The show is a sequel to the 1967 film, whose events are said to have occurred "a few years ago" despite the show being set in the 1980s–1990s contemporary to its broadcast.
In the pilot episode, Philadelphia homicide detective and criminal profiler Virgil Tibbs (Rollins) has returned to his hometown of Sparta, Mississippi for his mother's funeral. He is persuaded by Mayor James Findlay to remain in Sparta as Chief of Detectives under Bill Gillespie (O'Connor), the police chief with whom he fostered a relationship during a previous murder investigation in which he assisted. Mayor Findlay himself has an ulterior motive for hiring Tibbs: he wants to have some kind of record on civil rights to run for Congress and hiring Tibbs to integrate the all-white Sparta police department would not only help to overcome the local squad's reputation of being racist and underskilled, but also benefits him. In the midst of all of this, a young girl is found murdered and it's up to Gillespie and Tibbs to solve the crime.
Although the team suffers friction over Tibbs' dissatisfaction with the department's limited resources and racial attitudes and Gillespie is annoyed at the detective's condescending remarks about his hometown, the two men prove highly effective in enforcing the law.
At the beginning of the seventh season, Tibbs takes a leave of absence, moving to Jackson, Mississippi to complete his law degree on a compressed schedule. When he returns to Sparta, he and his wife, Althea (Anne Marie Johnson), have separated and they later divorce. She moves back to Philadelphia with their twins to be near her parents. Through the hard work of Sparta Councilwoman Harriet DeLong (Denise Nicholas), Tibbs is able to retire, although two months shy of the qualifying period, and keep his city pension. He begins practicing law upon accepting a position in Ben Taylor's law office. Rollins' final appearance on the series was February 2, 1994.
Meanwhile, the Sparta city council dismisses Gillespie as chief of police, selecting Hampton Forbes (Carl Weathers) as his replacement and making him the town's first African American to serve in that position. Gillespie finds a new post of equivalent authority as county sheriff. The two senior police officials find that they get along excellently, in both professional and personal spheres.
The first season was filmed in Hammond, Louisiana. Hammond was selected by James Lee Barrett, who wrote the pilot and was also the executive consultant for the show, to represent the small southern town of Sparta, Mississippi. The producers had difficulty finding usable filming locations, because other, more modern structures were close enough to be picked up in the images.[1] Eight episodes were filmed—the two-hour pilot movie and six regular one-hour episodes. The series premiered on March 6, 1988, with the season finale airing on May 3.
Many conflicts arose between Juanita Bartlett and Carroll O'Connor over the writing of the series. At first, Bartlett allowed O'Connor to consult on the series per his contract. After the pilot, however, she ordered scripts from her writers. O'Connor described these as "recycled material from other crime shows". He was disappointed in the scripts, feeling that the writers were taking big-city stories and imposing them on a small town. He believed that the key to this show's success was to express its small-town locale and characters through the stories.[2] Scripts would be given to him marked "FINAL: NO REWRITES", but O'Connor often rewrote scripts anyway, angering the production staff members, who felt they were burning up fax machines with the changes.[2] O'Connor described Bartlett as a very arrogant person.[1] If the show was going to be renewed, then O'Connor was not interested and threatened to quit the show unless the writing improved and Bartlett was replaced as executive producer.[citation needed] The early episodes were gritty, raw and considered groundbreaking for that time[citation needed]. There was an emphasis on grisly murders or other crimes, rather than the lives of the New South-era characters, for which the series later became known.
Second season, 1988–1989
Season two premiered on December 4, 1988 due to the Writers Guild of America strike; the season introduced a new look and set of executive producers, Jeri Taylor and her husband David Moessinger, with on-location shooting moved from Hammond, Louisiana to Covington, Georgia, which remained as the primary filming location of the show for the duration of the series.
The season premiere was aired as a two-hour TV movie originally entitled "The Voodoo Murders", now known in syndication as "Don't Look Back". The plot revolved around a copycat murder of one that Gillespie had investigated 20 years earlier.[3] Also, the Sparta city council was pushing Virgil Tibbs to run as a possible candidate for Chief of Police to replace Gillespie, but Virgil wasn't interested in doing so; regardless, a rumor surfaces that Tibbs is after Gillespie's job, causing dissension between the two men. Virgil's wife, Althea, who was a stay-at-home wife in the first season, is offered a position as a teacher and guidance counselor at local Sparta High School by city Councilman Ted Marcus (Thom Gossom Jr.).
