In the mid-80's, former network executive Fred Silverman had reinvented himself as a television producer. With business partner Dean Hargrove, Silverman shepherded a revival of Perry Mason as a series of TV-movies for NBC, rather than CBS.
That initial success led to a gold mine for Silverman & Hargrove, starting with NBC's Matlock (which finished its run on ABC), and followed by their first sale for CBS, Jake & The Fatman.
In a way, you can say that Jake & The Fatman was a reimagining of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, except that J. L. McCabe (William Conrad) was a district attorney instead of a private eye. Conrad had starred in Nero Wolfe a few years earlier in his first post-Cannon project, but it was a bust.
Jake (Joe Penny, ex-Riptide) was the legman for McCabe in much the same way Archie Goodwin was for Wolfe. The series began & finished in Los Angeles, spending some time in Hawaii in between after Magnum, P. I. ended its first run. In all, Fatman ran for five seasons, although it was a mid-season replacement entry for season 2. Either that, or it'd been delayed by the writers' strike in 1988, such that the 2nd season didn't begin until the calendar flipped to 1989.
Fatman also begat Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis: Murder, which began with a pilot episode in the 4th season. As it happened, Fatman came out of a back-door pilot of sorts during Matlock's 1st season, though Conrad, Penny, & Alan Campbell didn't play exactly the same characters, especially Penny, who played a mobster's son on Matlock.
Following is an intro from the 5th season:
It is said CBS made the decision to move the show back to LA halfway through the 4th season, probably to save money. Since Me-TV has Matlock & Diagnosis: Murder on their roster, why not Jake & The Fatman, too?
Rating: B.
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