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).

George Peppard WAS the show. Short hair when long hair was cool, wealthy and Bostonian, a ladies man with no equal, and the ability to solve impossible thefts for the insurance reward money. He was the man to see when all else failed. I still watch the re-runs when I get the chance. Sadly, too few shows were made. It was one of the four rotating Mystery Movies on NBC for a time. Supposedly, George Peppard walked away from a successful series because of the grind of the show. He was in nearly every scene and had to do voice overs too. Or else, one problem with the show that may have led to the decision to end the series was that, although entertaining and having great characters, the crimes were starting to get derivative and easier for the viewer to know the general solution to the problem in hand.

The inspiration for this show, for me, was the movie, THE THOMAS CROWNE AFFAIR. Take the important bits of the movie, a brilliant crime, Boston, wealth, the upper-crust life style, an insurance detective, and change the star from the thief to the recovery expert and you have the TV series, BANACEK. Of course, the added "hook" was making him Polish. This brand of Polish was the antithesis of every joke you've ever heard.

It would have been nice had George Peppard made some BANACEK REVISITED shows before he died. Like the NEW PERRY MASON, they would have been welcomed by his many fans. Peppard owned the role. Someone may play a similar role again, but they will not re-create the BANACEK mystique. George Peppard put his mark on that character for all time.......

"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"

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 sexist? More a case of the show seeing men and women as they are before political-correctness forced us to publicly pretend otherwise. Very liberating to go back and watch it. The only real flaw with the show was too much outdoor shooting in obvious Southern California locations (mountains in the background, LA smog, semi-arid landscapes that would be at home on Columbo, industrial and small business areas with Emergency and Adam-12 written all over them, and signs with names like "Pacific Metal Company") and not enough in the Boston area. You get a heavy dose of real Boston footage in the opening credits (and it looks like they did some filming in the city) but a lack of studio money no doubt kept them from going east more than they did, but a great show otherwise! I still enjoy watching Banacek solve those cases while verbally dueling with Jay, Felix, and his competition from the insurance companies.