N.Y.P.D. MARATHON
Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
I don’t know why Decades has decided to go on such a strong run of weekend marathons of late – but please, Decades, keep them coming. From noon ET today for the rest of the weekend, Decades is filling the weekend with episodes of the little-televised, not-currently-streaming 1967-69 ABC series N.Y.P.D. This isn’t the 1990s David Milch cop show, NYPD Blue. It’s a TV rarity in more ways than one: a half-hour drama series, shot mostly on location in and around New York, starring Frank Converse, Jack Warden and Robert Hooks. Hooks, one of the first Black co-stars of a drama series after Bill Cosby broke through in NBC’s I Spy, plays a NY detective who – in one amazingly bold episode, “Encounter on a Rooftop” (shown by Decades at 9:30 a.m. ET Sunday), is shot mistakenly by a young, bigoted white cop. NYPD produced just under 50 episodes in its two-season run, and Decades is showing them all this weekend – many of them twice. The premiere episode launches the marathon today at noon ET, and the crown jewel arrives Sunday at 11 a.m. ET, with the “Deadly Circle of Violence” episode from October 1968. That episode marks the screen debuts of two young actors who would make major impacts to cinema in the 1970s and beyond: Jill Clayburgh and Al Pacino (pictured).