The NBC Mystery Movie

*The NBC Mystery Movie*
The NBC Mystery Movie
Genre	Movie of the week
Theme music composer	Henry Mancini
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of episodes	(list of episodes)
Production
Running time	90 minutes (1971–1974, 1976–1977); 120 minutes (1974–1976)
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	1971 –; 1977
Related
	Amy Prentiss ; Banacek ; Columbo ; Cool Million ; Faraday & Company ; Hec Ramsey ; Lanigan's Rabbi ; Madigan ; McCloud ; McCoy ; McMillan & Wife ; Quincy, M.E. ; The Snoop Sisters ; Tenafly ;

Last updated October 25, 2024

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.

The NBC Mystery Movie was a "wheel series", or "umbrella program", that rotated several programs within the same period throughout each of its seasons. In its first, 1971–72, it rotated three detective dramas that were broadcast on Wednesday nights from 8:30 to 10:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (7:30–9:00 p.m. Central and Mountain time).

Background

The origin of the "wheel" format was a joint programming and creative production agreement between the NBC Television Network and Universal Studios Television and Motion Pictures in 1966, in accord with which NBC ordered a multi-year series of dramatic anthology productions from Universal that NBC would broadcast in the United States (both as originals and re-runs), with Universal retaining exclusive rights to overseas release of these productions as feature-length films, while NBC could not offer them as TV re-runs internationally.

The first series created under this agreement was The Name of the Game , a drama with three rotating stars. It was followed by The Bold Ones and Four in One (the similar The Men was produced for ABC and involved series from three studios, although one of them was Universal). While it was a long and profitable collaboration, it finally succumbed to the changes of the commercial broadcast market regarding both structure and content by the end of the decade.

By the late 1970s, the increasing popularity of situation comedies, coupled with their lower production costs and much greater scheduling flexibility and resale opportunities, surpassed that of these feature-length (90–120 minute) drama anthologies. The anthologies could not reasonably be reduced for shorter broadcast times for the re-run market. They were not designed for casual or short-term viewers, who would have little interest in the characters or the story of an individual episode. Each episode and each series were of widely varying quality, making package re-sale difficult. However, by the early 1980s, various movie episodes from the former Mystery Movie series were rebroadcast on late night's The CBS Late Movie as a package with an earlier half-hour situation comedy series rerun. While they lasted, the best of them employed the finest actors, writers and production standards available.^{[ citation needed ]}

Production history

Inaugural programs

The three original 1971–1972 season shows of The NBC Mystery Movie were:

McCloud , starring Dennis Weaver as a rural Taos, New Mexico lawman temporarily assigned to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Inspired by the Clint Eastwood 1968 film Coogan's Bluff , the show debuted the previous season as part of the hour-long NBC wheel show Four in One .
Columbo , starring Peter Falk as a deceptively bumbling Los Angeles homicide detective. The series was derived from a 1968 made-for-television movie, Prescription: Murder, which starred Falk in the same role.
McMillan & Wife , starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a husband-and-wife crime-fighting duo. Hudson's character was a hip, sophisticated San Francisco city police commissioner. Saint James later left the series and it was renamed McMillan.

The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1971–1972 season. Columbo was nominated for eight Emmy Awards and won four categories. This success prompted NBC to move the series to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening time period for the second season as The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. In addition, a fourth show was added to the rotation, lasting two seasons (1972–1974):

Hec Ramsey , starring Richard Boone as a gunfighter turned frontier forensic science detective in the Old West. This piece of the wheel series was produced by Jack Webb.

The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie programs

Inaugural

NBC also launched a clone of the umbrella series, The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie, which debuted in the original time period and featured three new programs:

Banacek , starring George Peppard as Thomas Banacek, a free-lance Polish-American insurance investigator in Boston. Like Hec Ramsey, it lasted two seasons (1972–1974).
Cool Million , starring James Farentino as a former CIA agent turned private investigator and security/retrieval expert whose fee per case was one million dollars.
Madigan had Richard Widmark reprising his 1968 film role as a streetwise veteran detective of the New York City Police Department.

