The FBI
1 9 6 5 - 1 9 7 4 (USA)
236 x 60 minute episodes
 No other TV show had portrayed the cool, professional operation
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation quite so thoroughly as this
long-running ABC series starring Efrem Zimbalist Jnr. as Inspector
Lewis Erskine of the FBI. Zimbalist personified the calm,
business-suited government agent who always tracked his criminals
down, scientifically and methodically and with virtually no
emotion at all.
For the first two seasons, Agent Jim Rhodes was Erskine's
associate and boyfriend to his daughter, Barbara. Agent Tom Colby
was Erskine's sidekick for Season's 3-8 (1967-73). He was replaced
by Agent Chris Daniels.
All the principals answered to Agent Arthur Ward, the assistant
to the FBI director and the man to whom Inspector Erskine
reported. Erskine was a man of little humour and a near obsessive
devotion to his duties and was haunted by the memory of his wife,
who had been killed in a job-related shoot-out.
Barbara Erskine, his daughter, appeared only during the first
season, later being written out. Erskine discouraged his daughter
from becoming involved with an FBI agent, hoping to spare her the
same pain.
But his capacity for compassion ended there. Neither he nor his
partners allowed themselves to become emotionally involved in
their work which focused on a range of crimes, from bank robbery
to kidnapping to the occasional Communist threat to overthrow the
government. The cases were based on real FBI files and ranged
across the United States and involved counterfeiters,
extortionists, organized crime, Communist spies, and radical
bombings. The program always portrayed the agency in a favourable
light.
 The FBI won the commendation of real-life FBI Director,
J. Edgar Hoover, who gave the show full government cooperation and
even allowed filming of some background scenes at the FBI
Headquarters in Washington.
Many telecasts closed with a short
segment asking the audience for information on the FBI's
most-wanted men (including, in April of 1968, the fugitive James
Earl Ray).
The FBI was the longest running series from the prolific
offices of Quinn Martin Productions, the production company guided
by the powerful television producer of the same name. Martin
professed that he did not want to do the show, primarily because
he saw himself and the Bureau in two different political and
philosophical camps.
But through a series of meetings with J. Edgar Hoover and other
Bureau representatives, and at the urging of ABC and sponsor Ford
Motor Company, Martin proceeded with the show.
Shortly after the series left the air, Martin produced two
made-for-television films, The FBI Versus Alvin Karpis
(1974), and The FBI Versus the Ku Klux Klan (1975).
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