Barnaby Jones, O Detetive

Buddy Epson & Lee Merriwether- very good acting & put together with Quinn Martin another winning combo. Actually, this show was CBS payback to Buddy who was extremely upset with CBS for canceling the Beverly Hillbillies while they were still a hit show. He kind of felt like he lost his family there & felt the execs at the network were a little nuts.

Buddy was right about that. This show is well done & CBS had raided ABC to get Quinn Martin to do this & Cannon. CBS wanted to change it's country image & these shows became a moderately successful way to do that. Trouble is CBS execs wasted more of the number 1 networks success & by the 1908's after they forced Walter Cronkrite to retire & dumbed down & tarted up their news with Dan Rather, they had pretty much become a second rated network.

This show's success along with MASH & a few others kept them on top through the 1970's. Buddy Ebsen was so talented that he could play almost anybody & make them believable. He comes off here as a fine detective & Lee Merriwether came into her own during this show.

Ebsen is one of the few TV actors to be part of successful shows in the 1950's, 60's, & 70's. It is a fitting tribute to such a unique talent who made his first splash in movies in the 1930's. He has an enduring legacy and this show is the last piece of it.

Another one of Quinn Martin's great 70's TV series, as a previous user said this show did come of as unintentionally funny at times due to the advanced age of the always entertaining Buddy Ebsen! I remember there would always be a scene in almost every episode where Mr Ebsen would stiffly run after someone. I kept thinking as a little kid that Buddy Ebsen looked soooo Skinny and frail that a puff of air could knock him down! Yet despite all of this, the show held our viewing interest for six seasons, perhaps we were drawn to the subliminal message that milk is good for your bones because it was obviously helping Barnaby Jones not to snap like a matchstick!

A tall, mop-haired, drawling hoofer in musicals of the thirties, a respected stage star/playwright in the forties, Fess Parker's grizzled sidekick in "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier", in the fifties, and the rustic patriarch of "The Beverly Hillbillies" in the sixties...Each decade introduced a new, successful direction in the career of multi-talented 'Renaissance Man', Buddy Ebsen (1908-2003). The seventies would be no exception, as then 65-year old Ebsen would bring his wisdom, sense of justice, and undeniable charm to one of the decade's most popular, if formulaic detective shows, Quinn Martin Productions' "Barnaby Jones" (1973-1980).

As a retired cop, the murder of his son, a successful private investigator, would bring the elder Jones back, not only to solve the crime, but to continue his son's business, aided by his daughter-in-law, Betty (the beautiful Lee Meriwether, 38). Barnaby was a prickly old codger, more care-worn and serious than Ebsen's 'Jed Clampett', and each episode would focus more on the perpetrators of the crimes he would ultimately solve, than on his personal life, which would give the program an almost "Columbo"-like slant. There was nearly always an 'innocent' to save, and many episodes would climax in shootouts and foot chases, where the ancient Jones would always 'run down' the younger criminals (making the series a favorite target of contemporary humorists).

The addition of young cousin Jedediah Romano ("Call me J.R.") Jones, in the person of 27-year old Mark Shera, in 1976, while geared to attract younger viewers, actually improved the series, as it lightened the overall 'tone', and gave Ebsen a 'student' to give 'Yoda-like' advice to. Together, Barnaby, Betty, and J.R. made quite a team!

While the series would air it's final episode in 1980, and Ebsen would move on to great success as a painter and author over the next two decades, he would revive the detective in his final film appearance, in the big screen version of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, in 1993. Barnaby Jones, as prickly as ever, would still be taking cases at 85!

This is one of my all time favorite private eye shows. Barnaby Jones was probably the last person you would think of as a private investigator, but he mixed good old fashioned detective work with all the then modern techniques (just check out the lab in his office). Lee Meriwether was perfectly cast as his daughter-in-law/secretary Betty and after a few years they brought in the muscle in the form of Barnaby's cousin J.R.(don't call me Jedidiah) Jones. Too bad they don't show reruns of this show anymore. It was an all time classic.

I know it's not profound TV, but I enjoyed the early murder plots of the show and Barnaby's way of making remarks that rattled the perpetrators (like a watered-down Columbo sometimes). I just bought Season One in DVD, and I enjoy seeing many big-name actors appearing and looking them up to see whether they're still alive and/or working. I will probably not purchase seasons beyond four or five, because, unlike some reviewers, I was disgruntled with the arrival of Barnaby's nephew, whose presence made the stories more contrived. I was annoyed when the later programs presented cases in which Secretary Betty was involved -- both contrived and unrealistic. The one-man show did it for me.