Gone was Christian LeBlanc, who portrayed Officer Junior Abernathy and added were two new regular characters—Joanne St. John (Lois Nettleton), the chief's sometime girlfriend and owner of the local diner, The Magnolia Cafe; and a cocky, young rookie officer, Willson Sweet (Geoffrey Thorne), fresh out of the police academy and the second black officer hired to serve on Sparta's police force. The season also introduced the first of several new recurring characters, including general practitioner / county coroner Dr. Frank Robb (Dan Biggers). "The Creek" saw the introduction of the second prominent Georgia performer to claim a regular role on the series, Officer Randy Goode (1988-1993) played by Randall Franks, who was cast following the show's move to Covington. "Gunshot", where Virgil experiences guilt and mental trauma after he shoots and kills a female robbery suspect, introduces a character with a criminal past who later becomes invaluable as an informant to Gillespie and the Sparta P.D., Jimmy Dawes (Afemo Omilami).
Plots in this season included Gillespie's girlfriend Joanne having a mysterious connection to an escaped pimp and murderer; a minister promoting the integration of his church congregation suddenly ends up dead; Bubba accused of rape; and Gillespie witnessing the execution of a remorseful man whom he arrested years ago (Paul Benjamin), a compelling episode that O'Connor wrote himself under the pseudonym Matt Harris ("A Trip Upstate").
During the filming of the episode "Walkout", O'Connor began to experience fatigue. It was later discovered that he needed sextuple heart bypass surgery, due to years of heavy smoking. During the last four episodes of the season, Joe Don Baker was brought in as retired police captain Tom Dugan, a replacement for Chief Gillespie, who was said to be away at a police training conference at Quantico. The episodes where Gillespie was away were "Fifteen Forever", "Ladybug, Ladybug", "The Pig Woman of Sparta" and "Missing" (Gillespie appears briefly in the episode to announce his return). Dugan was appointed acting chief by Councilwoman White, but he was actually working undercover for the FBI in an attempt to stop the assassination of a civil rights preacher during a visit to the town by a white supremacist group (that is not revealed until the season three episode "Anniversary").
The season finale "Missing" has the chief being kidnapped upon his return to Sparta by men in masks, and the police and the FBI are trying to locate him and those responsible. O'Connor wanted the chief to undergo heart surgery in the storyline, but Taylor and Moessinger came up with this storyline instead.
It was the final straw in a long line of complaints against Taylor and Moessinger, who were fired at the end of the season, with O'Connor becoming sole executive producer the rest of the series.[1] When Taylor and Moessinger decided to do the show, Taylor was quoted, "I was one of those in the '60s that was out marching for civil rights" and "I was one of those who thought the major work had all been done. When we decided to do the show, we took research trips to the South and we saw that there had been an enormous amount of change. We came back with a renewed vigor but also with the realization that there is still a lot more to be done. There is still deeply entrenched racism. And addressing that became a much larger element in our thinking about the show." Moessinger was quoted, "What makes race relations a constant in our show is the two lead characters-- one is white and one is black. Whether they are angry at each other, whether they're happy or sad, we're showing the interaction of two men who are trying to do the best in life. If we never put one race issue into it, if we never said one word about it, the message is there because it's showing how people ought to interrelate, how they ought to work together, how they ought to get along."[4]
Third season, 1989–1990
In the third season, O'Connor took complete control of the show after firing Taylor and Moessinger. From that point on, he brought aboard writers and showrunners who shared his vision of where he wanted the series to go. Althea deals with the effects and aftermath of rape in the explosive season premiere. Upon returning home from the grocery store one afternoon after school, Althea is ambushed and sexually assaulted in her kitchen by Sparta High School's new music teacher, Stephen Ainslee (Ken Marshall), who Althea had a strained relationship with from the beginning because he couldn't handle her authority and it culminated in the attack. The episode shows the Tibbs' and the Sparta police's frustrating attempts to bring the teacher to justice, with Althea having extreme difficulty coping afterwards.
