Barnaby Jones exemplified the late-'60s/early '70s trend toward gimmicky detectives, featuring private eyes that were too fat (Cannon), too old (Barnaby Jones), restricted to a wheelchair (Ironside), etc. The series was also patterned somewhat after Columbo, the Peter Falk "howcatchems" in which the murder and murderer are plainly shown at the beginning, the fun being in watching the detective gather evidence culminating with the murderer's arrest, sometimes after goading him into a confession. While the influence is clearly there, a rip-off it's not, though Barnaby Jones still isn't half the show Columbo was.

All in all, Barnaby Jones - The First Season is pleasant if unremarkable, TV mystery comfort food, no more. The good news is that this Quinn Martin show paralleling QM's Cannon has video transfers far superior to that series. The transfers look great, more in line with another QM series from about the same time, The Streets of San Francisco. It's just a shame the slightly better Cannon continues to look lousy while QM's other shows look great.

Wikipedia states, "The Barnaby Jones character was introduced in the third-season Cannon episode 'Requiem for a Son' in 1973. The two-part episode 'The Deadly Conspiracy' (1975) began on Cannon and concluded on Barnaby Jones." However, this is incorrect. Barnaby Jones is introduced in the first episode of Barnaby Jones, "Requiem for a Son," a pilot featuring Frank Cannon (William Conrad). It's a clever show, in that it plays like an episode of Cannon that segues into an episode of Barnaby Jones, but Ebsen returned the favor only once, appearing on Cannon's fifth-season crossover episode, "The Deadly Conspiracy."

In any case, Barnaby Jones begins with the murder of private eye Hal Jones (Robert Patten), shortly after arranging a late-night meeting with colleague Frank Cannon. Learning of Hal's murder, Cannon offers his services to Hal's widow, Betty (Lee Meriwether) and her father-in-law Barnaby (Ebsen), a retired private eye himself. Though Barnaby keeps Cannon on as a consultant, he resolves to solve his son's murder himself. After catching the killer, Barnaby opts to keep the family business open, with Betty acting as his assistant.

It's not clear if the decision to pattern the series after Columbo was made from the beginning or if that came later, but it's interesting the show plays up Ebsen's age rather than the backwoods persona with which he had been so long associated. Columbo's appeal was always that the murderers were wealthy and sophisticated, who underestimate the working class, lowbrow detective. Instead of working in that direction, Barnaby Jones plays up, painfully at times, Barnaby's age. Ebsen was, after all, an ex-dancer, still lithe and only 64 when the series began - two years younger than Harrison Ford was when he made Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - but at times people treat him like he's just wandered off from the nursing home. And then there is what's supposed to be Barnaby's endearing trademark: he drinks tall glasses of milk, never hard liquor. It's a bit much.

Another stark difference between Barnaby and Columbo is that Ebsen plays the character almost humorlessly, as if he wanted to break completely from his Jed Clampett character. His colleague Cannon outwardly may appear more intimidating (Conrad, of course, got his start as a bad guy in the days of film noir) but is actually warm-hearted and friendly. Poker-faced Barnaby, on the other hand, is inexpressive and lacking warmth. It's too bad (at least in the episodes this reviewer watched) Barnaby was loathe to cut loose once in a while, maybe do a little soft-shoe for Betty in the office now and then.

But Barnaby Jones is undeniably well-produced, like other QM shows, notably slicker than rival Universal's cop and detective shows, which always looked cheap and raggedy, Ironside being one obvious example. QM also ponied-up the cash to stack their shows with a better roster of guest stars, some of whom played murderers on Columbo. "Murder in the Doll's House," for instance, has a great line-up: Jack Cassidy, Anne Francis, Cathy Lee Crosby, and Estelle Winwood, with Whit Bissell (Meriwether's Time Tunnel co-star), Richard Derr, and Phillip Pine in supporting parts.

Other notable actors this season include: Bradford Dillman, Mary Jackson, Janice Rule, William Shatner, Jeff Donnell, Gary Lockwood, Booth Colman, Jerry Houser, Eric Braeden, Richard Bull, Ross Elliott, Richard Hatch, Frank Maxwell, Barbara Stuart, Lloyd Bochner, Jackie Coogan, Arlene Golonka, Marlyn Mason, Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Dabbs Greer, Geoffrey Lewis, James Luisi, Bill Bixby, Barry Sullivan, and Marie Windsor.

Video & Audio

Barnaby Jones - The First Season is in full-frame format and looks terrific, with good color, a sharp image, and is virtually damage-free with no obvious age-related wear. The show was a mid-season replacement, and so its entire first season consists of just 13 hour-long episodes (running 50-plus minutes apiece, sans commercials) comfortably authored on four single-sided discs. Audio is (English) Dolby Digital mono only, but like its picture notably superior to Cannon. (Jerry Goldsmith's title theme is memorable.)

Extra Features

Supplements are limited to 60-second previews of next week's show; these are also in surprisingly good condition.

Parting Thoughts

It's not a great series, but it's also easy to see how Barnaby Jones might find an audience, albeit a mostly older and undemanding one, and that the show would mosey along comfortably for its eight-year run. No great shakes but Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV's latest audio commentary, for AnimEigo's Tora-san DVD boxed set, is on sale now.