tonyspencer

This was one of the best shows ever made for TV. Full of mystery and intrigue and twists and turns. Compulsive viewing. I was lucky I saw this in the UK. They might have got the episode order wrong, I can't remember, but it at least was on at a regular time every week. My girlfriend and I got hooked from the trailer in, and neither of us is a big fan of American series normally.

After the pilot, we knew this was something special. We missed a couple of episodes, and it made you sad and mad for a week missing those ones lol.

Great casting, superb acting. Gary Cole was absolutely brilliant, better even than his role as Custer. Lucas Black turned in an amazing performance for a kid, and Paige Turco was at her best too since Party of Five. And Nick Searcy of course, as the Sheriff's long suffering sidekick.

Yes, there were some confusing and perplexing bits, which I presume would have been explained later, and no doubt would have been in a later series. That made the ending weak, and you could tell they'd killed it. Made us go WHAT? Why did they do that with one of the best shows ever? Shoot the exec.

I thought this was a great show, and one of the few comedies that has successfully crossed the Atlantic to the UK. Good casting.

Sure it's a lot of kids doing mildly bad things, but the difference is having a cop for a foster parent. He could have got rid of them at any time, but the kids opened his eyes, and he put morals across in a mild way. Abe's performance was superb.

His reactions every time there was a new problem were truly great, his expressions, and mannerisms. Perhaps a little moralistic, but it gave a good account of accommodating differences, and seeing things from a different point of view.

Even more interesting is that Richard Hillary, who wrote the original short story, was a Spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain who was shot down in 1940, and bailed out with extensive burns and was rescued by the Margate lifeboat.

He is better known for his book The Last Enemy, published in 1942 (filmed 1956), which describes his call up, experience, and recovery. He was killed on active service in 1943.

After three months of skin grafts, he was sent to the US in 1941 on a promotional tour to garner war interest, and did many radio talks, and had an affair with Merle Oberon. In the late 1990s, recordings of those talks (often quoting from the book) surfaced, and were included in a Channel 4 drama/documentary (Oxford Film and Television) in 2000 called Richard Hillary: A Fighter Pilot's Story.