Anyone here a Rockford Files fan?
"Rockford" has a connection to Hawaii Five-O -- and not a good one. NBC was tired of getting their clock cleaned by Five-O in the ratings. After a promising first season of "Rockford" from 1974-5, they decided to move it to be directly up against Five-O for the 1975-6 season.
The result? The audience fractured, and both shows suffered.
There were no VCRs or DVRs in those days, so you had to choose one or the other.
These were my two favorite 1970s dramas, so I see why the audience was split. I would have been very frustrated having to choose. (I was too young to be watching either of them, being 3-4 years old at the time!)
Rockford actually holds up pretty well today, despite it being 45 years since premiering. The show didn't last nearly as long as Five-O (only 5 1/2 seasons), but it ended prematurely due to knee problems of star James Garner.
It was ahead of its time in some ways:
- Jim Rockford was not a really tough guy, and seemed to be taking beatings more often than he gave them. Rockford succeeded using his mind to outwit his opponents.
- Jim Rockford was also a flawed hero. He was cranky. He was sometimes selfish. He lived in a beaten up trailer on the beach. He often used his police detective friend Dennis Becker to look up info for him, which irritated Dennis to no end.
- Beth Davenport, the only regular female character on the show (played by Gretchen Corbett), was an aggressive, competent attorney, and was the antithesis to the "damsel in distress" types you typically saw on TV in those days.
- Jim Rockford was shown battling small, everyday problems in his life, and didn't simply work on cases -- a forerunner to the character-driven television you see today.
The show also had a TON of on-location shooting around Los Angeles. This increased production costs big time, but it's one of the factors which makes the show especially endearing today. I grew up in 1970s Los Angeles, so seeing "Rockford" is like traveling back in time to see the world through my eyes as a young child.
It's a very different show than Five-O, and both appealed to me for different reasons. However, one thing they had in common was the creative plots and the weird criminals we got to meet.
Also, the "Angel" character was one of the more complex and interesting ones on TV in the '70s. Here was a guy who would sell his own mother down the river for $10, and repeatedly caused hassle for Rockford with his shifty ways, yet he was a character we were supposed to (and did) like. His friendship with Rockford was a complicated one, and the viewer came to understand it better as the series progressed.