Reframe: Revisiting a TV Classic in ‘Barney Miller’

As an adolescent, Barney Miller was a staple in my household. If memory serves correctly (always a bit of a guessing game), I first encountered the show in syndication, which meant you could watch the comedic (and sometimes quite serious) machinations of the twelfth precinct detective squad in NYC pretty much every weeknight. While I enjoyed the show as a youth, it’s always dicey to go back and look at a series that started way back in 1976 and see how it holds up. We live in a new golden age of TV, where the work done on the small screen is no longer seen as lesser when compared to film. That was not the case in 1976. For the most part, back then, you were either a TV actor or a film actor, and the latter was held in far higher esteem than the former. 

During these slower days of the first quarter of the new year, there just isn’t as much prestige TV or film to watch unless you are catching up on shows and films you missed from the previous year. Being pretty caught up and looking for something to pass the time, I came by the recommendation of Barney Miller from one of the streaming services. 

Feeling a bit nostalgic, but also a little trepidatious, I decided to hit play on the pilot for this 47-year-old sitcom that I loved so much in my younger days. What I discovered in revisiting the show astonished me. So, while the Reframe space has always been set aside for films, I decided that, for the first time, maybe it would be useful to take advantage of this historical column for a television show. So, here we are. 

So, what could be so astonishing about a nearly half century old sitcom about a squad of undermanned detectives working out of a rundown building in an era of high crime, high inflation, and political unrest?

In short, everything. 

Barney Miller was the rare show of its era to comment on subjects affecting the days the characters lived in. Among the issues the series covered during its run from 1975 to 1982 were sexuality, race, gender, nuclear power, politics, economics, and freedom of speech, all in admirable fashion. Everyone on this remarkably diverse and progressive show, from the cops to the lawbreakers were treated like people who were worthy of being seen. 

It’s a show with relevance that extends well beyond its time. Who wouldn’t want to think that a detective squad full of officers like those in the 12th precinct still exist? Maybe the more depressing question is, did they ever exist outside of this show? I don’t know, but I certainly want to believe.

There are two recurring gay characters  who on occasion run afoul of the law. And while one character (Stan “Wojo” Wojciehowicz) is notably homophobic, he’s not viciously so. Wojo is just a big lug who is foolish enough to ask a gay man why he didn’t try harder to be straight. And in the cluelessness of his question, we are told that being gay is not a choice by the character Wojo is addressing. Wojo may still not fully understand once the conversation ends, but he walks away from the discussion clearly thinking about something that he does not understand. 

I suspect that many members of the audience felt the same way taking in the episode. This gift of thoughtfulness is in large part due to the writing and the humane perspective the show takes towards both officers and the criminals they interface with. 

Perhaps the most powerful moment in the show’s history involves the squad’s one black detective, Ron Harris (superbly played by Ron Glass), being shot at by two white uniformed cops who assumed he was a criminal. When Harris is told that the follow up to the incident will go “by the book,” Harris rages, saying “…and the book was written by the man!” The moment is powerful enough to resonate in our current day, but thinking that this episode aired in the ‘70s, well, it feels almost revolutionary upon reflection. 

Often, issues of race were touched on with subtlety and humor. There’s a running joke about how Detective Nick Yamana is often mistaken for being Chinese when he is in fact Japanese. Whenever Yamana corrects someone who mislabels his background it is done with a joke, but it’s the kind of joke that sticks to you. It matters that Yamana is Japanese and not Chinese. When one character complains about feeling like they are living in Orwell’s 1984, Yamana replies, “or 1942”: a stealthy quip about the Japanese internment camps (Soo and his family were real life internees) in America that Roosevelt created during World War Two.

At the same time, none of the detectives on the squad are presented as perfect human beings. Yamana had a gambling problem, Harris is often more interested in his efforts to write novels than he is his police work, Fish (the great Abe Vigoda) is miserable about facing down mandatory retirement (the episode that details his last day is truly heartbreaking), Detective Arthur Dietrich (a one-of-kind Steve Landesberg) is a puzzling funnel of knowledge that may be delivered in deadpan, but hides the fact that Dietrich (who briefly attended law school and med school) sees himself as an underachiever, and Wojo is habitually late and commitment-phobic when it comes to the many women he squires.

