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Mod Squad, The

Cop/Detective/Mystery Series

About This Show

From Wikipedia:

The Mod Squad is a television series that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968 until August 23, 1973. This series starred Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III and Tige Andrews. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas.

Plot

The Mod Squad was a police drama that featured three young, hip crime fighters. One White, One Black, One Blonde, was the promotional hype-line. The casting was intended to appeal to a youthful, counterculture audience. The basic premise was that the youthful investigators were offered work fighting crime as an alternative to being incarcerated themselves. The show's primary gimmick centered on the three cops using their youthful, hippie personas as a guise to get close to the criminals they investigated. The show was moderately popular during its initial run of five seasons and 123 episodes. Tige Andrews (Captain Adam Greer), Michael Cole (Pete Cochran), Peggy Lipton (Julie Barnes), and Clarence Williams III (Linc Hayes) starred. The show portrayed a multicultural society and dealt with issues of racial politics, drug culture, and counterculture.

The show was loosely based on Bud Ruskin's experiences in the late 1950s as a squad leader for undercover narcotics cops, though it took almost 10 years after he wrote a script for the idea to be given the greenlight by ABC television studios.

more...

People Who Talked About This Show

  • Aaron Spelling
  • Earle Hagen
  • Katie Couric
  • Nolan Miller
  • Ruth Engelhardt

Featured Content

Video: The Mod Squad opening titles

Resources

Links:

DVD: The Mod Squad: Season One, Volume One

Fansite for The Mod Squad

IMDb page on The Mod Squad

Wikipedia page on The Mod Squad

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People Talking About This Show

  • Ruth Engelhardt
    • Business affairs executive Ruth Engelhardt on how The Mod Squad  was the first series financed using cost-plus financing (05m 43s)
  • Earle Hagen
    • Composer Earl Hagen on creating the music for The Mod Squad (14m 20s)
  • Katie Couric
    • Katie Couric on television shows she enjoyed during her childhood (00m 09s)
  • Nolan Miller
    • Costume designer Nolan Miller on working on  The Mod Squad (03m 08s)
  • Aaron Spelling
    • Aaron Spelling on executive producing The Mod Squad (05m 00s)
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