And so he did, for 22 more episodes in the third (1976-77) season of The Rockford Files, the Emmy Award-winning detective series that was like no other, with a protagonist born of the unique screen persona of series star James Garner. Garner cut his teeth on TV's offbeat comic Western Maverick, the creation of producer-writer Roy Huggins, who co-created Rockford as well. By the third year Huggins was long gone, but the series was left in the able hands of Stephen J. Cannell (who developed the series with Huggins), co-producer Chas. Floyd Johnson, story editor and creative consultant Juanita Bartlett, and burgeoning writer David Chase, whose gave the show a shot in the arm after a second year that saw a major erosion in its once huge mainstream audience.

Jim Rockford (Garner) is a low-rent private eye (he charges "$200 a day, plus expenses") working out of his run-down mobile home, incongruously parked on a lot near the beach in Malibu. The bane of the LAPD, especially long-suffering friend Sgt. Dennis Becker (Joe Santos), Rockford has a knack for attracting trouble. An ex-con incarcerated for a robbery he didn't commit - he was eventually pardoned, though no one seems to remember that - Rockford's clients include former cellmates and dubious associates like the morally vacuous "Angel" Martin (Stuart Margolin), who'd gleefully sell his mother if there was fifty bucks in it for him.

Like Garner's Maverick, Rockford is streetwise but averse to physical violence. He'd just as soon talk his way out of a jam than resort to the unlicensed gun he's got stashed in his cookie jar. That doesn't stop desperate bad guys from beating him up, which they do in just about every episode, and though Rockford is a grifter par excellence, more often than not his often deadbeat clients weasel out of paying his fees.

Garner's characterization - a breezy mix of laid-back charm, caustic wit, and irritableness - is utterly irresistible. He delights in conning the con artists, living life on his terms - including fast-food tacos for breakfast. Garner at times seemed to tire of playing variations of the same persona, sometimes choosing darker, less humorous characters in films both good (Hour of the Gun) and bad (A Man Called Sledge). Though he's fine in "straight" roles far removed from his Maverick/Rockford personae, other good actors could have done comparably well in those parts. But only James Garner can, only James Garner ever will play the "James Garner character" to such perfection. If he sometimes found it frustrating as an actor to be so uniquely typecast - actors like Bela Lugosi, S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, and Franklin Pangborn were at least playing characters types in which they excelled; Garner, it was unfairly perceived, merely played "himself" - it was only because this screen persona he created was so eminently likeable and approachable. Sometimes characters on the best shows become almost like old friends, none more so than Jim Rockford. And unquestionably it will be Rockford, and variations of it (in films like The Great Escape and Support Your Local Sheriff) for which Garner will be most remembered.

The Rockford Files' regular and semi-regular cast is uniformly excellent. Santos, in the show's most conventional role, is similarly likeable and continually surprises viewers with the layers of shading he brings to the part. Gretchen Corbett, still not quite 30, is nonetheless totally convincing as Beth Davenport, Rockford's bulldog of an attorney, who like Becker Rockford drives to distraction with the trouble he's constantly getting into.

However, it's the relationship between Rockford and his father, Joseph "Rocky" Rockford (Noah Beery, Jr.), that is the show's emotional center. Though Beery was only 15 years older than Garner they had a special rapport and theirs was a realistic and warm relationship. Rocky badgers his son with favors (often in the form of free investigations for his pals), and is always complaining about his son's chosen profession. A former trucker reluctant to retire completely, Rocky at times drives Jim crazy, but the two clearly adore one another, and theirs is a special relationship made clear in the show's opening titles, with the two fishing off the Malibu Pier.

As detailed in Ed Robertson's superb book Thirty Years of The Rockford Files**, the series bridged three generations of seminal television talent: besides Higgins (Maverick, The Fugitive) and Cannell (The A-Team, 21 Jump Street), who regarded Huggins as his mentor, David Chase (The Sopranos) joined the show at the beginning of its third season, helping to reinvigorate the show and eventually contributing (not surprisingly) numerous scripts centered on organized crime. His scripts, according to Robertson, were notable also for their political and topical content as well as their idiosyncratic characters, including one who was a kind of prototype for Tony Soprano.

After a first season that established the show's premise and characters with very strong scripts that simultaneously worked as straight detective stories (one penned by Leigh Brackett, no less), the show's second year saw a sharp decline in its ratings (a 20% drop), due to the unforeseen tendency of that year's teleplays to paint Rockford as a chump, often on the receiving end of other people's schemes. Mainstream audiences much preferred the Rockford of the first season, a smart P.I. two steps ahead of the bad guys, and this was somewhat rectified during the third year: the show started winning Emmys and its core audience loyally stuck with the program, though the series never fully recovered its once huge audience.

The show's list of great starts continues unabated, with season three featuring such names as Sharon Gless, Robert Webber, Robert Walden, Burt Young, Kim Richards, Robert Loggia, John Anderson, William Daniels, Ned Beatty, Michael Lerner, Ron Rifkin, Joe Maross, Steve Landesberg, Cleavon Little, Simon Oakland, Strother Martin, Scott Brady, Issac Hayes, Louis Gossett, Jr., Joyce Van Patten, John P. Ryan, and Wesley Addy.

Video & Audio

The Rockford Files - Season Three is presented in its original full frame format on five single-sided DVDs with 4-5 episodes, uncut and not time-compressed, per disc. The shows look great save for their title elements, which are a bit dirty and grainy due to the rushed nature of weekly television. (Watching '70s era shows, one develops a new appreciation for the delicate work of negative cutters.) The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sounds great for what it is. English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing is available.

Extra Features

The only extra is a pretty good one, "Quickie Nirvana," the seventh episode from season four, written by David Chase.

Parting Thoughts

Unlike earlier Universal shows like Dragnet 1967 and Adam-12, produced in those awful, problem-plagued double-sided discs that no doubt hurt sales, which in turn dissuaded the label from releasing later seasons, The Rockford Files is getting the presentation this great show deserves, and happily Universal seems intent on getting the entire series (and, hopefully the later Rockford TV movies) out before too long. Season four is scheduled for mid-May.

** Beyond its use as an excellent episode guide, Robertson's book goes into impressive detail on the business of '70s television (the relationships between studios and networks, actors and producers, etc.), the labyrinthine road developing a continuing series and its scripts, all while offering a superb analysis of the show's characters and their changes over Rockford long run.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's most recent essays appear in Criterion's new three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse's The Quiet Duel.