The second part of the season two finale, "Missing", is resumed in the third season's sixth episode, "Anniversary"— a decision made by O'Connor that displeased NBC because the episodes were not shown in chronological order. The season two cliffhanger depicted Gillespie being kidnapped and Dugan murdered; with the displacement of the episodes, it was as if none of that ever happened. O'Connor selected the "Rape" episode to kick off season three instead because he thought it was more powerful and would attract higher ratings.
The crack epidemic takes hold amongst the youth of Sparta in "Crackdown", but Gillespie is in denial about how serious it really is, dismissing it as a big city problem. In this episode, Sweet risks his career to try to save the life of a 13-year-old addict, against Gillespie's wishes. A young Vietnamese refugee comes to town during the Christmas holidays, claiming to be the son of a Sparta resident who was killed during the war.
The character of Joanne St. John was eliminated to make room for Sparta city Councilwoman Harriet DeLong as Chief Gillespie's future love interest, first as a recurring character, then later as a main cast member in Season 6. An attractive African–American divorcée, Harriet was a college graduate, outspoken and brimming with attitude, which was a turn-off to Gillespie and the two of them did not get along.
In "First Girl", Gillespie hires Christine Rankin, Sparta's first black policewoman, who is later killed her first day on duty in a shootout with a drug dealer and murder suspect, causing Gillespie despair and guilt. As a result, he is temporarily suspended from his duties as chief of police pending an investigation. Feeling responsible for what happened, he becomes intent on seeking out Rankin's killer. Her replacement was Officer LuAnn Corbin (Crystal R. Fox), who would remain a prominent character throughout the rest of the series, although Fox was listed in the ending credits as a guest star until season seven where she finally appeared in the opening credits. Hiring LuAnn opens the door for more policewomen to join the force; Officer Dee Shepard (Dee Shaw) is hired later in the season.
In the two-part season finale, "Citizen Trundel" (written by O'Connor, Cynthia Deming and William J. Royce), Harriet DeLong's younger sister, Natalie, is murdered by order of her secret lover and the married father of her nine-year-old son, millionaire businessman V.J. "Vidge" Trundel. The situation causes Harriet anguish, rage and frustration, not only because of Natalie's murder but because Chief Gillespie is reluctant to pursue the powerful Trundel as a suspect, which infuriates Harriet. She is determined to have the millionaire brought to justice by any means necessary. (The near-epilogue to the Trundel storyline picks up in Season 5's "Trundel's Will Be Done".) These are the first episodes in which we see Bill and Harriet begin to form a connection beyond them always being in disagreement. During this period, he is able to see beyond her hardened exterior and finds a vulnerable and sensitive woman beneath it; she discovers his compassionate side. From this point on, a camaraderie is formed between the two. Their slow burning relationship eventually becomes the focus of the series in the later seasons.
This story arc was of special significance to Nicholas, as her real-life sister had been murdered ten years earlier and the culprit had never been caught. When O'Connor approached Nicholas about the storyline, it had upset her greatly and she had to write him a note explaining the situation, as he was unaware of the circumstances. He offered to have her not appear in the episode, but she chose to do so to bring closure for her and her family. She was able to channel her unresolved grief into the role. Only O'Connor and director Leo Penn knew the truth during filming.[5]
Rollins' substance abuse problems
During the back half of season three, Howard Rollins took six weeks off when he entered a drug and alcohol rehab program to battle his addiction issues.[6] He missed five episodes: "King's Ransom", "Triangle", "Hello In There", "December Days" and "An Angry Woman". MGM worked around his rehab schedule. Episodes were not necessarily aired in the order they were filmed, which explains why Tibbs was present one week and not the next. In an attempt to explain Rollins' absence, Tibbs was said to be in New Orleans working for the FBI. Rollins considered suicide shortly before Christmas 1989, prompting his stay in rehab.[6] O'Connor threatened to sue a tabloid which published a story saying that MGM and O'Connor had fired Rollins for being absent from the set due to his problems, which was untrue. Being very close to Rollins, O'Connor felt personally offended.[6] Nicholas said "Carroll set the standard for loyalty. If he liked you, he really liked you and would be there for you."[7]
Fourth season, 1990–1991
Cynthia Deming and William J. Royce were promoted to main story editors. The season opens with a two-part episode entitled "Brotherly Love" and the birth of Virgil and Althea's twins, William and Sarah. Althea had revealed her pregnancy at the end of the third season.
