But TV's newest batch of prime-time detectives are, let us say, not the sleuths you'd feel most comfortable hiring to follow an armed robber down a dark alley. Add to these such veteran TV sleuths as Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote, Andy Griffith in Matlock and Peter Falk in occasional Columbo movies, and you've got enough votes to block Clinton's Medicare reforms.
Detective shows are the low-impact aerobics of network programming.
To an aging star for whom feature-film roles have dried up and sitcoms are too demanding, a detective show can be a comfortable sinecure. Even so, the genre has had to struggle to get back into network favor. The audience for these shows tends to be older, at a time when advertisers seem obsessed with targeting the young crowd. Not every show is as hokey and mechanical as Burke's Law, which routinely ends with a scene in which Burke gathers all the suspects and eliminates them one by one until he fingers the guilty party. For many, the job is just a sideline, sometimes a reluctant one.