Writers apparently love PIs.
From Andy Richter (Andy Richter Controls the Universe) to Dixon Hill (Star Trek: The Next Generation). Feel free to give other examples.
Yet, for my entire life, I have yet to need to hire or interact with a private detective in any way, shape, or form. Is that unusual, or do most people use PI services? (This last part would’ve gone in IMHO, but I get tired of being mod-slapped for doing that)
I think Moonlighting had a few. Remington Steel too.
For PI shows, there’s The Rockford Files and everything else.
Magnum PI
Hart to Hart (?)
A-Team (sort of)
Steele.
Are you counting shows that are specifically ABOUT PIs or not? Because we could populate a pretty long list just with those.
Peter Gunn
Magnum, P.I.
The Rockford Files
Simon & Simon
Banacek
Cannon
Mannix
Spenser: For Hire
Does Ellery Queen count? He made his living as a mystery writer rather than from his investigating. But any excuse to mention the Ellery Queen TV show and I’ll do it. Wish they hadn’t cancelled it after one season.
Nero Wolfe (there have been, to my knowledge, two different series)
I’ve never needed a P.I. personally, but I used to know a guy, a few apartments down from me, who was a P.I. Every now and again we’d have a few beers out by the pool and shoot the breeze. No cool name like “Remington Steele”; I believe his name was Gary Somethingreallycommon.
Apparently, about 95% of his business was people, both men and women, who believed their spouses were cheating on them. Gary’s main duty was to keep tabs on the suspected spouse’s comings (cummings?) and goings. He did this glamorous, exciting job by sitting in his car with a camera for hours on end and eating a ton of fast food and snacks. Ol’ Gary was about 5’7" and weighed an easy 350 lbs.
I’m sure with the easy access to decent writers in the television industry you could make the lifestyle of a janitor seem like a glamorous, adventurous, non-stop thrill ride.
I also once had a chance to chat with a retired PI. He laughed at a reference to a “Simon & Simon” episode where the brothers stated that they didn’t do any divorce work. This guy claimed that 90% of his work was divorces, and that any PI who refused divorce work would be out of business overnight. (The other 10% was tracking down bad checks and other deadbeats.)
Pushing Daisies.
Now I’ll never know if Emerson finds his daughter.
:smack:
How could I have missed THIS show?!
Face it, jayjay. You suck.
Veronica Mars.
No TV PI does anything like a PI in real life. Their cases are usually catching cheating spouses, finding missing persons, making background checks, serving subpoenas, performing surveillance for insurance companies and all types of mundane tasks.
I read a book a few years ago describing the life of a real PI. The most memorable thing was that he had to keep empty jars in his car because he couldn’t take bathroom breaks when staking out a house.
Of course, a PI makes for good drama, but even back in the 1940s the writers knew they were creating a fantasy (Raymond Chandler once said that his Philip Marlowe would never be a PI in real life). The closest thing to an accurate portrayal was the PI in House.
Well, in a huge city like NYC, in the 30’s, with corrupt PD and all, I could see one PI making a living off murder and high profile “must be kep quiet” theft and kidnapping cases. So, I can buy Nero Wolfe. That’s a historical series, today.
But I know a lot of cops, and today, any PI or “concerned private citizen” messing around a lot in real crime would find his ass in jail and his license pulled. They mostly do divorce, missing persons, insurance work, and maybe industrial espionage.
The whole thing is that people like watching shows about crime and foiling crime. The police are constrained and some people don’t like the Police. So it is PIs.
We also have:
Monk & Psych.
Retired PD or not, the SFPD would never use Monk.
What did the “PI” stand for?
You mean Andy Barker, PI? I forget what he did in Controls the Universe, but I don’t think he solved any mysteries.
Heck, Jessica Fletcher doesn’t go looking for murders to solve, they just happen all around her.
Pretty Impressive. It refers largely to his mustache.
Richie Brockelman, Private Eye (Rockford Files spinoff)
The Hawaiian Eye
Encyclopedia Brown! (3 episodes)