While Althea is waiting to go into labor, Tibbs' friend and ex-colleague from the Philadelphia P.D. is found dead and it's at first labeled as a suicide. Tibbs heads up to the big city to attend his funeral, only to learn his friend's death was not by his own hand, but murder. Tibbs soon recognizes there is corruption going on within the police department and his friend was framed for the murder of a drug dealer. In the process of trying to clear his friend's name, he first becomes a target, then framed for murder himself. Chief Gillespie travels to Philly to get Virgil out of jail, help him solve the mystery of what happened to his friend and seek justice for him, expose the corrupt officers and make it back home to Sparta in time for the twins' birth. William and Sarah Tibbs were welcomed into the world on September 18, 1990.
Other stories include a teacher wrongfully accused of the molestation of a student, which ends with tragic consequences. Parker falls for a blind woman who is the only witness to the disappearance and eventual murder of her next door neighbor. Virgil's younger cousin is the prime suspect in a rash of burglaries that go terribly wrong, and jeopardizes Virgil's attempts to reunite his extended family. Gillespie and Harriet's growing friendship hits an awkward patch once her ex-husband Vic is arrested for his participation in a robbery with two other men that resulted in murder, and Harriet's teenage son Eugene vehemently disapproves of the police chief's propinquity to his mother. (This storyline continues towards the end of the season when after a trial, Vic is found guilty of first degree murder and receives a death penalty sentence.) Bubba going to Los Angeles to extradite a Sparta resident responsible for a fire that killed two people was actually the first of two backdoor pilots for a series that featured Alan Autry, but neither were picked up by the network.
Fifth season, 1991–1992
The fifth season begins with the revelation that Chief Gillespie has a 19-year-old daughter, Lana Farren (Christine Elise, formerly of Beverly Hills, 90210), who is unaware of who her biological father is. The chief is now good friends with her mother, Georgia (Stella Stevens), who is in town to settle some personal business. Lana was conceived during a period where her mother was separated from her husband and she and Gillespie had an affair. However, she was never divorced from her husband Ken, who has harbored a grudge ever since and is looking for the opportunity to settle a score.
In the episode "The More Things Change", Gillespie and DeLong share their first kiss after he drives her home after attending a party and he finally reveals his affections for her. They both lament the very likely possibility that a relationship between the two of them would not be accepted by most in Sparta.
Other storylines include D.A. Darnelle's daughter being kidnapped; Virgil's Aunt Ruda is the only witness who can clear Bubba's name in a police shooting; Sweet's quest to discover the truth about the murder of his grandfather in 1948 and those responsible for it (a story loosely based on the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, "Sweet, Sweet Blues"[8]) and racists sabotaging a celebration honoring a Sparta civil rights pioneer in "Odessa", the first of six episodes written by Denise Nicholas, who, despite enjoying her role as Harriet, was bothered by the show's lack of black writers and complained about it to O'Connor, who admitted that she was right. He asked Nicholas to write a script, which she did. When she submitted it, O'Connor liked it so much that he encouraged her to write others for the series.[9]
In the two-part season finale "Sanctuary" and "The Law on Trial", Sheriff McComb has Gillespie, Tibbs and a priest, Father Antonio DeMarco (Cesare Danova), charged with obstruction of justice and harboring a fugitive after an escaped prisoner—a Salvadoran immigrant seeking asylum—is given sanctuary in a monastery and Gillespie and Tibbs don't arrest him when he refuses to give himself up. McComb also threatens to have them both fired from the force. The Father is also charged with helping the prisoner escape. The prisoner is later shot and killed in a tense standoff with the sheriff's department. Towards the trial's end, Father DeMarco's heartfelt summation to the jury contributes to the case being dismissed (though that is not revealed until the start of Season 6).
Between court appearances, Harriet pays Gillespie an inconspicuous visit and the two share a tender and romantic moment. The conflict between Sheriff McComb and Chief Gillespie lingers throughout the following season, affecting every crossover dealing with subsequent interactions between McComb's deputies and Gillespie's officers. It isn't until the arrival of new Chief Hampton Forbes (Carl Weathers) in Season 7 that we see McComb and Gillespie as friends again. The episode and the season end with Gillespie and Tibbs awaiting the verdict in their respective residences on the evening the case is given to the jury. At the end of the original and final broadcast on NBC, it was revealed that the jury couldn't reach a verdict, a mistrial is declared and the two men are freed. Bill and Harriet spend the night together for the first time.
