N.Y.P.D. (TV series)

N.Y.P.D. centers around three New York police detectives – Lieutenant Mike Haines (Jack Warden), Detective Jeff Ward (Robert Hooks), and Detective Johnny Corso (Frank Converse) – who fight a wide range of crimes and criminals. The show features many real New York City locations, as well as episodes based on actual New York City police cases.

• Jack Warden as Lt. Mike Haines
• Robert Hooks as Det. Jeff Ward
• Frank Converse as Det. Johnny Corso
• Ted Beniades as Det. Richie
• Denise Nicholas as Ethel
• Tom Rosqui as Det. Jacobs

The show was produced by Talent Associates, Ltd., a company founded by Alfred Levy and David Susskind. Talent Associates had produced 14 years of the anthology program Armstrong Circle Theatre and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour. David Susskind created N.Y.P.D. with screenwriter Arnold Perl (Cotton Comes to Harlem). Daniel Melnick, executive producer of N.Y.P.D., was a partner with Susskind in Talent Associates and had brought Mel Brooks and Buck Henry together to create the television comedy Get Smart in 1965. Producer Susskind and actor Harvey Keitel would work together again on Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). One of the writers on the series was Lonne Elder, who would later become the first African-American nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar (for the 1972 movie Sounder).

Among the guest stars who appeared in the series were:

• Al Pacino (S02E05; "Deadly Circle of Violence")
• Martin Sheen (S02E08 "The Peep Freak")
• Jon Voight (S01E14; "The Bombers")
• Harvey Keitel (S02E06; "The Shady Lady")
• Jane Alexander (S02E14; "The Night Watch")
• Roy Scheider (S02E19; "Who's Got the Bundle?")
• Sam Waterston (S02E23; "No Day Trippers Need Apply")
• Charles Grodin (S01E06; "Money Man")
• Howard Da Silva (S01E07; "Old Gangsters Never Die")
• Murray Hamilton (S01E24; "The Private Eye Puzzle")
• Charles Durning (S02E01 "Naked in the Streets")

Others include: Robert Alda, Rutanya Alda, Conrad Bain, Philip Bosco, John Cazale, Leslie Charleson, Miriam Colon, Franklin Cover, Matthew Cowles, Blythe Danner, Ossie Davis, Mary Fickett, Ron Gilbert, Scott Glenn, Mark Gordon, Moses Gunn, Graham Jarvis, James Earl Jones, Raul Julia, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Laurence Luckinbill, Nancy Marchand, Bill Macy, Donna McKechnie, Meg Myles, Priscilla Pointer, Andrew Robinson, Esther Rolle, Richard Ward, Louis Zorich, Jill Clayburgh, Jane Elliot, Ralph Waite, Gretchen Corbett

In 1967, N.Y.P.D. was the first television series in America to air an episode with a self-identified gay character ("Shakedown"), which was the opening episode of the series.^[1] The plot centers around the police tracking down a blackmailer who has triggered several suicides by their targeting of gay men. In the course of their investigation, the police also visit a gay rights group, another television first.

N.Y.P.D. scripts featured both black and white people as cops, suspects, and witnesses, an unselfconscious racial blend that would not otherwise be seen for several years on American network television (Room 222 and Hawaii Five-O were among the next series to feature casts situated similarly.)

The series' opening credit sequence, prominently featuring a closeup of a police car emergency light as the vehicle drives through the streets of New York, would later be spoofed in the 1980s comedy series Police Squad! and subsequent movies.