At a time when Angela Lansbury's wildly successful "Murder She Wrote" was winding down, and Dick Van Dyke was in the throes of his late-career resurgence with the equally popular "Diagnosis: Murder", CBS, smartly recognizing the trend of uncomplicated, viewer-friendly mysteries that skewed toward an older demographic, rolled out a reboot of Gene Barry's famous Aaron Spelling-produced '60's series "Burke's Law"! The fact that Spelling had been able to consistently reinvent his product throughout the years to continue producing hit shows marketed toward a younger audience only helped him in the creation of this new "Burke's" endeavor! The fact that star Gene Barry was still a commanding presence in his later years greatly bolstered the seamless execution of this reboot! The new "Burke's Law" benefited from the apparently unlimited budget Spelling threw into the first year of all of his shows! He could place in guest-star roles just about any of the esteemed older actors of one-time prominence, and mix them with the popular younger actors who'd appeared in one of his many nighttime soaps! The solutions to the various "mysteries" were largely, arbitrarily resolved, but the real fun lay in Gene Barry's infectiously fun lead turn, ably supported by his TV "son"---the reliably stoic Peter Barton! This "Burke's Law" reboot was, to my mind, every bit the satisfying, cotton candy-mystery TV puffery that these other hit CBS mystery series were! It was far from amazing, but it was genuinely enjoyable as a latter-day example of pure formula TV made uniquely entertaining and compellingly watchable by all the ingredients that comprised the singular imprint of an Aaron Spelling production!
