Quinn/Martin?

[Joe S. Walker]

Actually Quinn Martin was only one person. And with William Conrad no longer around to do voice-overs, I don't think anyone's really going to capture the style of those old shows.

[Steven Grant]

Actually Quinn Martin was only one person. And with William Conrad no longer around to do voice-overs, I don't think anyone's really going to capture the style of those old shows.

?? Didn't those old shows used to have a hyphen between Quinn and Martin in the credits?

No, the whole Quinn Martin style, though Conrad was frequently a part of it, was this very steeljawed, always business, furrowed-brow seriousness, with an occasional quip thrown in, usually right at the end to leave the viewer smiling just a little after an hour of very steeljawed, always business, furrowed-brow seriousness. It was possibly the most self-important fluff that ever appeared on American network TV.

The Aaron Spelling style was the Quinn Martin style with tongue-in-cheek.

- Grant

[Buzz Dixon]

I loved QM Productions; they were exactly as you describe, Steven, though they did go off on a tizzy once and hired Larry Cohen to create THE INVADERS for them (the first season of which was one of the most unnerving, paranoia inducing nightmares ever put on TV and would have sent Agent Muldaur running home to hide under his bed).

Their shows always had a Prolog (teaser), Act I, Act II, Act II, Act IV, and an Epilog, all conveniently titled for those keeping score at home. And their episode titles were always along the lines"Tonight...APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY!!!"

[Drusilla lives!]

I loved QM Productions; they were exactly as you describe, Steven, though they did go off on a tizzy once and hired Larry Cohen to create THE INVADERS for them (the first season of which was one of the most unnerving, paranoia inducing nightmares ever put on TV and would have sent Agent Muldaur running home to hide under his bed).

Their shows always had a Prolog (teaser), Act I, Act II, Act II, Act IV, and an Epilog, all conveniently titled for those keeping score at home. And their episode titles were always along the lines"Tonight...APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY!!!"

Loved Cannon... great show IMO and finally coming out on dvd.

[NatGertler]

Their shows always had a Prolog (teaser), Act I, Act II, Act II, Act IV, and an Epilog, all conveniently titled for those keeping score at home.Well, it's not that convenient if they actually had two Act IIs...
Didn't get into all the QM line, but The Fugitive was some fine drama stuff. They worked that concept quite effectively. (I've long wanted to write a sequel series to that.)

[Steven Grant]

I loved QM Productions; they were exactly as you describe, Steven, though they did go off on a tizzy once and hired Larry Cohen to create THE INVADERS for them (the first season of which was one of the most unnerving, paranoia inducing nightmares ever put on TV and would have sent Agent Muldaur running home to hide under his bed).

Their shows always had a Prolog (teaser), Act I, Act II, Act II, Act IV, and an Epilog, all conveniently titled for those keeping score at home. And their episode titles were always along the lines"Tonight...APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY!!!"

I do recall that first season of THE INVADERS, created on the heels of CORONET BLUE. Too bad INVADERS subsequently deteriorated into gibberish, but those early episodes were obviously Cohen's paean to INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. In my junior high it became quite popular to keep one's little finger stiff, at least for a couple months.

That formula, of course, is exactly what POLICE SQUAD parodied to death...

I forget: was MANNIX a QM show? The first season of that was terrific, too, and completely different from later episodes. He was a field agent for a modern security firm called Intertect (not sure I remember that correctly; Inter-something) run by Joseph Campanella, and they had really interesting (for the time) stories. It was a very strange dynamic for a detective show. And apparently didn't go over all that well; with the second season he was a traditional self-employed freelance detective, though if I remember correctly at least for a couple episodes they referred back to Intertect - he'd call his old boss Campanella for this info tidbit or that - so it wasn't a complete break. But later seasons were very traditional stuff; either the first season wasn't or I was still completely unfamiliar with the motifs at the time so it all seemed fresh and new to me.

- Grant

[Steven Grant]

Well, it's not that convenient if they actually had two Act IIs...
Didn't get into all the QM line, but The Fugitive was some fine drama stuff. They worked that concept quite effectively. (I've long wanted to write a sequel series to that.)

