A creation of the BRAVO cable network, Brilliant but Cancelled – Crime Dramas is part of a new DVD series showcasing ostensibly high-quality TV series that, for whatever reason, failed to find an audience. This installment features one episode each from four short-lived crime dramas: Delvecchio, Gideon Oliver, Johnny Staccato and Touching Evil.

As crime-fighters go, Johnny Staccato is one serious hepcat, playing jazz piano at Waldo's, a Greenwich Village music joint, when he isn't hitting the streets as a private eye. And as TV heroes go, Johnny Staccato star John Cassavetes was one of the unlikeliest, his piercing eyes and angular features helping to imbue the titular character with a generous amount of nervy intensity.

Evidently, Cassavetes himself was ambivalent about his TV stint. According to the Ray Carney book, "Cassavetes on Cassavetes," the celebrated actor-director only accepted the Johnny Staccato gig because he was broke while trying to finish his first film, Shadows, and wife Gena Rowlands was pregnant with the couple's first child.

NBC first aired "Tempted," the Johnny Staccato episode included here, on Nov. 19, 1959. The show guest stars a very sexy Elizabeth Montgomery as Fay, a friend of Johnny's who turns up at Waldo's club with a $200,000 necklace she "accidentally" took from the jewelry store where she is employed. Fay works her bewitching charms trying to enlist Johnny's help in her scheme to profit from the purloined jewelry.

Running less than a half hour, Johnny Staccato moves with swift economy to tell its tale. Shot in moody black and white, the show boasted a stylish noir atmosphere, some nicely hard-boiled dialogue and a jazzy score courtesy the great Elmer Bernstein. Moreover, it's a kick to see Cassavetes and Montgomery in this gem of Fifties-era TV.

An early creation of TV wunderkind Steven Bochco, Delvecchio was a sort of precursor to Bochco's critically acclaimed Hill Street Blues in the 1980s. In this earlier incarnation, a pre-Taxi Judd Hirsch is Sgt. Dominick Delvecchio, a no-nonsense Los Angeles cop who balances his detective work with studying to become a lawyer.

If this 1976-77 series fit the "brilliant" mode, you wouldn't know it judging by Brilliant but Cancelled's humdrum episode. In "Licensed to Kill," Delvecchio investigates the suicide of Gina, an 18-year-old woman who is a longtime family friend of the detective's. Evidently, Gina killed herself because she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and she feared that the costs of medical care would bankrupt her family.

That might sound like a rather dubious justification for suicide, but Delvecchio accepts it as making complete sense. He soon learns, however, that Gina did not have stomach cancer, but rather a mild case of diverticulitis. Delvecchio's suspicions grow when trace amounts of codeine are found in the woman's bloodstream. Consequently, he zeroes in on a quack doctor (John Hillerman) who was treating Gina for an illness she did not have.

First aired in February of 1977, "Licensed to Kill" is unremarkable TV. Delvecchio's unshakable belief (apparently unquestioned by the show's creators) that the doctor's false diagnosis was comparable to imposing a death sentence on Gina, is ludicrous and offensive. Did Delvecchio's writers honestly think cancer patients in the 1970s had little recourse besides suicide? Boy, and we thought that decade were rough enough just because of all the corduroy and polyester people wore.

There are other hallmarks of dated Seventies-era TV here. Excluding Hirsch's deadpan performance, much of the acting is cringe-inducing. Meanwhile, a few plot points are presented with all the subtlety of a mallet to the back of the skull. In one awkwardly staged scene, the series' creators take pains to show us that -- a ha! -- a man leaving the evil doctor's office swallows a pill, thereby leading Delvecchio to safely conclude that the doctor lied when he claims he doesn't dispense medication. Such detective work would make Jacques Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes.

Long before Law & Order took over the airwaves, Dick Wolf and his development team gave the world Gideon Oliver. Based on a character from Aaron Elkins' novels, the series starred Louis Gossett Jr. as Gideon, a gifted anthropology professor at Columbia University who puts his brilliance to use fighting crime.