Sixth season, 1992–1993
At the beginning of Season 6, In the Heat of the Night moved from NBC to CBS.[10] It was not publicly known at the time when Season 5 ended whether or not the show would continue. Even though the show still had respectable ratings, it was considered to be "on the bubble" — a phrase that describes something that is uncertain or at risk of being eliminated. NBC had not confirmed renewal of the series, while other programs on the network had already been given the green light to return. Fearing being dropped without a chance to give the series a proper finale, Heat producers began to negotiate elsewhere. NBC ultimately decided to cancel the show, but only after rumors that a deal with a competitive network was imminent turned out to be true. Originally, CBS opted to pick up the series for only a set of six two-hour movies. However, it was eventually picked up for a full 22-episode order.
The first two episodes of the season see the surreptitious romance between Gillespie and DeLong intensify. They frequently meet in a small apartment that doubles as Harriet's art studio. However, they fall out when Harriet's son, Eugene, witnesses a drive-by shooting involving rival drug gangs, which took the life of his friend but he is unwilling to cooperate with the authorities. Other highlights from the season include a faded country music singer (Robert Goulet) who ends up committing murder; Althea has a nervous breakdown after witnessing a student's brutal suicide; the reconciliation between Gillespie and his estranged daughter Lana; a law school friend of Virgil's (Jason Beghe) is suspected of being involved in the death of an ex-girlfriend, and a two-part episode directed by Larry Hagman involves a white supremacist politician whose visit to Sparta has a couple of ulterior motives, including aspirations for a presidential run ("The Leftover Man").
Burgess Meredith (in one of his last acting roles) also appears as an eccentric judge overseeing a case (he would return for a brief cameo in Season 7). The season ends with Gillespie and Harriet planning a possible future together, but are forced to confront the impending execution of Harriet's imprisoned ex-husband Vic and Eugene's dissatisfaction over their relationship.
Howard Rollins' firing
Rollins was ultimately dropped from the show for health reasons plus three outstanding warrants in Rockdale County and the city of Covington.[11] He was replaced in Season 7 by Weathers. Filming began on April 28, 1993. Rollins had not been seen on the set since January 1993, when Season 6 wrapped. Despite numerous attempts by the media to contact Rollins, who was believed to be living in New York City, only O'Connor was in contact with Rollins during this period with the hope that Rollins would get his legal and personal issues resolved and return to the series in time, but unfortunately, that was not the case.
After Season 6, Anne-Marie Johnson, Geoffrey Thorne and Rollins exited the series. Rollins would return occasionally as a special guest star, while Johnson took a starring role on the final season of Fox's sketch comedy series In Living Color and Thorne left to pursue a career as a novelist and screenwriter; the character of Sweet simply vanished from the series without any explanation.
Seventh season, 1993–1994
Season 7 opens with Bill Gillespie being forced out of office and former Memphis, Tennessee Police Department Inspector Hampton Forbes (Carl Weathers) is hired as the new police chief by the city council. After nearly three decades on the Sparta police force, Gillespie does not receive a new contract from the council because his affair with Harriet is now out in the open, although other excuses are made for his dismissal. He seems to be accepting of the outcome, while Harriet doesn't hesitate to show her fury over the decision.
The transition from Gillespie being in charge to Forbes taking over is slightly uneasy at the very start, but soon things smooth out. Gillespie's final case as Sparta's chief of police is a fatal shooting of a neighbor by a nine year old boy and it must be decided what is to be done with him.
However, Gillespie is soon appointed as the interim Sheriff of Newton County when Nathan McComb suffers a heart attack and is too ill to continue his duties. Gillespie's function was solely to finish out McComb's term. This new appointment for Gillespie angers some on the city council. They want an investigation, which is upsetting and hurtful for Harriet.
