On The Streets of San Francisco: Season 1 Volume 1 (1972)

I bought this, the first half of the first season of the television program The Streets of San Francisco, recently, but apparently as part of a purchase that I did not enumerate for you, gentle reader. Perhaps it was the beginning of August, when I went to the antique malls to finish my Christmas shopping before I spent a couple days of my vacation ferrying my brother to and from his homestead to a medical appointment in St. Louis. I wanted to have the Christmas shopping done so I could take the Christmas presents over since I could not ship them because I lack certain stickers for the package. I bought a couple things for myself during this excursion, but apparently not enough to have posted about it.

Not that it matters where I got it, but I dived right into it. I remember that my sainted mother watched this show, whether on first run when I was really young or in syndication when I was what would later be called a “tween.” (Where did that word go? I haven’t seen it lately. Maybe I don’t see it because my boys are past that now.) But I didn’t remember much about it, and what I might have–San Francisco and Karl Malden–is undoubtedly mixed with Rice-a-Roni (the San Francisco treat) and American Express (Karl Malden saying, “Don’t leave home without them.”) commercials.

This set of 4 DVDs contains the first half of the first season, which is the television movie pilot (based on a book called Poor, Poor Ophelia which I might just look for now). This is actually a pretty good snack size for my television watching, as larger sets that we have which include complete series daunt me–they will consume my evenings for a couple of months–but this one was only a couple of weeks. I might pick other such volumes up if I see them, as I enjoyed the series.

If you’re not familiar with the series, it has an older police detective, Mike Stone (Malden) partnering with a new detective (Michael Douglas) who is educated/a college boy (not clear: how he came to be a detective; a few years in uniform would have acclimated him to police work and made him less of a college boy than he is in the show, but never mind–maybe that’s covered in the book). They work all kinds of cases, not just homicide–although they get their share of those. It was filmed on location. Well, from the second season on, the entire show was filmed in San Francisco, so you really do get a sense of place. I’ve been to old San Francisco twice in the early part of this century, and even then it was dingier than in this program comes out of the 1960s and shows a little bit of the seemy side. But not as gritty as modern shows, I imagine.

I won’t go episode-by-episode (Wikipedia has a list with short plot summaries). I will say that the story structure varied widely; it was not a formulaic body-detect-solve or body-we know who the bad guy is-detect-solve structures. In some of them, the actual crimes do not occur until the second or third act (each portion of the show is enumerated as Act I through Act IV with an Epilog outro). In others, the crime occurs within the first minute. We have some kidnappings, some assaults, and some homicides. In most cases, Malden wants to talk or negotiate with the criminal. There’s a little fisticuffs and a little gunplay, but most of the time the bad guy is taken into custody.

So it was a pleasure to watch, not only for the sudden nostalgia I’m having for the 1970s. Anemoia, I know, nostalgia for a place you’ve never been because I was very young then and did not have to deal with an adult’s cares, but I remember it as a secure time for young child Brian J. and I remember the look and feel of the time. The film made me want to get a couple of sport coats and return to going Grant which I have fallen out of again because I’m really not going anywhere, really, these days, and when I do, dressing business casual makes one stand out in not a good way.

I could not help but note how the intro kind of matches the style of that for Hawaii Five-O. Both have that sixties/seventies sound to them and feature a lot of quick clips of tourist locations with a lot of zoom effects. Compare:

The later program started earlier and lasted longer, and I watched it in syndication more completely than this program.

As my youngest took his driving test as I started watching, I could not help but chuckle that the drivers followed all of the obscure rules that trip you up on the driver’s test. They turn the wheels to the curb when parking, but that’s easier to remember when you’re parking in San Francisco on a thirty degree incline. When kidnappers nab a guy on the street, they signal to re-enter traffic from the curb. So a little extra for me. The lad passed first try, or I would have made him watch the series with me.

I couldn’t help but notice, also, the guest stars in many of the episodes went on to get series of their own. One episode has Hutch, and then a later episode has Starsky. An early episode has Mr. H., and another has Mrs. H. from Hart to Hart–and the latter episode has Devon Miles from Knight Rider. Mel from Alice is a recurring character as is Dr. Huer from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. So in addition to a bunch of that guys from 1960s and 1970s television, we get people who would go onto some success of their own. Lost, I am sure, on younger viewers. But are there younger viewers? Probably not.

And, yeah, the anemoia is hitting me hard these days, what with all the books from the 1970s I’ve been reading an my earlier excursion into Sha Na Na this summer. I suppose if it all turns out okay, my boys will have a similar sense of the 2020s that my parents probably would not share with their adult perspectives and no assurances.