Subsequent

During the 1973–1974 season, the programs rotating on Sunday remained the same, while on Wednesday, Cool Million and Madigan were canceled and Banacek rotated with three new series:

Faraday & Company , starring Dan Dailey as a private detective who returns to Los Angeles after a quarter century in a South American jail.
Tenafly , starring James McEachin as an African-American private detective.
The Snoop Sisters , starring Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick as two elderly sisters who routinely found mysteries which they solved.

Rescheduling to Tuesday nights as The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie during January 1974 was not enough to help boost ratings, and the midweek series was canceled. The Sunday series continued, anchored by the popular trio of Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan and Wife.

Later changes

During subsequent years, these rotated with a fourth series, which changed each year (1974–1977), including:

Amy Prentiss , starring Jessica Walter as the fictional first female chief of detectives for the San Francisco Police Department. This series was a spinoff of Ironside .
McCoy , starring Tony Curtis as a professional con-man/thief.
Quincy, M.E. , starring Jack Klugman as a medical examiner in the L.A. County Coroner's office.
Lanigan's Rabbi , about a small town police chief (Art Carney) and his best friend, a rabbi and amateur sleuth (Bruce Solomon), based on Harry Kemelman's popular Rabbi Small mysteries.

Additionally, the two-hour pilot of another Universal mystery series, Ellery Queen: Too Many Suspects , aired in the usual Sunday timeslot of the Mystery Movie on March 23, 1975; it was promoted as an NBC Mystery Movie Special. (The resulting series began airing that September, but in a Thursday night timeslot, and not under the NBC Mystery Movie umbrella.)

Of all the wheel series, only the original three — Columbo, McCloud and McMillan & Wife — survived for the entire run of the Mystery Movie. Most of the others were short-lived, and, with the exception of Hec Ramsey and Banacek, were all only on the air for one season. Quincy, M.E., which was the next to last new Mystery Movie series to premiere, ended up outlasting the parent series itself; midway through the final Mystery Movie season, Quincy was taken out of the wheel lineup and retooled into a one-hour weekly series that ran for six more seasons, coming to an end in 1983.

Although the Mystery Movie series was cancelled at the end of the 1976–1977 season, NBC kept Columbo in production and a seventh season consisting of five films premiered on November 21, 1977. After the fifth film aired in May 1978, NBC cancelled Columbo as well.

Presentation

The NBCMystery Movie theme music was composed by Henry Mancini.

The opening credits consisted of a shadowed figure carrying a flashlight slowly walking toward the camera in a desert landscape under dramatically lit clouds, as images of the various rotating series appeared sequentially on the screen; at the end, an announcer (Hank Simms) presented the night's main actors and series (example: "tonight, starring Peter Falk as Columbo"). Some syndicated episodes of Columbo retain this opening credit sequence, though the original title caption which included "NBC" and (after the first season), a day of the week was instead replaced by a similar graphic, simply showing multiple colored filmstrips with "MYSTERY" written within the frames, scrolling upwards within a circle (in the original animation, some of these filmstrips contained the NBC logo, and they scrolled upwards at a faster pace), alternatively, the portion of the introduction featuring Columbo replaced the original NBC-branded end graphic. Some syndicated reruns of other Mystery Movie shows retained the intro, but simply faded away before the NBC-branded opening graphic could be shown.

The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie theme was composed by Quincy Jones for its first season and had an animated open to show the lineup.

Post-series

In 1989, Universal Television and ABC teamed to launch a revival of the mystery wheel, titled the ABC Monday Mystery Movie. The network brought back original Mystery Movie series Columbo to be part of the wheel, with Peter Falk returning in the title role. Two new series joined Columbo in its first year, Gideon Oliver , starring Louis Gossett Jr. as a crime solving anthropologist, and B.L. Stryker , which featured Burt Reynolds as a South Florida private investigator.^[1] It was originally meant to be on Saturdays, but moved to Mondays amidst production delays related to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike.^[2]

Columbo and B.L. Stryker continued in the wheel's second season on Saturday (as ABC Saturday Mystery Movie) with two other series in August 1989: the new Christine Cromwell , a San Francisco based mystery starring Jaclyn Smith, and a revival of CBS' 1970s crime drama Kojak .^[3] The wheel series ran irregularly from February 1989 until August 1990. After the ABC Saturday Mystery Movie ended, ABC kept Columbo in production and Falk starred in an additional fourteen episodes before the network discontinued the series in 2003.

