mcforbes

This was the last movie of the series, I believe that there are two additional ones that were never shown. It is sort of a close out, a lot of the old cast appears in it. At this point James Garner said he was getting too old, one foot chase shows him hobbling out of the pickup, I guess he was too old for the Firebird at this point, to catch the bad guy. As a fan, I appreciated the series being tied in with the movies, and should be the model for Hollywood to follow. If there ever was a Rockford big screen movie made and if it was soon, perhaps James Garner could play Rocky.

Of the six movies that were shown I would recommend all of them, particularly I Love LA, which was the first and the highest rated.

Mannix lasted eight seasons, which says the show was a quality show and had a following it also survived the launch of a number of other detective shows in the 1970's. Do we have any of these shows left in the current TV landscape, the answer to that is no. I think that Nash Bridges was probably the last, and CBS cut that although they have not had anything close to it in ratings on a Friday night in five years. This genre can come back if you were to stick with the Rockford, Magnum, Mannix formula that worked back then, do a car chase as part of it, not as the whole thing like they have tried to do in the 90's with movies of 70's and 80's TV.....The formula that works is the Rockford Movies of the 1990's which got exceptional ratings until CBS got greedy. A Hollywood producer should look at that and look at Tom Selleck for a role, he is doing something similar right now. What is needed is a movie star actor/actress who may have not had recent success but can come back to the small screen, like James Garner did. I think it would work again.