Results are uneven. There are some groaners of dialogue that Gossett is forced to utter, especially when it comes to firing up his class ("This is the departure lounge, not the baggage claim!" he intones metaphorically). And this Gideon Oliver is a bit too smart for his own good. Heck, not only can the guy identify a bone as being a canine femur, but he knows immediately that it belongs to a German Shepherd.

Nevertheless, the series pilot featured here, "Sleep Well, Professor Oliver," is a surprisingly effective hodgepodge of some mighty sensationalistic elements. Delving into the shooting death of a friend, our intrepid professor uncovers a cult of devil-worshipping pedophiles, child pornographers and snuff-film makers led, improbably, by Anthony LaPaglia as a genteel Satanist. This is outrageous stuff, perhaps even campy. Nothing is too far-fetched for inclusion; the show even suggests that this fictitious cult is responsible for the real-life "Son of Sam" slayings. Evidently, the writers could not find a way to add subplots about cannibalism, necrophilia and autoerotic asphyxiation.

Gideon Oliver, one of three series rotated on the "ABC Mystery Movie" on Monday nights in 1989 (alternating with a revived Columbo and B.L. Stryker), lasted for a meager five episodes. That's a shame. As "Sleep Well" demonstrates, the storytelling was crisp and Gossett gave a commanding and charismatic performance.

Elsewhere, the featured episode boasts performances by such future stars as Tom Sizemore, Cynthia Nixon and Marcia Gay Harden.

It lasted for only a year on the USA Network, but 2004's Touching Evil was more compelling than much of what, inexplicably, goes on to find an audience. An Americanized version of a defunct British series, this stylized thriller successfully melds X-Files edginess with serial killer chic for a series that, in an ideal world, should have garnered at least a cult following.

David Creegan (Jeffrey Donovan) and Susan Branca (Vera Farmiga) are members of the FBI's newly formed Organized and Serial Crime (OSC) unit. Creegan is a particularly singular FBI agent, having suffered brain damage after being shot in the head at point-blank range. The resulting injury has erased the part of David's brain responsible for feelings of shame. That quirk was exploited more successfully in episodes other than "K," the one featured in Brilliant but Cancelled.

As for "K," it's mostly form and little content. David and Susan track down four creepy art students who are murdering humans and horses, apparently at the behest of a cutting-edge San Francisco artist. The story begins promisingly enough, with some genuinely disturbing atmospherics, but it doesn't take long for the plotline to fizzle. Perhaps the writers were making a super-ironic statement about the type of modern art that the episode satirizes. Or maybe not.

More irritating is how Brilliant but Cancelled just dumps the viewer into the midpoint of Touching Evil's story arc. For example, Pruitt Taylor Vince (he was the fearsome-looking psycho in the movie Identity), shows up as David's wacko buddy. This being the sixth episode in the series, however, the viewer is given no backstory regarding the character or what his connection is to David.

All episodes are in television's standard 1.33:1 aspect ratio, but the quality of image varies considerably among the three.

Gideon Oliver boasts a clear and clean image, although color is slightly faded in a few spots and there is a speck of dirt here and there. The 47-year-old Johnny Staccato episode is exceedingly well-preserved. The two-year-old Touching Evil episode, which features some beautiful imagery of the San Francisco Bay area, is in pristine form.

The years have been most unkind to Delvecchio. The colors have a slightly washed-out look, and there are hints of grain and film damage in a few spots. None of it is enough to mount much of a distraction, but the picture quality is certainly below the rest of Brilliant but Cancelled.

Presented in Stereo 2.0, the audio for three of the episodes is TV flat, but good enough to get the job done. By contrast, Touching Evil boasts a surprisingly rich and vivid soundtrack.

It defies logic that a DVD spotlighting little-known TV shows would be devoid of extras, but such is the case. It's up to the viewer to figure out who the characters are and what makes them tick. A modicum of effort on the part of the DVD producers would have helped put the shows in a historical and artistic context.

Why did these shows fail? What programs were they up against? How many episodes did each series last? A short featurette or commentary would have been invaluable.

In the final count, Brilliant but Cancelled – Crime Dramas includes two good episodes (Johnny Staccato, Gideon Oliver), one fair (Touching Evil) and one far-from-brilliant (Delvecchio). The absence of extras, however, is a serious shortcoming for a DVD that had the potential to be a real gem.