Official Detective | |
---|---|
Genre | Anthology |
Written by | Mort Briskin Don Martin |
Directed by | Paul Guilfoyle Lee Sholem |
Presented by | Everett Sloane |
Theme music composer | Jack Shaindlin |
Composer | E.C. Norton |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 40 |
Production | |
Producer | Mort Briskin |
Camera setup | Single-camera |
Running time | 25 mins. |
Production companies | Desilu Productions National Telefilm Associates |
Original release | |
Network | Syndication |
Release | 1957 – March 19, 1958 |
Official Detective is an American anthology television series which aired in syndication from 1957 to March 19, 1958. The series was hosted by veteran film actor Everett Sloane. [1]
The production of the first pilot was announced in December 1956. [2] The story dealt with the slaying of a woman where the main challenge is to identify the body. [3]
Mort Briskin was the producer, [4] and Lee Sholem was the director. [5] The episodes of Official Detective are archived at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles. [6] Episodes were produced for NTA at Desilu. [7]
Desilu employed professional detectives as technical advisers to ensure that procedures depicted in the program accurately represented real-life police work. Scripts were adapted from articles published in Official Detective magazine, and officials at the magazine reviewed the scripts' content for accuracy. [8]
Critic Jack Gould, writing in The New York Times , described the program as "another routine crime series", adding, "The major horror of the first episode was the senseless slaughter of half-hour by a very ancient blunt instrument." [9]
A review in the trade publication Billboard called the program "another of this year's more solid entries into the syndication field". [10] The review called the premiere episode's approach "a little too pedestrian". [10] Although it said that some dialog was corny, it added that the show "has enough muscle to have planted a firm foot on the ground."