I was about 8 years old when this went off the air and adult TV series were just starting to come up on my little radar screen. I have no recollection of ever watching this private detective show until I caught it on the American Life channel (before it turned into the Combat! Channel and this along with many other fine shows disappeared). I knew nothing about the show but somehow knew about Edd Byrnes/"Kookie".
This show rocks! It is early American television at its best. Now I've only seen about 3 episodes but they are just so damn good. One, starring a very talented Bert Convey, spent almost the entire show on the guest actors, in fact Efrem didn't appear until about two-thirds of the way through and was seen sparingly after that. In another episode Efrem dramatically freed Americans in East Berlin and Smith was barely seen. Wouldn't ever see that sort of flexibility in story-telling on a series today. Some of the plot elements are overdone, cheesy and/or unbelievable, but that just adds to the camp factor.
The two leads are great and play well off each other in super cool fashion, while Byrnes earns his rep as their sometimes assistant. Great stuff, wish it still appeared somewhere on the digital dial.
This show rocks! It is early American television at its best. Now I've only seen about 3 episodes but they are just so damn good. One, starring a very talented Bert Convey, spent almost the entire show on the guest actors, in fact Efrem didn't appear until about two-thirds of the way through and was seen sparingly after that. In another episode Efrem dramatically freed Americans in East Berlin and Smith was barely seen. Wouldn't ever see that sort of flexibility in story-telling on a series today. Some of the plot elements are overdone, cheesy and/or unbelievable, but that just adds to the camp factor.
The two leads are great and play well off each other in super cool fashion, while Byrnes earns his rep as their sometimes assistant. Great stuff, wish it still appeared somewhere on the digital dial.