Lockdown, Lowdown… Ringside Report Looks Back at the TV Show Kojak

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

In the United Kingdom and certainly in my wee house in the West Coast of Scotland, occasionally there was a viewing of an institution. Saturday night after 9pm and Friday evening of the same time would be the time for the milky coffee, the toast and to settle. It was an hour before bedtime and that institution was on the TV before crawling up the stairs.

For a period of time in the 1970’s I got to hear who loved ya baby and watch how many lollipops could be consumed in an hour long episode of Kojak! Telly Savalas on the telly in Scotland and it was an incredible show. There was something about the New York landscape and the crimes which seemed from another world that appealed. And central to that was a man who could do no wrong because his moral code was impeachable.

Over 5 seasons and 118 episodes, Kojak was our moral guide, our compass and a weekly dose of remembering what was right in the world: him.

The premise was simple, a New York Police Department Detective Lieutenant, Theo Kojak, from 1973 to 1978, having taken the time slot on CBS from another one of my favorites, Cannon, would solve crime with his team of crack detectives.

The principal character, Kojak had actually begun life in a film, The Marcus – Nelson Murders, which was based on a true story. It used an original investigation botched due to incompetence and police corruption to give us Savalas playing a composite character of many inspirational policemen, rather than a real person, who came in and solved the case, stopping a miscarriage of justice and hence the film became the pilot, and the moral compass became set.

Swath was even more remarkable was that the fallout from the original case, in the 1960’s, led to the creation by the US Supreme Court of the Miranda Rights.

Filmed in the city in which it was set, Kojak patrolled the streets of Manhattan. With a Greek-American heritage, though white, for me it was the beginning of understanding that there were such things as mixed races.

The lollipop was not an obvious prop at the beginning of the series as Kojak was a smoker. The ban on smoking in 1971 on American television set them a challenge – solved by the lollipops! Though he switched to cigarillos, so I imagine there was some kind of loophole or lollipop hole for them!

Amongst his team were his captain, Frank McNeil (played by Dan Frazer) who was the first of clueless police hierarchy who seemed to be a little dazed at competence, plainclothes Bobby Crocker (played by Kevin Dobson), Stavros (played by Savalas’ own brother, George) and Rizzo (played by Vince Conti) as well as, for a short time, Gil Weaver (played by Roger Robinson).

After five seasons ratings killed it but for us in the UK it was a loss. Having said that, I was so young that I may just have missed it was not on anymore! We did not have repeats on the same way we have now, nor Netflix to download and binge watch so it was all just a blur. But what an exceptional blur!

Demand was high however for a repeat of the characters leading to no fewer than seven movies – two created by CBS and five by ABC. It meant that having started way back in the 1970’s we had the dear old coochy coo on till the start of the 1990’s!

The 21st century was however not going to miss out and in 2005, with Ving Rhames taking on the role, a season of a remake made its presence. For me, however Kojak is one bald headed half Greek dude who sucks on tootsie pops. Nostalgia being what it is can be a fickle friend and whilst having a darkly humored character played by anyone else takes the spirit and even the essence of the man, the visual can be very important. I don’t mind taking liberties with characters when it works – the ne The Equalizer being a case in point which I really like – but there are cultural events with which you ought not to tamper. If you cannot find a half Greek bald guy with charisma to play the role…

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television , you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…

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