Ironside

It's mostly just a cop show. But this one happens to be an update of a show from the late 1960s. In the original Raymond Burr (best known as Perry Mason) is a tough detective confined to a wheelchair, who has a team around him to help him keep solving crimes. The original, in keeping with those times, had a black actor be one of the team. The new show has a black lead, Blair Underwood. It's interesting to me looking in reference material that the original lasted almost eight years. I was away at school without a TV most of those years and did not know how it faired in the ratings. I saw the original premiere and a few other stray episodes the first season though, and thought, compared to its contemporaries, it was complete crap. The character Ironside was kept from actually swearing by the FCC, so he hilariously bellowed "flamin' " this and "flamin' " that all through the episodes. It was a worthy progenitor of the next cop show hit, Mod Squad, which in my book was even crappier. (I knew at the time Mod Squad was a big hit. Had no idea about Ironside.) Fast forward 40 years to the new Ironside's premiere. I thought it was vastly superior to the original, gritty where the original mostly looked silly trying to look gritty. No faux swearing. An actor who seems to fit the part much better, projecting real anger, passion and inner strength, rather than Burr's perpetually grumpy, fat cop. So naturally the critics have panned the new Ironside unmercifully. Just too many gritty cop shows on the air these days, I guess. I think the critics are being a little unfair to this one. But to be honest I have no intention of watching it every week either.