The Mod Squad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the television show. For the movie, see The Mod Squad (film).
- For the group from the Christopher Buckley book, see Thank You for Smoking (novel)
| The Mod Squad | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Police Drama |
| Creator(s) | Bud Ruskin |
| Starring | Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III, Peggy Lipton, Tige Andrews |
| Theme music composer | Earle Hagen |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of episodes | 123 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 1 hour |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ABC |
| Original run | September 24, 1968 – August 23, 1973 |
| Links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
The Mod Squad was a television series that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968 until August 23, 1973. Its executive producers were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas.
It was a police drama that feature "hip" young crime fighters: one African-American, one street kid, and one blonde woman. The casting was intended to appeal to a youthful, counter-culture 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 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 counter-culture.
The show was loosely based on Police Officer 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.
A TV reunion movie, The Return of Mod Squad, aired on ABC May 18, 1979. The Mod Squad, a 1999 MGM film starring Giovanni Ribisi, Omar Epps, Claire Danes and Dennis Farina, was a less-than-stellar attempt to update the show's premise.
