Burke's Law

Burke's Law
Burke's Law 1963 series intro card
Genre	Crime drama
Created by	Frank D. Gilroy Ivan Goff Ernest Kinoy
Starring	Gene Barry
Theme music composer	Herschel Burke Gilbert
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	81
Production
Producer(s)	Aaron Spelling
Associate producer(s)	Richard Newton
Running time	60 mins.
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 20, 1963 – May 1, 1965
Chronology
Related shows	Honey West

Burke's Law is a detective series which ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965 and was revived on CBS in the 1990s. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire Los Angeles Chief of Detectives, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce.

Characters

There were stylistic similarities to Barry's previous series, Bat Masterson, in which he had played the debonair dandy Bat Masterson in the Old West. During the opening credits, as the title flashed onscreen, a woman's voice was heard seductively pronouncing the words "It's Burke's Law!" The title also reflected the character Burke's habit of dispensing wisdom to his underlings in a professorial manner, e.g. "Never ask a question unless you already know the answer. Burke's Law."

The title of each episode started with the words "Who Killed..." with the name or description of the victim (who died in the show's opening minutes) completing it.

In the original series, other characters were Detective Tim Tilson (Gary Conway), Detective Les Hart (Regis Toomey), Sergeant Ames (Eileen O'Neill), and Henry, Burke's Asian chauffeur Leon Lontoc. The character of Tilson was that of a go-getting young man whose ability to find clues and trace references didn't result in his solving the murders, being always outflanked by Burke's cool intuition.

In several episodes Anne Francis appeared as female detective Honey West, which led to a short-lived spin-off series.

Music

The musical score for Burke's Law was largely the work of Herschel Burke Gilbert, whose middle name was coincidentally the same as the character of the series.

History

The role of Amos Burke actually predated Barry's series, having been played by Dick Powell on an episode of The Dick Powell Show in 1961. The first incarnation of the series was produced by Powell's company, Four Star Television.

In the last season of the original, 1965–1966, the series was retitled Amos Burke, Secret Agent, and only seventeen episodes were broadcast instead of the thirty-two of the first two seasons. In this last season, Burke went to work for a secret government agency, but still drove around in his Rolls, which had been discreetly bulletproofed by the agency. The supporting cast of the earlier seasons was dropped.

The revival show

Peter and Amos Burke

In the revival of the show, which ran on CBS from 1994 to 1995, the title again became "Burke's Law" and Burke was back at work as a police detective. In the second incarnation, Burke was assisted by his son, Peter (Peter Barton). The revival, even more than the original program, was widely regarded as being largely camp. The nostalgic revival featured guest appearances by many of Barry's peers from the 1960s Spy-fi genre, including Patrick Macnee (The Avengers), Peter Lupus (Mission: Impossible) and Anne Francis reprising Honey West (albeit renamed "Honey Best").

DVD releases

VCI Entertainment is releasing Burke's Law on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. Season One, Volume One became available on DVD from on April 29, 2008. Season One Volume Two will be released on November 18, 2008. [1]

External links

• Burke's Law at the Internet Movie Database
• Burke's Law (1994) at the Internet Movie Database
• Burke's Law at TV.com
• Burke's Law (1994) at TV.com
• "Gene Barry Fan Page". xmission.com.

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