And what would you do with it? He's unjustly accused of murder again?

THE FUGITIVE was just ROUTE 66 with a plot thread, and less obvious means of transportation.

- Grant

[Buzz Dixon]

And what would you do with it? He's unjustly accused of murder again?

THE FUGITIVE was just ROUTE 66 with a plot thread, and less obvious means of transportation.

- GrantDanny Kaye had a variety show at the time; they did a sketch with exactly that premise, even going so far as the Barry Morse character telling the Fugitive he'd count to 100 to give him a head start...

[NatGertler]

And what would you do with it? He's unjustly accused of murder again?No, no no. And no Deadman "oh, I mean to find a guy missing the -other- arm."

At heart, The Fugitive was about two basically decent and highly capable guys who tore each other's life apart. If memory serves, by the end of the series Gerard's marriage had fallen apart. And Kimball? His wife is still dead. By now, his medical practice is gone, his patients all have a new doctor, and it's bound to be hard to rebuild when people at best see you as a novelty, and more likely harbor some suspicion that you actually killed your wife. He has nothing (except eleventeen women he met on the road, all of whom he couldn't stay with because he Had To Be Going, all of whom now figure he's waiting for them.)
So what does Gerard do? He throws himself into his work. It's all he has left. And when the next fugitive - a genuine badass - goes on the run, he realizes it would be handy to have the assistance of someone smart who has inside knowledge of how a fugitive thinks.
So you place together these two very able guys, both of which owe the other on some level (for Gerard knows he spent years hounding an innocent man, and Kimball knows that Gerard ultimately helped bring it all to a close), but both of whom also hold in those deep emotional crevices that logic cannot scratch resentments toward the other for destroying their life. That's the engine you build it around. It might not be an ongoing series, but there's at least a movie, maybe a miniseries in there.

[Steven Grant]

It might not be an ongoing series, but there's at least a movie, maybe a miniseries in there.

So pitch it. You don't need those specific characters, at that point they're simply character histories. Two characters in complete conflict - a cop whose life has broken down because he spent x years tracking down an escaped murderer, only to learn that the man was innocent, and the innocent accused murderer, who lost everything not just in the original murder but because he was forced on the run by the cop for so many years. It's a perfectly valid concept for a movie, and that they'd recognize it as The Fugitive, only afterward, is a bonus. People write and sell "what if" spinoffs of existing properties like that all the time, without repercussion as long as they don't specifically invoke the original property without permission.

- Grant

[NatGertler]

Oh, I keep it "on the list", but there are other things that take priority.

Oddly enough, the inspiration for that one started not with The Fugitive, but with reading the first line of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" ("The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.") When I read that, I immediately put down the book and started doing a quick little summary of what it brought to mind... and discovered it was The Fugitive II. As such, I'm well aware that the serial numbers could be filed off of that.

[Buzz Dixon]

No, no no. And no Deadman "oh, I mean to find a guy missing the -other- arm."

At heart, The Fugitive was about two basically decent and highly capable guys who tore each other's life apart. If memory serves, by the end of the series Gerard's marriage had fallen apart. And Kimball? His wife is still dead. By now, his medical practice is gone, his patients all have a new doctor, and it's bound to be hard to rebuild when people at best see you as a novelty, and more likely harbor some suspicion that you actually killed your wife. He has nothing (except eleventeen women he met on the road, all of whom he couldn't stay with because he Had To Be Going, all of whom now figure he's waiting for them.)
So what does Gerard do? He throws himself into his work. It's all he has left. And when the next fugitive - a genuine badass - goes on the run, he realizes it would be handy to have the assistance of someone smart who has inside knowledge of how a fugitive thinks.
So you place together these two very able guys, both of which owe the other on some level (for Gerard knows he spent years hounding an innocent man, and Kimball knows that Gerard ultimately helped bring it all to a close), but both of whom also hold in those deep emotional crevices that logic cannot scratch resentments toward the other for destroying their life. That's the engine you build it around. It might not be an ongoing series, but there's at least a movie, maybe a miniseries in there.Nat, seriously, write this up as anything but a direct sequel to THE FUGITIVE and pitch it.

