Several months ago, Adam Brantley Hill – yes, the nephew of Ronald Brantley, who was featured in this newspaper for decades as The Coffee Breaker – suggested that I check out Amazon Prime and watch “Kojak.” I didn’t know the entire series was available anywhere, but in the world of streaming it seems like you can find pretty much anything.
Dr. Hill was right to recommend “Kojak.” Over the past few weeks, I have spent a lot of time with the series and realized that I didn’t have a full appreciation for it. The show began as a TV movie (remember those?) in 1973. CBS ordered a series based on that original work, and five years’ worth of episodes and several other TV movies came from there. Lieutenant Theodopolous “Theo” Kojak is a New York City police detective, Manhattan South precinct. His workplace office is a dump but Kojak looks like a million bucks with the clean suits he wears. He’s tough but tender. He’s forceful but sensitive. He’s also hilarious. And, in retrospect, Kojak is one of the best television characters of all time thanks to the committed performance by Telly Savalas.
Savalas had been a character actor for years, usually playing bad guys like Blofeld or Pontius Pilate. Despite some recognition for his quality performances, at the turn of the decade he found himself working in B-grade pictures made overseas, usually cheap horror and slasher films. And, while Telly became a sex symbol as “Kojak,” he definitely had a sinister appearance at times that probably got him cast in a lot of those menacing roles before the TV show came along.
There are some great characters in Kojak’s orbit at the precinct: Captain Frank McNeil (Dan Frazer); Detective Bobby Crocker (Kevin Dobson); Detectives Stavros (George ‘Demosthenes’ Savalas), Saperstein (Mark Russell) and Rizzo (Vince Conti). While Kojak expects a lot from his co-workers, they also don’t seem to mind his sarcastic put-downs when they come along.
What I remembered was the Tootsie Pop, the bald head, and the catchphrase ‘who loves ya, baby’. This show was so much more than those things. “Kojak” has everything you could possibly want in a police procedural: exciting scripts, gritty realism, tight direction, guest starring actors who were the best in the business at the time, and one of the best lead actor performances ever.
It's important to remember that television of that era was covered in cop shows. At the same time “Kojak” was airing, so were these classics: “Mannix,” “McMillan and Wife,” “Columbo,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Harry-O,” “The Rockford Files,” “Cannon,” “Barnaby Jones,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “McCloud,” “Adam-12,” “Ironside” – well, you get the picture, there were many choices in this genre. And while they all have their positives, in watching “Kojak” I have to say that out of them all, it has stood the test of time much better than some of the others that now appear very dated.
One of the things that sets Theo Kojak apart from his contemporaries is his humanity. He seems to actually care about the stoolies, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, thieves, gamblers, drunks, and hustlers with whom he comes into regular contact – so long as they do their part in helping him solve crimes. We don’t ever really get to see any of Kojak’s personal life, and the tendency to show the office gang hanging out after hours discussing personal problems – so commonplace today on a lot of series – is almost entirely absent from this show. It’s all about busting the bad guys, baby. And Kojak cruises the mean streets of ‘70s New York in his brown Buick Century, calling people made-up names like ‘coochie-coo’ or roughing up people who won’t cooperate. On more than one occasion, he will throw his trademark lollipop at some punk and say something like, “shuddup and suck on this!” The guy is also well-read and can make his street lingo sound like Shakespeare (and vice versa).
Kojak represents integrity, dedication, and sacrifice – things we ask of our public servants. He’s always going to be right; this series does not feature any moral relativism in which the misunderstood villain gets the glory or our hero turns bad for a good reason. No, none of that. Theo Kojak is actually more in the tradition of a Marshal Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke,” who has a job to do and is married to that job completely.
In an era where the public has turned against law enforcement to the point that there are actually supporters of the “defund the police” movement, going back and seeing how Kojak handles his job was actually refreshing. He didn’t care what people thought as long as everybody did what they were supposed to do. Hey, who loves ya baby?
Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University.
