The NBC Mystery Movie
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The NBC Mystery Movie aired from 1971 until 1977 (on NBC
naturally!) and consisted of several recurring programs. Its use
of a rotation of different shows under an umbrella title was an
NBC innovation during this era, and followed on the heels of the
network's 1968 umbrella series, The Name of the Game (which
ran each of its different segments under the same title).
In 1969 NBC launched The Bold Ones (which included The
New Doctors, The Lawyers, The Protectors, and,
in 1970, The Senator), and in 1970 the network presented
the Four in One collection of Night Gallery, San
Francisco International Airport, The Psychiatrist, and McCloud.
But the idea behind Mystery Movie and similar
"wheel format" series had much deeper roots than these
NBC versions, and can be traced back at least to ABC's Warner
Brothers Presents, which debuted in 1955.
The original incarnation of The NBC Mystery Movie
consisted of three rotating series:-
McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver as a modern-day western
Marshal who was transplanted from New Mexico to the streets of New
York, was a holdover from NBC's earlier Four in One line-up;
McMillan and Wife starred Rock Hudson and Susan St.
James as San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan and
his wife, Sally.
And the most successful Mystery Movie segment of all; Columbo,
featured Peter Falk reprising his role from the highly rated 1968
NBC made-for-television movie, Prescription: Murder, as a
seemingly slow-witted yet keenly perceptive and doggedly tenacious
LAPD homicide Lieutenant.
The new Wednesday night series was an immediate success for NBC
(and Columbo was nominated for eight Emmy Awards, winning
in four categories).
For the next season, NBC attempted to capitalise on the Mystery
Movie's success in two ways. First, it moved the original Mystery
Movie line-up of Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan
and Wife to the highly competitive Sunday night schedule and,
as a fourth instalment to this rotation, added Hec Ramsey,
starring Richard Boone as a Western crime fighter.
NBC also initiated a completely new slate of similar shows, and
moved these into the Wednesday time period formerly occupied by
the original Mystery Movie line-up. Thus, NBC's 1972 fall
schedule contained the original Mystery Movie shows, now
called The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, plus a completely new
set of programs, titled The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.
NBC continued to achieve commercial and critical success with
its Sunday Mystery Movie series. The umbrella program
finished tied as the fifth highest-rated series of the 1972-73
season, and Columbo garnered four more Emmy nominations to
go along with acting nominations for McMillan and Wife's
Susan St. James and Nancy Walker.
But the Wednesday Mystery Movie line-up never was able
to realise a similar degree of success. The new Wednesday series
included:-
Banacek, starring George Peppard as a sleuth who made
his living by collecting insurance company rewards for solving
crimes and insurance scams (Banacek's Polish-American heritage was
also a featured element of the program);
Cool Million, a segment that featured James Farentino as
a high-priced private investigator and former CIA agent, and;
Madigan, starring Richard Widmark as a New York police
detective.
While the shows' concepts may have sounded similar to those of
the original Mystery Movie segments, they lacked the
novelty and unique characterisations of the originals, and NBC's
attempt to clone its Mystery Movie format in such a way
that it could fill a second block in its prime time schedule was
ultimately unsuccessful.
The "knock-off" Wednesday line-up was retooled
several times over its two seasons on the air. Madigan and Banacek
were retained for the 1973 fall season, and were joined in the
rotation by Tenafly, which featured James McEachin as an
African-American P.I in Los Angeles (the series title was
suspiciously similar to the 1972 blaxploitation hit film, Superfly),
The Snoop Sisters, which brought Helen Hayes to prime time
television as half of a mystery writing/crime solving team of
elderly sisters, and Faraday and Company, starring veteran
film and television actor Dan Dailey.
But after seeing no better results in its second year, the NBC
Wednesday Mystery Movie was dropped for the 1974 fall season.
NBC was not the only network unable to successfully clone the Mystery
Movie formula. Both ABC, with its 1972 The Men series,
and CBS, with its 1973 Tuesday Night CBS Movie (which
rotated made-for-TV movies with the series Shaft, featuring
Richard Roundtree reprising the title role from the film of the
same name, and Hawkins, starring the legendary Jimmy
Stewart as a small town attorney, failed in similar short-lived
attempts.
But while its imitators struggled, the three original Mystery
Movie entries remained strong into the mid-1970s. Over these
years, NBC continued to try to find a fourth element that could be
added to the Columbo/McCloud/McMillan and
Wife mix, trying out such shows as Amy Prentiss, McCoy,
and Lanigan's Rabbi.
Finally, in the fall of 1976, Quincy, M.E., starring
Jack Klugman as a Los Angeles medical examiner, joined the
rotation. In early 1977, it was spun off as a regular weekly
series, and would go on to have a successful seven-year run on the
network.
By the end of the 1976-77 season, The Sunday Mystery Movie
had reached the end of its run, and was replaced on the NBC
schedule by The Big Event.
But The NBC Mystery Movie had left a legacy that would
not soon be forgotten, and the series served as an inspiration for
a future television trend: the made-for-television movie,
featuring regular characters and routine plotlines, which would
appear only a limited number of times each season.
Ironically, one of the most popular of such recurring programs
would be Mystery Movie 's own Columbo, which was
revived in the late 1980s by ABC and would go on to once again
garner high ratings and still more Emmy Awards for its new
network.
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