[NatGertler]

Nat, seriously, write this up as anything but a direct sequel to THE FUGITIVE and pitch it.
Thanks for the supportive comment; if I figure out how Hollywood works, I may do just that.

[bartl]

I forget: was MANNIX a QM show? The first season of that was terrific, too, and completely different from later episodes. He was a field agent for a modern security firm called Intertect (not sure I remember that correctly; Inter-something) run by Joseph Campanella, and they had really interesting (for the time) stories. It was a very strange dynamic for a detective show. And apparently didn't go over all that well; with the second season he was a traditional self-employed freelance detective, though if I remember correctly at least for a couple episodes they referred back to Intertect - he'd call his old boss Campanella for this info tidbit or that - so it wasn't a complete break. But later seasons were very traditional stuff; either the first season wasn't or I was still completely unfamiliar with the motifs at the time so it all seemed fresh and new to me.
The first season concentrated on the best of the old vs. the new (with Mannix representing the best of the old; a private detective friend of mine says that 99% of PI work is done on computer these days, with marital infidelity cases being the biggest exception.

It was mentioned before, but a nice twist on that theme was HEC RAMSEY, which took place just after the turn of the century. The plot was that a man was trying to convert a town's police force from sheriff/deputies to a modern police force; a condition was that he had to hire old gunfighter Hec Ramsey as a condition. The twist was that Ramsey had since taken extensive training in (for then) modern forensic techniques, and was even more into the concept than the chief of police was.

[Perry Holley]

Wandering back to The Mentalist for a moment...

I want to like the show - the lead actor has a certain smarmy charm to him - but I can't help but be annoyed by the suspicion that the writers don't have the slightest clue how actual mentalists do the stuff that they do. Some of it I can just write off as a good understanding of body language - the rock-paper-scissors trick with the sheriff, for example - but when he says something like "your father was a football coach," would it be so difficult to say how the heck he came to that conclusion? Even if only to say, "actually, I just looked at your personnel file," or somesuch.

Also - and this is admittedly a nitpick - while I can buy on some level him keeping the room where his wife and child unchanged as a reminder to himself, it just hits me as over the top that he actually sleeps in said room.

That said, the basic concept isn't too bad... a group of well-meaning but annoyed Watsons to his Holmes (and lets face it, Holmes would be a giant pain the ass to have to work with), so I'll probably give it another episode or two to see if it improves.

[Buzz Dixon]

"Tonight's episode...NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE!"

[NatGertler]

That said, the basic concept isn't too bad... a group of well-meaning but annoyed Watsons to his Holmes (and lets face it, Holmes would be a giant pain the ass to have to work with)Yeah, that's a good concept. It's called House, and it's quite enjoyable.

As for The Mentalist, despite the character, it's not the clever-but-explained-deduction show we were hoping for. It looks to be a serial killer show with that hung off of it. The former would be a new take on a no-longer-common genre; the latter is a less interesting now-common genre.

[DubipR]

I have a soft spot for Barnaby Jones. Watching them in syndication, out of all the QM Productions this one stands out for me. Sure, The Fugitive is a fantastic show, but those Thursday afternoons watching KDOC, seeing Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether was bliss.

What made the QM shows great were not only the scripts, but the theme songs.
Steve, you asked about Mannix. It's not a QM Production; it was produced by Bruce Geller.

[Cei-U!]

It was mentioned before, but a nice twist on that theme was HEC RAMSEY, which took place just after the turn of the century. The plot was that a man was trying to convert a town's police force from sheriff/deputies to a modern police force; a condition was that he had to hire old gunfighter Hec Ramsey as a condition. The twist was that Ramsey had since taken extensive training in (for then) modern forensic techniques, and was even more into the concept than the chief of police was.

Did you know that in one episode (possibly the pilot, I can't remember) Hec Ramsey revealed that he used to operate as a gun-for-hire named Paladin? (Actually, he didn't use the name but he outlined his m.o. and mentioned by name the hotel Paladin used as a headquarters.) In short, HEC RAMSEY was an unofficial sequel to HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL.

Cei-U!
I summon the forgotten TV lore!