Other cases involve a nine-year-old girl being killed because of a drunk driver; the return of Parker's oddball stepfather, Roy Eversole (Pat Hingle, first seen in Season 6) and his lady friend Miss Roda (Anne Meara); Forbes mentors a young boxing protégé who can't seem to stay out of trouble; Gillespie must once again confront his bigoted background when a new synagogue moves into Sparta and is repeatedly vandalized. The rabbi (Jerry Stiller) detests Gillespie, who in the 1960s was serving as an officer on the racist Sparta police force, and the police refused to investigate the arson of the city synagogue back then. Christine Elise makes one final appearance as Bill's daughter in the episode "A Love Lost", directed by Larry Hagman, in which Gillespie must protect her from a former boyfriend involved in a gun-running scheme in Sparta.
In the episode "Ches and the Grand Lady", Bobby Short reprises his role as Ches Collins, the blues musician from "Sweet, Sweet Blues" in Season 5. The episode also guest stars Jean Simmons as a dying grand dame of Sparta who is Ches's old flame and the overbearing great-aunt of Lonnie Jamison. Harriet's son Eugene once again finds himself at odds with the police, endangering his parole trying to help a friend. Maybelle Chesboro (played by Elizabeth Ashley), the ex-madam, returns. (The role of Maybelle was initially played by Diane Ladd in Season 3's "Home Is Where the Heart Is".) She has returned to operate a legal phone sex business.
Virgil Tibbs comes back from Jackson with his juris doctor — which explains his absence – in his new capacity as attorney in three episodes ("Virgil Tibbs: Attorney at Law", "Good Cop, Bad Cop", "Conspiracy of One") and assists the Sparta P.D. with several cases after having moved into Ben Taylor's law office. At first, scripts were written to imply that the Tibbses were simply away or living in Jackson until Virgil completed his studies and graduated from law school. However, upon his return, he reveals to Gillespie in "Virgil Tibbs: Attorney at Law" that he and Althea are separated and she took their twins back home to Philadelphia to live, fed up with her life in Sparta and traumatized from all that had happened to her while living there. Virgil is heartbroken over the collapse of his marriage but does not contest, although he has difficulty accepting his new status as a single man. The episode "Conspiracy of One", where Virgil suspects that one of his law firm's clients orchestrated an "accident" which resulted in his spouse's death, marks Howard Rollins' final appearance on the show (air date February 2, 1994), and officially ends the Tibbs storyline in the series.
Finally, in "Dangerous Engagement", Gillespie and DeLong tie the knot at the same church involved in the "Sanctuary" case from Season 5.[12] Chief Forbes serves as best man.
The season and the TV series wraps up with a two-hour movie of the week, "Give Me Your Life", starring Peter Fonda as Marcantony Appfel, leader of a religious cult in which the sexual abuse of children is rumored to have occurred. The story (by O'Connor and written by Cynthia Deming and William J. Royce) is loosely based on the real-life drama and Waco seige in Texas in 1993 with the cult leader David Koresh and his followers, the Branch Davidians. A series of articles was published in the Waco Tribune-Herald in early 1993 about Koresh being labeled "The Sinful Messiah" and the main topic of the Heat script stemmed from that, prior to the seige taking place.
TV movies and Hugh O'Connor's death
Four made-for-television movies were produced for CBS during the 1994–95 season, continuing the series. Once released on DVD, these movies were considered the eighth and final season of the show.[13] The movies were:
A Matter of Justice
Who Was Geli Bendl?
By Duty Bound
Grow Old Along with Me
O'Connor's son and Heat cast member Hugh O'Connor died by suicide nearly two months before the fourth film aired, having been struggling with substance abuse issues since his teen years.[14] When the film was broadcast in its original, two-hour format, a black screen was added in between the intro tag and the opening title; it read "In memory of Hugh O'Connor: 1962–1995".
In the Heat of the Night won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Drama Series (formally Outstanding Drama Series, Mini-Series or Television Movie), two years in a row, 1992 and 1993. The 1992 win was specifically for the Season 5 episode, "Sweet, Sweet Blues".
Broadcast history
The series debuted as a midseason replacement for the NBC series J.J. Starbuck, premiering on March 6, 1988. The series ran on the network until May 19, 1992, when it moved to CBS and aired until May 16, 1995.
