Peter Michael Falk was an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the long-running NBC series Columbo, for which he won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award (1973). In 1996, TV Guide ranked Falk No. 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list. He received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.
Dragnet is an American radio, television and film series, following the exploits of dedicated Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Detective Joe Friday and his partners, created by actor and producer Jack Webb. The show took its name from the police term "dragnet", a term for a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series created by Dick Wolf and produced by Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television, launching the Law & Order franchise.
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist and physician Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning 15 seasons. It was produced by Constant C Productions and Amblin Television, in association with Warner Bros. Television. ER follows the inner life of the emergency room (ER) of Cook County General Hospital in Chicago, and various critical issues faced by the department's physicians and staff.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American crime drama television series created by Dick Wolf for NBC. The first spin-off of Law & Order, it starred Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler until Meloni left the series in 2011 after 12 seasons, and Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson, now the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit after originally having been Stabler's partner in a fictionalized version of the New York City Police Department. Meloni has since reprised his role as Stabler in the spin-off series Law & Order: Organized Crime (2021–present). Law & Order: Special Victims Unit follows the style of the original Law & Order in that some episodes are loosely based on real crimes that have received media attention.
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms. The show received critical acclaim, and its production innovations influenced many subsequent dramatic television series produced in the United States and Canada. In its debut season, the series won eight Emmy Awards, a debut season record later surpassed only by The West Wing. The show won a total of 26 Emmy Awards during its run, including four consecutive wins for Outstanding Drama Series.
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris that aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes, spanning seven seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, the show is about four older women who share a home in Miami, Florida. It was produced by Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions, in association with Touchstone Television. Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, and Harris served as the original executive producers.
Columbo is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. After two pilot episodes in 1968 and 1971, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of The NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired less frequently on ABC from 1989 to 2003.
Remington Steele is an American television series co-created by Robert Butler and Michael Gleason. The series, starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan, was produced by MTM Enterprises and first broadcast on the NBC network from October 10, 1982, to February 17, 1987. The series blended the genres of romantic comedy, drama, detective procedural and international political intrigue and espionage.
A television pilot, in United Kingdom and United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a television network or other distributor. A pilot is created to be a testing ground to gauge whether a series will be successful. It is, therefore, a test episode for the intended television series, an early step in the series development, much like pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity.
The NBC Mystery Movie is an American television anthology series produced by Universal Pictures, that NBC broadcast from 1971 to 1977. Devoted to a rotating series of mystery episodes, it was sometimes split into two subsets broadcast on different nights of the week: The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.
Peter Lawrence Boyle was an American actor. Known as a character actor, he played Frank Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and the comical monster in Mel Brooks' film spoof Young Frankenstein (1974). He also starred in The Candidate (1972). Boyle, who won an Emmy Award in 1996 for a guest-starring role on the Fox science-fiction drama The X-Files, won praise in both comedic and dramatic parts following his breakthrough performance in the 1970 film Joe, and as Wizard in Taxi Driver (1976).
Moonlighting is an American comedy drama television series that aired on ABC from March 3, 1985, to May 14, 1989. The network aired a total of 67 episodes. Starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis as private detectives, and Allyce Beasley as their quirky receptionist, the show was a mixture of drama, comedy, mystery, and romance, and was considered to be one of the first successful and influential examples of comedy drama, or "dramedy", emerging as a distinct television genre. The show's theme song was co-written and performed by jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a star and relaunching Shepherd's career after a string of lackluster projects. In 1997, the episode "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" was ranked number 34 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. In 2007, the series was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time". The relationship between the characters David and Maddie was included in TV Guide's list of the best TV couples of all time.
Lookwell was a television pilot written and produced by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel, the latter of whom would become a primary creative voice for O'Brien's late night show. It starred Adam West. Despite being a "personal favorite" of NBC chairman Brandon Tartikoff, the pilot was not picked up as a series. It was broadcast on NBC on July 28, 1991, in a summer weekend timeslot reserved for burning off pilots which the network had passed on. The pilot has since become a cult classic.
Father Dowling Mysteries is an American mystery television series that aired from January 20, 1989 to May 2, 1991. Prior to the series, a TV movie aired on November 30, 1987. For its first season, the show was on NBC; it moved to ABC for its last two seasons.
Friday Night Lights is an American sports drama television series developed by Peter Berg and inspired by the 1990 nonfiction book by H. G. Bissinger, which was adapted as the 2004 film of the same name by Berg. Executive producers were Brian Grazer, David Nevins, Sarah Aubrey and Jason Katims who also served as showrunner. The series follows a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, a small, close-knit community in rural West Texas. It features an ensemble cast led by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, portraying high school football coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami Taylor, a school faculty member. The primary cast includes characters associated with football and high school. The show uses its small-town backdrop to address many issues in contemporary American culture like family values, school funding, racism, substance use, abortion and lack of economic opportunities.
Nero Wolfe is an American drama television series based on the characters in Rex Stout's series of detective stories. The series aired on NBC from January 16 to August 25, 1981. William Conrad fills the role of the detective genius Nero Wolfe, and Lee Horsley is his assistant Archie Goodwin. Produced by Paramount Television, the series updates the world of Nero Wolfe to contemporary New York City and draws few of its stories from the Stout originals.
The National Hockey League has never fared as well on American television in comparison to the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, or the National Football League, although that has begun to change, with NBC's broadcasts of the final games of the 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013 Stanley Cup Finals scoring some of the best ratings ever enjoyed by the sport on American television.