Universal brought McCloud back for a reunion film in 1989. The film, titled The Return of Sam McCloud, featured Dennis Weaver in the role of United States Senator Sam McCloud. However, unlike the television series, the reunion film aired on CBS.

The ABC Mystery Movie theme was composed by Mike Post.

Friday Night Mystery

In the fall of 1993, NBC made an attempt to revive the wheel format, this time called The NBC Friday Night Mystery. This rotation included:^[4]

MacShayne starring Kenny Rogers as a gambler turned house detective to pay his debts.
Hart to Hart , a revival starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers.
Staying Afloat starring Larry Hagman as a former millionaire who becomes a jet-setting government operative.
The Cosby Mysteries , a telefilm starring Bill Cosby that was spun off into a weekly one-hour series for the 1994 season.
A continuation of the Perry Mason telefilms that were already airing on NBC.^[4] When star Raymond Burr died after filming only the first of six scheduled films for the series, NBC retitled the series A Perry Mason Mystery and cast Paul Sorvino as Anthony Caruso,^[5]^[6] a close friend of Mason, to continue the series in a second film with an option for one more.^[7] Three subsequent films aired starring Hal Holbrook as “Wild Bill” McKenzie.
Ray Alexander was a late addition starring Louis Gossett Jr. as Ray Alexander, a detective-restaurateur, with co-stars James Coburn and Ossie Davis. This series' first installment, A Taste for Justice, aired on May 13, 1994 with two more films planned.^[8] However, only one additional film, A Menu for Murder was filmed and aired the following season.

Promotional materials originally included a revival of the CBS telefilm series, Janek, which debuted in 1985 starring Richard Crenna as New York City Police Lieutenant of Detectives Frank Janek. An alleged feud between the two networks led to CBS demanding that NBC not proceed with production.^[9]^[10]

In popular culture

The cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would often make a recurring joke ("It's The NBC Mystery Movie!") whenever a character in a movie shone a flashlight. Eventually, at the beginning of the episode Teenagers from Outer Space , Joel has the robots in electrical shock therapy to try and break them of the habit.
A 2008 episode of The Simpsons , "Dial 'N' for Nerder", ended with a reference to the NBC Mystery Movie opening sequence, featuring Nelson Muntz as Columbo, Dr. Hibbert as Quincy, Rich Texan as McCloud and Mr. Burns and Smithers as McMillan and Wife.
In an episode of the cartoon King of the Hill , Hank Hill refers to Hec Ramsey as an under-appreciated part of the NBC Mystery Wheel.

U.S. television ratings

The NBC Mystery Movie maintained high ratings finishing in the top 30 of shows for the first four seasons. The show rated as the following:

Television ratings
Show	TV season	Rank	Households (millions)
The NBC Mystery Movie	1971–1972	#14^[11]	14,40
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie	1972–1973	#6^[12]	15,68
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie	1973–1974	#14^[13]	14,69
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie	1974–1975	#24^[14]	14,59
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie	1975–1976	#53^[15]	N/A
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie	1976–1977	#62^[16]	12,76
ABC Mystery Movie	1988–1989	#29^[17]	13,92

Related Research Articles

Banacek is an American detective television series starring George Peppard that aired on NBC from 1972 to 1974. The series was part of the rotating NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie anthology. It alternated in its time slot with several other shows, but was the only one of them to last beyond its first season.

Peter Michael Falk was an American film and television actor, singer and television director and producer. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo on the NBC/ABC 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.

Matlock is an American mystery legal drama television series created by Dean Hargrove and starring Andy Griffith in the title role of criminal defense attorney Ben Matlock. The show, produced by Intermedia Entertainment Company, The Fred Silverman Company, Dean Hargrove Productions and Viacom Productions, originally aired from March 3, 1986, to May 8, 1992, on NBC, then on ABC from November 5, 1992, to May 7, 1995.

