Pilot

The show started off good with handsome Michael Woods as "Jack Cleary" a private eye with a lot of charisma and a "Clint Eastwood" voice. Josh Brolin played his young informer and (sort of) side kick who helped with cases. The locations were perfect as were the cars and actors.The show, about Hollywood in the 1950's, had tons of possibilities with an excellent pilot. The first episodes showed promise but it seemed to keep going down hill, script wise, as the season progressed. ABC did nothing to publicize the show and Brandon Tartikoff, who headed the network, made some lame remarks about one of the actors, which was totally unfounded. The show was canceled after one season.

I never understood why "Private Eye" didn't make it.

If anyone has this series on VHS or DVD. I would be interested in purchasing a copy.

The series is very well written and because of the time in which the show was written, I loved the time in in which the show takes place. I really loved the idea of the Private Eye and Michael Woods plays the part to perfection.

Josh Brolin plays his part good and the office girl, Dottie that works for Cleary does also.

I think the show had a lot of style and a really 'retro deco neon drenched noirish 50's/early 60's dragnet look' that was really great. "Private Eye" had a nu-wave 'rebel without a cause' kind of feel,complete with a 'unshaven trench coat wearing cigarette smokin' gumshoe' type and a 'black leather jacketed, blue jeans' white t-shirt wearin',engineer booted,ducktailed,chopped black 50's hotrod mercury.

Thanks, Gale

now I'm not sure when this episode played,i think it was at some point during its first several months or so,but in said episode,Chris Isaak over dubbed his vocals for a character named billy ray or some such thing in an episode about payola,murder & rock-a-billy music. Jim youngs,of'the wanderers' & 'footloose'fame,played the twanging' hic-upping'teen idol type,by the way,the actor is also actor john savage's brother of 'the deer hunter' fame and I'm pretty sure the Chris Isaak music was off his first two records,'silver tone' & 'Chris Isaak' respectively. I'm also pretty sure the other music,i.e. background music and such,was played by Joe Jackson & Todd Rundgren,being that this show was also from the makers of 'crime story' another series about the same kind of genre that was out about the same time and by the way,i thought both shows had a lot of style and a really 'retro deco neon drenched noirish 50's/early 60's dragnet look' that was really cool. "private eye" having a nu-wave 'rebel with out a cause' kind of feel,complete with a 'unshaven trench coat wearing cigarette smoking' hard drinking' gumshoe type and a 'black leather jacketed,blue jeans, white t-shirt wearing',engineer boot wearing,duck tailed,chopped black 50's hotrod mercury driving',shotgun & switchblade toting',greasey juvenile delinquent' type....it fit the 86/87 stray cats video MTV thing that was popular then for a brief time. "crime story" of course was chalk full of big late 50's/early 60's Oldsmobile's,Cadillac's,Lincoln's,Buick's,Pontiac's,Desoto's,Chrysler crown imperial's and other assorted 'enormously finned automobiles as big as Texas,tough talking' detectives spouting' mickey spillaneisms every other word too usually trembling little wise guy punk types and you couldn't tell who the good guys or the bad guys were,cause they all dressed in black,right down to the tench coats and pork pie hats,until a gun fight broke out that is and a handful of guys would go down in a hail of gunfire and since the good guys always won,ala 'dragnet' & 'highway patrol',you'de know that the bad guys were the punks on the ground all bullet riddled, kinda cool,huh?