Banacek

Polish-American Thomas Banacek, antiques collector, insurance agent, and amateur sleuth, appeared in this enjoyable series in the early 1970s. Played by the lovely George Peppard, pre-A Team. Each week he tries to solve a mystery, on commission of course, with the help of his rare bookseller friend, Felix (the peerless Murray Matheson), and his driver, Jay (the excellent Ralph Manza). Sometimes we got girl power too in the shape of feisty Carlie Kirkland (Christine Belford). Banacek slides his way through each case with ease - whether tackling disappearances, drug running, gold bullion disappearances, and the like. He usually ends up with a pretty girl as well who he's met while he's been investigating. Absolute rubbish but I loved it. And his catchphrase 'There's an old Polish proverb' must have suited Peppard as he wheeled it out again in his Chinatown TV movies some years later (as 'There's an old Chinese proverb', of course).

A great look back at TV show history and the times. Classic list of actors in every episode.

Okay, Banacek wasn't exactly a P.I.-he was an investigator for the Boston Insurance Company who tracked down stolen goods for a generous commission. This show starred the late George Peppard ten years before he entertained us all as Hannibal in the A-Team.

Before I first saw this series, I thought to myself, "An insurance investigator-how boring." This series proved me wrong. Yes, Banacek was an insurance investigator but it was the items he tracked down that provided the entertainment. They were never small relatively cheap items, always something costing millions of dollars. In one of my favourite episodes, Banacek tried to track down a missing football player (yes, really).

Fans of Columbo will like this show as Banacek solved his cases whilst the rest of us scratched our heads wondering what was going on. There was a fair bit of action at times but it was the way in which Banacek would systematically solve the case that provided the bulk of the entertainment.

All in all, a fantastic show.

George Peppard starred as Thomas Banacek, a private insurance investigator of Polish descent based in Boston who became involved in various insurance fraud cases involving art, books, coins, horses, etc. He demanded and received a big fee for his services, which made him a very wealthy man, and enabled him to live well indeed, and he was quite the natural ladies man, in just about every episode! He was helped by his sidekick/chauffeur Jay Drury, played by Ralph Manza, whose theories about the cases were always wrong, and also Murray Matheson as Felix Mulholland, a book seller who provided Banacek with vital information he needed to solve his cases, all of which were very entertaining.

This had a memorably breezy theme, and was great fun to watch. Sadly, this only lasted two years and 17 episodes, because Peppard quit for personal reasons, which was a great pity, since this show could have gone on as long as "Columbo" did.

"Banacek" has also been aired in polish TV during seventies. Polish people were partly proud, partly disappointed watching these series. People were laughing watching it and started to make jokes about this TV series. Main reason of jokes were "typical polish" proverbs often cited by investigator.

I can assure you - none of his proverbs really exist in Polish. All of them were invented by script writers. Many years later, when someone tried to "invent old tradition" saying something which sounded archaic but in fact was invented by him people used to say "Do not be such Banaczek".

Btw. proper polish spelling of his name is "Banaczek" and should be pronounced as "Bana-check"