<i>Ironside</i> (1967 TV series) American television crime drama (1967–1975)

Ironside is an American television crime drama that aired on NBC over eight seasons from 1967 to 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr as Robert T. Ironside, a consultant to the San Francisco police department, who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot while on vacation. The character debuted on March 28, 1967, in a TV movie entitled Ironside. When the series was broadcast in the United Kingdom, from late 1967 onward, it was broadcast as A Man Called Ironside. The show earned Burr six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations.

<i>Columbo</i> American crime drama television film series

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 on ABC as a rotating program on The ABC Mystery Movie from 1989 to 1990, and on a less frequent basis from 1990 to 2003.

<i>McCloud</i> (TV series) American television series (1970–1977)

McCloud is an American police drama television series created by Herman Miller, that aired on NBC from September 16, 1970, to April 17, 1977. The series starred Dennis Weaver, and for six of its seven years as part of the NBC Mystery Movie rotating wheel series that was produced for the network by Universal Television. The show was centered on Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud of the small western town of Taos, New Mexico, who was on loan to the metropolitan New York City Police Department (NYPD) as a special investigator.

<i>Quincy, M.E.</i> American mystery medical drama TV series (1976–1983)

Quincy, M.E. is an American mystery medical drama television series from Universal Studios that was broadcast on NBC from October 3, 1976, to May 11, 1983. Jack Klugman starred in the title role as a Los Angeles County medical examiner who routinely engages in police investigations.

A wheel series, wheel show, wheel format or umbrella series is a television series in which two or more regular programs are rotated in the same time slot. Sometimes the wheel series is given its own umbrella title and promoted as a single unit instead of promoting its separate components.

<i>McMillan & Wife</i> American police procedural television series

McMillan & Wife is an American police procedural television series that aired on NBC from September 17, 1971, to April 24, 1977. Starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James in the title roles, the series premiered in episodes as part of Universal Television's wheel series NBC Mystery Movie, in rotation with Columbo and McCloud. Initially airing on Wednesday night, the original lineup was shifted to Sundays in the second season, where it aired for the rest of its run. For the final season, known as McMillan, numerous changes were made that included killing off St. James' character of Sally McMillan.

William Windom was an American actor. He was known as a character actor of the stage and screen. He is well known for his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt alongside Angela Lansbury in the CBS mystery series Murder, She Wrote and his intense guest role as Commodore Matt Decker in Star Trek: The Original Series.

McCoy is an American comedy-drama series that starred Tony Curtis and aired on NBC-TV during the 1975–1976 season.

<i>Lanigans Rabbi</i> 1977 American crime drama series

Lanigan's Rabbi is an American Police procedural series that aired on the NBC television network from January 30 to April 24, 1977. The title alludes to Police Chief Paul Lanigan and his friend, Rabbi David Small.

Hec Ramsey is an American television series that aired on NBC from 1972 to 1974, starring Richard Boone. The series was created by Jack Webb's production company, Mark VII Limited in association with Universal's television productions. The series was first broadcast in the United States by NBC as part of the NBC Mystery Movie, a wheel series format.

Sidney Murray Matheson was a U.S.-based Australian actor. He appeared on stage and in films and television programs until 1983.

Madigan is an American crime drama television series based on the 1968 film of the same title, starring Richard Widmark as Sgt. Dan Madigan. The show aired on NBC in 1972–73 as part of the NBC Mystery Movie umbrella series.

Robert Van Scoyk was an American television writer, producer and story editor active during the Golden Age of Television from the late 1940s until the late 1990s.

Here is a list of episodes from the first season of the American television detective series Columbo.

<i>Mrs. Columbo</i> 1979 American television series

Mrs. Columbo is an American crime drama television series, initially based on the wife of Lieutenant Columbo, the title character from the television series Columbo. It was created and produced by Richard Alan Simmons and Universal Television for NBC, and stars Kate Mulgrew as a news reporter helping to solve crimes while raising her daughter.

