Adam-12 was a television program which ran from 1968 until 1975 on NBC. The program concentrated on the daily activities of a pair of Los Angeles police officers, veteran Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and rookie Jim Reed (Kent McCord), and to a lesser extent Sergeant William "Mac" MacDonald (William Boyett). The show was produced by Jack Webb, who also was behind Dragnet and Emergency!. The series was nominally considered a spin-off of Webb's Dragnet 1967, and the Reed and Malloy characters appeared on episodes of the parent program.

Story settings

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The officers worked out of the Central Division of the LAPD, but the show used situations from real LAPD case files and thus was not set in any one area of the city. The title of the show is derived from the radio car unit number of the duo, 1 (for Central Division), A(dam) to designate it as a two man patrol, and 12 to designate their patrol area. However, the moniker was generally thought to refer to the number of their patrol car, and in recognition of this, beginning in 1971 the vehicles used were marked with the number 012. The outdoor filming was done primarily in the North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Studio City, and Hollywood Hills sections of Los Angeles (and in close proximity to Universal Studios), although the exteriors of the station house were actually of the newly completed Rampart Division station of the Los Angeles Police Department in Hollywood.

Episodes from Adam-12 and Dragnet have been used for training purposes by police academies in the United States, especially when teaching recruits correct handcuffing procedures, as the camera often zoomed in closely when the officers were in the act of handcuffing suspects. As was Jack Webb's practice, other minor facets of day-to-day police practices were also accurately portrayed, from hand signals used by officers to the methods used in field interviews, and even such details as routinely locking the doors of the patrol car before leaving it unattended to interview victims and witnesses.

The police radio used on this series is an actual radio used by the LAPD in the 1960s and 1970s, with the call sign KMA-367. The dispatcher was also a real-life LAPD dispatcher, Shaaron Claridge. Badges used on the show were actual LAPD shields, numbers 744 for Malloy and 2430 for Reed, which were loaned by the Office of the Chief of Police, a practice which had begun when Dragnet moved from radio to television.

Police vehicles used included the 1968 and 1969 Plymouth Belvedere, 1971 Plymouth Satellite and 1972 AMC Matador. To ensure authenticity, executive producer Jack Webb acquired the cars as part of LAPD fleet purchases.

In the pilot episode, Malloy is disillusioned when his partner is killed in the line-of-duty trying to foil an armed robbery. Malloy decides to resign from the department, but is persuaded to stay on and train a new partner: rookie Officer Jim Reed, fresh out of the police academy. Reed has a lot of potential, but is green and overeager. At the end of the episode, Reed disobeys Malloy's instructions but succeeds in arresting several armed persons. Malloy yells at him. However the watch commander, Malloy's one-time training officer, reminds him he was once an eager young rookie. Malloy takes it on himself to mold Reed into one of Los Angeles' finest (which, as evidenced by later episodes, he does).

A 1970 episode, "Elegy for a Pig", detailed Malloy's earlier relationship with his best friend from the Academy (Mark Goddard), starting from the night he was killed and thinking back to their shared experiences before ending with his funeral. Among some of the novel features of the episode was that it had no music over the opening and end credits, and there was also no dialogue in the episode except for Malloy's narration.

A typical episode involved Reed and Molloy as they went about their daily beat, with incidents ranging from humorous to deadly serious. Sometimes, a common incident or theme is explored throughout the episode and/or incidents therein; others focused on mistakes of rookie (and oftentimes, older) officers.

In later years, Reed was granted first-class officer status (and Malloy was also promoted), and episodes centered on their maturing skills and relationship.

The paramedics from another Webb creation, Emergency! crossed over onto the show as well, although one episode of Emergency! involved a paramedic watching Adam-12 as a TV show.

After a long syndication run, the show found a new audience in the 1980s and 1990s via airings on Nick at Nite and TV Land. However, it has since been pulled from wide television distribution since the Jack Webb Estate owns the rights to this series, although it presently runs in Canada on DejaView. Original series distributor Universal Pictures (under license from the Webb Estate) has released the first season of Adam-12 on DVD and via iTunes.

A remake was attempted in 1989, starring Ethan Wayne, Peter Parros and Miguel Fernandes, but this version entitled The New Adam-12 only ran twelve episodes. It aired in tandem with The New Dragnet.

=Trivia=

• Kent McCord makes a cameo appearance on Batman as a rookie policeman who wants to give the Batmobile a ticket for illegal parking.
• In 1990, Martin Milner and Kent McCord were reunited in a show called Nashville Beat. Although their characters were not Malloy and Reed, they were policemen, formerly based in Los Angeles.
• Two of Martin Milner's children appeared in episodes of Adam-12. Andrew Milner was a mini-bike stunt rider for Johnny Whitaker in the episode "Northeast Division"(1973). Amy Milner appeared in the episode "Victim of the Crime" (1975).
• Pete Malloy's birthdate is March 17 (Log 111).

External Links

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• The Martin Milner Archives - fan site, with a biography, photos and text of numerous articles about the series
• IMDB Page

1960s TV shows in the United States | 1970s TV shows in the United States | 1980s TV shows in the United States | Crime television series | NBC network shows | NBC Universal Television shows

Adam-12 (1968)