29 Years Ago In TIME

TV crime dramas are multiplying this season. Not all are as cuddly as Columbo, but the trend is a familiar one, dating back at least as far as TIME's 1973 cover on the profusion of COP SHOWS.

A crowded police-court docket, said Mark Twain, is the surest sign that trade is brisk and money plenty. The current season would seem to bear him out, with a slight twist. There is brisk betting and plentiful money riding on a schedule that is up to its antenna in crooks and crime, cops and private eyes, crusading attorneys and special investigators. In all, there are 29 crime shows on the network schedules, accounting for roughly 21 of the 63 prime-time hours each week ... Attempts to vary that formula have stretched as far as TV writers' imaginations can fetch. The good guys come in wondrous array: in uniform (Adam-12, The Rookies), in disguise (Toma), in court (Perry Mason, Owen Marshall) and in hayseed (Hawkins, McCloud). They are black (Shaft, Tenafly), elderly (The Snoop Sisters), bald (Kojak), Polish (Banacek), portly (Cannon), paralytic (Ironside) and partly computer (The Six Million Dollar Man). They work alone (Mannix), in pairs (The Streets of San Francisco, Faraday and Company, McMillan & Wife) and in precision-movement teams (Chase, Hawaii Five-O). --TIME, Nov. 26, 1973