References

↑ Lomartire, Paul (May 21, 1989). "Television: 'Colombo' aired 4 times this year". TV Post . p. 6. Retrieved August 6, 2022.
↑ "Fall's first draft" (PDF). Broadcasting . May 30, 1988. p. 21. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
↑ Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle F. (2009). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Random House. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-3074-8320-1 . Retrieved February 3, 2018.
1 2 Lawler, Sylvia (May 23, 1993). "NBC Aims To Reverse The Trend". The Morning Call . Allentown, Penn. p. 2. Retrieved August 6, 2022.
↑ "Perry Mason (1985–1993), The Perry Mason Mystery (1993–1995)". The Classic TV Archive. Retrieved 2015-04-08.
↑ Davidson, Jim (2014). "Perry Mason TV-Movies". The Perry Mason Book: A Comprehensive Guide to America's Favorite Defender of Justice (e-book). ASIN B00OOELV1K.
↑ "NBC Plans New Perry Mason Movie". Orlando Sentinel . Washington Post. September 27, 1993. p. D4. Retrieved August 6, 2022.
↑ King, Susan (May 8, 1994). "Focus: Gossett, P.I.: NBC Movie Offers a Detective With Charm Around The Edges" . Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 2, 2018.
↑ "Feuding networks". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2023-08-26.
↑ "LATE-NIGHT PERSONALITIES TALK UP A STORM". Chicago Tribune. 1993-08-29. Retrieved 2023-08-26.
↑ "TV Ratings: 1971-1972". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
↑ "TV Ratings: 1972-1973". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
↑ "TV Ratings: 1973-1974". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
↑ "TV Ratings: 1974-1975". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
↑ "1975-76 Ratings History -- 1,2,3... 1st Times Run Rampant as ABC Reaches 2nd and NBC Sinks to 3rd". The TV Ratings Guide. Archived from the original on 2018-07-21. Retrieved August 6, 2022.
↑ "1976-77 Ratings History -- New Record As ABC Jiggles Into 1st, CBS Returns to 2nd After Ruling 21 Undisturbed Years". The TV Ratings Guide. Archived from the original on 2018-07-21. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
↑ "TV Ratings: 1988-1989". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

External links

The NBC Mystery Movie at IMDb
The NBC Mystery Movie at the Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Lomartire, Paul (May 21, 1989). "Television: 'Colombo' aired 4 times this year". TV Post . p. 6. Retrieved August 6, 2022.

[:0-2] "Fall's first draft" (PDF). Broadcasting . May 30, 1988. p. 21. Retrieved November 12, 2023.

[3] Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle F. (2009). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Random House. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-3074-8320-1 . Retrieved February 3, 2018.

[mcall-4] 1 2 Lawler, Sylvia (May 23, 1993). "NBC Aims To Reverse The Trend". The Morning Call . Allentown, Penn. p. 2. Retrieved August 6, 2022.

[CTVA_Movies-5] "Perry Mason (1985–1993), The Perry Mason Mystery (1993–1995)". The Classic TV Archive. Retrieved 2015-04-08.

[Davidson-6] Davidson, Jim (2014). "Perry Mason TV-Movies". The Perry Mason Book: A Comprehensive Guide to America's Favorite Defender of Justice (e-book). ASIN B00OOELV1K.

[7] "NBC Plans New Perry Mason Movie". Orlando Sentinel . Washington Post. September 27, 1993. p. D4. Retrieved August 6, 2022.

[8] King, Susan (May 8, 1994). "Focus: Gossett, P.I.: NBC Movie Offers a Detective With Charm Around The Edges" . Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 2, 2018.

[9] "Feuding networks". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2023-08-26.

[10] "LATE-NIGHT PERSONALITIES TALK UP A STORM". Chicago Tribune. 1993-08-29. Retrieved 2023-08-26.

[11] "TV Ratings: 1971-1972". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

[12] "TV Ratings: 1972-1973". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

[13] "TV Ratings: 1973-1974". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

[14] "TV Ratings: 1974-1975". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

[15] "1975-76 Ratings History -- 1,2,3... 1st Times Run Rampant as ABC Reaches 2nd and NBC Sinks to 3rd". The TV Ratings Guide. Archived from the original on 2018-07-21. Retrieved August 6, 2022.

[16] "1976-77 Ratings History -- New Record As ABC Jiggles Into 1st, CBS Returns to 2nd After Ruling 21 Undisturbed Years". The TV Ratings Guide. Archived from the original on 2018-07-21. Retrieved May 2, 2020.

[17] "TV Ratings: 1988-1989". Classic TV Hits. Retrieved May 14, 2012.

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