.

But I don't--I just said what was printed, you know?

And that was much cleverer than anything I could come up with.

And when you change a word here, you might change something in the next two or three scenes.

♪ And when you do that, you're messing with it.

That's not good.

(Travis) Private cop, huh?

♪ (Tom) Look, you aren't gonna shoot anybody and we both know it, so why don't you just put that thing away before you have an accident.

-Who are you working for?

-Well, that's confidential.

(gun clicks) Larry Kirkoff.

It's the writing.

Without the writing you're going nowhere.

(Tom) Well, look, Travis.

(grunts) ♪ You know, I fell for that trick once myself.

Works pretty good, doesn't it?

(narrator) The Rockford Files would get produced exactly as written.

Cannell and Garner would form a lifelong friendship despite an awkward first meeting.

Now, here I am at age 29, and I'm actually writing for him.

And I remember the first day that we were doing the pilot, I went down, I didn't know what to say to him, I was starstruck.

And I'm standing next to him and I'm going, "You know, Jim, I just gotta tell ya that if I was really good and did my homework, you know, I could stay up and watch Maverick."

And he looked at me and said, "There's a lot of things you could have said to me that would have beat that."

(laughs) (funky music) (narrator) The Rockford Files was an instant hit.

Viewers loved this new take on the crime drama, and they loved James Garner.

(Rita) I loved doing work with him.

Everything you see is pretty much what he is.

Jim did his very first screen test at 20th Century Fox when I was a contract player there with me.

They were still doing things like screen testing good-looking kids, you know, to put them under contract and groom them.

He was one of these good-looking kids.

And he was a hunk.

He was really gorgeous.

I think it's my attitude, 'cause I don't want people laughing at me.

I want them to laugh with me.

I want them to know I know it's humorous.

(energetic music) (narrator) Given his talent as an actor, one of James Garner's other skills is often overlooked.

He was one of the best stunt drivers in Hollywood and personally oversaw the selection of Rockford's car, a Pontiac Firebird Esprit.

Well, it's a car that you could just do tricks with, you know?

It's the right size, right length, right wheelbase.

(engine starts) You know, the right engine power.

You just do things with it.

It was fun.

(tires screech) (intense music) (narrator) Garner's stunt driving skills were so widely respected, one particular maneuver was named in his honor, a trick that stunt drivers now call a "Rockford."

♪ The car chases looked so good, Cannell worried Garner might get hurt, and so stunt drivers were hired to replace him.

But the new drivers were tame compared to Garner, and so Stephen J. Cannell had to reverse his decision.

(Stephen) I was forced to swallow my pride and go down to the set and say, "You know, Jim, I think maybe you should drive this car."

(chuckles) He was that much better, 'cause, you know, he's one of the best-- one of the best stunt drivers probably in this business.

And here he was as the star of my show, so I could tie my principal into all those shots.

(soft music) (narrator) Unlike modern ensemble shows, The Rockford Files had just one lead character, and that meant James Garner was in nearly every shot of every episode, a grueling schedule that eventually took its toll.

♪ By the sixth year, flareups of Garner's old knee and back injuries forced an end to the series.

♪ The stars of TV's early years were now leaving the stage, but they would be imitated over and over in the coming decades.

Most new crime dramas would follow the templates of TV's first pioneers, imitating the tight procedurals of Jack Webb, the shocking violence of The Untouchables, or the likeable characters of Columbo and Rockford.

♪ (intense music) ♪ The crime drama is a well-refined art form that's grown stronger over time.

The heroes have changed and their methods have evolved, but viewers still enjoy watching their favorite good guys solving crimes and catching the bad guys.

♪ Given its storied past, the television crime drama has a promising future.

I'm one of the multitudes that love crime dramas.

It really was another life that you lived that was fabulous, you know?

I think it's like a kid in a sandbox getting to do all those things that you would love to do.

(gunfire) I sit down and I try really hard to do something that I'll be proud of that I'll want to go home and watch myself.

And I don't think about hopeful-- back then, we were trying to get 30, 40 million people to watch the show.

How could I know what 30 million people want?

I didn't, but I could know what Steve Cannell wants.

(soft music) (Stephanie) It was just delicious, adorable.

We had so much fun.

So when you arrive in Vatzia, you will be Charles Langley, his wife Janet.

(Cinnamon) Janet Langley, MD.

It was just an extraordinary time.

Everything about it.

I was a woman in a man's world.

It was a man's world until the '70s and '80s.

It was a real feeling of something important going on.

I want 'em to remember me and smile.

That's all.

(sentimental music) (mysterious music) (narrator) Today, crime dramas are more popular than ever.

But even the most successful series of recent years can trace its roots to the crime dramas of an earlier time.

♪ Shows made popular by the Pioneers of Television.

(dramatic music) ♪ (energetic music) ♪ (intense music) ♪ (soft music) ♪ (mysterious music) ♪ (bright music)