At the center of this tempest stands Hal Linden as the title character of the show. In the long annals of episodic television there have been few more dignified, pitch-perfect straight man performances than the one delivered here by Linden. He is the reason all of the colorful characters around him can play and be eccentric because he is the ballast that grounds the show in reality. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend a paragraph on the wonderful writing of the show by show creator Danny Arnold and his team. It’s not just that the scripts were smart, and thoughtful, they were often incredibly specific in their choice of words. The most oft-spoken line in the show is the simple phrase, “take it easy.” As officers dealing with victims and criminals under stress, getting them to calm down was a common part of every episode. Hell, sometimes the officers needed to be told to “take it easy” themselves by Barney (who I’m sure said that line the most). I would argue that if you were to binge Barney Miller as I did, and take a drink every time a character said that phrase, you’d be under the table within an hour. 

I just realized that at this point, I may be making Barney Miller sound like the most serious and dramatic sitcom ever, but do not doubt that there were plenty of laughs separating the pathos. I could go on endlessly about the episode in which Wojo unknowingly brings in some hash-laced brownies that get half the squad sky high. I won’t do that, because you really should watch it yourself, but let me just say that Jack Soo’s reading of the lines, “Mushy, mushy” and “Have you seen my legs?” is pure comic gold.

Barney Miller ran for eight seasons on ABC. After a slow start, it soon became a ratings hit and a critical darling. The show lived in the top ten of the Nielsen Ratings and scored 32 Emmy nominations.

Over the course of its eight seasons, every single regular detective who was on the show for more than two seasons received at least one Emmy nomination (perhaps most notable is Glass’s nomination, a rarity at the time for a black actor not attached to a Norman Lear series) except poor Jack Soo, who died of esophageal cancer during the fifth season. 

Twice the show tried to replace Soo with new detectives, but eventually they gave up and simply enlarged the roles of the remaining characters, particularly that of the diminutive uniformed officer Carl Levitt, who’s height-challenged nature kept him from being promoted to plainclothes detective (until the lovely final episode). 

In watching the show a second time all these many years later, I found a bit of sadness in the viewing. While I took great pleasure in the episodes themselves, it hurt to think that none of the actors associated with the show (aside from Linda Lavin who left the show after season one to headline the smash success Alice) ever came close to achieving the sort of success they experienced on Barney Miller. 

Linden, who made his pre-Barney bones on the stage, winning a Tony for the musical The Rothschilds was chosen to lead a handful of series after Barney Miller came to an end, but none ever made it through a full second season. While Linden was a gifted, versatile actor, it seems audiences could never see him in any other role. I guess Linden’s biggest fault was being too damn good at playing Barney Miller. 

Glass earned a measure of cult fame by appearing on the sci-fi show Firefly and its subsequent film Serenity, but otherwise was largely relegated to guest appearances on television. 

Max Gail remains active to this day, but like Glass has largely performed in guest spots and small film roles. 

Abe Vigoda’s Fish got his own spin-off series (called simply Fish) that lasted for two years, and fans of The Godfather will always remember him for his work on that film, but had few credits of note after Barney. 

Landesberg, who got his start in standup (I see him as a precursor to the bone-dry comics Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg) never escaped the shadow of the oh so particular and peculiar Arthur Dietrich. Interesting side note on Landesberg: he exaggerated his age down by nine years for the entirety of his acting career. In one episode Dietrich is asked how old he is. Dietrich replies “29.” He was 38 at the time.

Before becoming a regular cast member on Barney Miller, Ron Carey was a favorite of Mel Brooks, appearing in three of the spoof master’s films (Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and History of the World Part I), but after his turn as Officer Levitt, Carey was never so fortunate again. 

Gregory Sierra, who played Detective Chano Amanguale for the first two seasons of the show stayed active until 2006, largely in bit parts and guest spots too. While Sierra’s time on the show was short, his breakdown in his modest apartment over a TV dinner after killing two men in the line of duty is unforgettable. 

They all peaked here and never came remotely close to such heights again.

Maybe that’s why the finale hit me so hard after binging 170 episodes over the last month. When it was over, it wasn’t just over, it was all over. For everyone. In that fabled finale, Dietrich tells the crew that he loves them. Harris points out that “something special happened here.” Levitt tries to speak but ends up burying his head into Barney’s chest (which I don’t mind telling you absolutely slayed me), and lunkhead Wojo states that while we may never see each other again, they will all take a piece of each other with them. If that all sounds dreadfully corny, please know that’s the fault of this writer, because somehow it isn’t. Maybe it’s because all of the actors stay perfectly in character and their words and actions feel completely authentic.

Harris was right. Something special did happen here in this grimy precinct over eight seasons. Barney Miller is the rare show that never failed or tailed off meekly as it met its end. In fact, ABC never actually canceled the show. Danny Arnold ended the program because he didn’t want the show to start repeating itself. He and these remarkable actors left us wanting something more. 

What else could you possibly ask for?

Barney Miller is available for streaming now on Amazon Prime.