Barney Miller
 The downbeat 12th precinct squad room in Greenwich Village, New
York City, was the setting for this eccentric series.
Prostitutes,
crooks, lunatics and other forms of street life passing through
the station house often stole the show from a fine ensemble cast,
led by Hal Linden as Captain Barney Miller.
Abe Vigoda was arguably the real star of the show for many
episodes, but when Fish retired and went home to Bernice after 35
years of being a cop, other characters took the fore.
Notably the womanising
but kind and well-intentioned Stan 'Wojo' Wojciehowicz,
Nick Yemana (Oriental and a sucker for a bet), verbose Puerto
Rican Chano Ameguale, and Sergeant Ron Harris (and the ongoing
saga of his veritas novel, Blood On The Badge)
Remarkably, considering the popularity and critical acclaim it
would soon attract, Barney Miller very nearly failed to get off
the ground. Danny Arnold - the driving force behind the show -
took years to persuade ABC to put it on screen.
The one-off pilot edition The Life And Times Of Barney
Miller,
was declared a flop, and it was only thanks to the intervention of
top director John Rich that the series was revived.
Rich had
steered All In The Family to great heights and ABC were desperate
to sign him to a contract for other work. Even though it was not
his project, Rich virtually insisted that ABC develop the Barney
Miller pilot into a full series if they wanted him to sign a deal.
 Most of the episodes were self-contained
(and took place on a single set) but strands of
continuing storylines ran through the series.
Barney Miller episodes were frequently made great by the
guest cast who acted the human flotsam and jetsam that passed
through the station house: mad bombers, purse snatchers,
prostitutes, teenage burglars, even a werewolf.
The humour was
sardonic and intelligent and ran to such subjects as mental
illness, arson and teenage pregnancy.
Abe Vigoda - who played the detective with the bowel complaint,
Phil Fish - was given his own series, Fish in 1977. There was also
an attempt to float Wojo into his own series but this stalled
after the broadcast of a special one hour episode of Barney Miller
devoted to him.
Barney Miller was a major hit with police forces across the US
who felt it more accurately depicted their day-to-day work than,
say, Starsky and Hutch.
The cast members were even made honorary
members of the NYPD, but after eight years the show finally folded
because the writers had simply run out of topics and they wanted
to bow out with standards intact.
The final storyline - called Landmark - ran over three episodes and had the
Greenwich Village station house declared a historic monument
(former campaign HQ of Teddy Roosevelt) and the squad were
disbanded.
The jail cell door and the duty roster board from the set were
presented to the Smithsonian Institution.
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