Thursday at 8:00–9:00 PM on CBS (September 16, 1993 – January 6, 1994) Wednesday at 9:00–10:00 PM on CBS (January 12 – May 11, 1994)
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Locations
Like the original movie, the television series also took place in a fictionalized version of Sparta, Mississippi. While there is a real Sparta located in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, the version of Sparta shown on television is very different from the real town. For example, the TV Sparta is situated along Interstate 20 in Newton County, while the real town is nowhere near any interstate. During the first season, Hammond, Louisiana was the site of the show's production. In the second season, the show was moved to Georgia, to an area east of Atlanta and it remained there for the rest of its run. The principal area of Sparta was in fact downtown Covington, Georgia. Rural scenes were filmed in a wide surrounding area, in the Georgia counties of Newton (where Covington is located), Rockdale, Walton, Morgan, and Jasper. Decatur in Dekalb County was used as a stand-in for an episode as the Mississippi Capital city of Jackson, and Atlanta itself was used in one episode, in which Bubba worked on a case there. During the series' run, many of the cast members had homes in the area and were often spotted in local restaurants and retail stores. The cast members would also go around to local schools to speak to students.
Broadcast and syndication
The series also airs in broadcast syndication on Ovation. Ovation airs the show every Monday and Tuesday afternoon for five hours from 2:00 PM ET to 7:00 PM ET back to back. WGN America previously aired the series every weekday morning starting at 11AM ET for 4 hours usually until 3PM ET Monday through Thursday. WGN aired the show Fridays, too, at the same time. Ovation now has moved the show to Monday mornings from 8 AM to 2 PM as part of their "Morning Mysteries" crime and mystery drama block, and Thursdays at 10 PM/9 PM ET/CT (or sometimes 11 PM/10 PM ET/CT.). The show also aired Tuesdays nights at 7PM ET, but was scaled down to just a Thursday airing starting December 7, 2020. MeTV also acquired the rights to the show and it began airing in around either 2018 or 2019, running it every weekday beginning at 11AM ET/10AM CT. MGM's ThisTV network, a classic movie-focused network, also airs the show weekdays. The show previously aired on TNT from 1995 to 2005. The show has remained relatively strong in syndication to this day, particularly airing on some local stations. Bounce TV began airing reruns of the series starting September 13, 2021.
Home media
TGG Direct released the first season on DVD in Region 1 on August 30, 2012.[15] The eighth and final season was released on June 11, 2013.[16]
On October 23, 2012, TGG Direct released an 8-disc best-of set entitled In the Heat of the Night – 24hr Television Marathon.[17]
TGG Direct released seasons 4 and 5 onto DVD on December 10, 2013. However, due to licensing issues, the following episodes are missing from the box set: Brotherly Love, Shine On Sparta Moon, Sweet, Sweet Blues, Sanctuary, Law On Trial.[18][19]
TGG Direct released seasons 2 & 3 in a single boxed set onto DVD on March 11, 2014. However, due to clearance issues, the following episodes are excluded – Season 2 Excluded Episodes: The Family Secret, The Hammer and the Glove, A Trip Upstate, Intruders, Sister Sister, Walkout; Season 3 Excluded Episodes: Fairest of Them All, Crackdown, Anniversary, My Name is Hank, King's Ransom, A Loss of Innocence, Home is Where the Heart Is, Indiscretions, Citizen Trundel Part 1 and Part 2
TGG Direct also released seasons 6 and 7 in individual boxed sets onto DVD on March 11, 2014. However, due to clearance issues, the following episode is excluded from Season 6: Random's Child and the following episodes are excluded from Season 7: Singin' The Blues, Every Man's Family, Maybelle Returns, Ches and the Grand Lady, Dangerous Engagement.
Soundtrack
The theme song, "In the Heat of the Night", was originally recorded by Quincy Jones, with Ray Charles on vocals and piano for the movie. It is usually paired with "They Call Me Mr. Tibbs" on albums. Bill Champlin of the band Chicago sang the opening theme song for the television series.
The original song itself is supposed to be from Virgil's point of view, being a stranger in a hostile environment. In the case of the TV series, the lyrics refer to both main characters fighting crime in the tiny town of Sparta.
Randall Franks and Alan Autry co-produced the cast CD Christmas Time's A Comin' for Sonlite and MGM/UA, featuring the entire cast and a host of music stars. It was released Christmas 1991 and 1992, and was among the top holiday recordings of those years around the South and Midwest.
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