The NBC Mystery Movie is an American television anthology series produced by Universal Pictures, that NBC broadcast from 1971 to 1977. Devoted to a rotating series of mystery episodes, it was sometimes split into two subsets broadcast on different nights of the week: The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.
The NBC Mystery Movie was a "wheel series", or "umbrella program" that rotated several programs within the same period throughout each of its seasons. In its first, 1971–72, it rotated three detective dramas that were broadcast on Wednesday nights from 8:30 to 10:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (7:30–9:00 p.m. Central and Mountain time).
Background
The origin of the "wheel" format was a joint programming and creative production agreement between the NBC Television Network and Universal Studios Television and Motion Pictures in 1966, in accord with which NBC ordered a multi-year series of dramatic anthology productions from Universal that NBC would broadcast in the United States (both as originals and re-runs), with Universal retaining exclusive rights to overseas release of these productions as feature-length films, while NBC could not offer them as TV re-runs internationally.
The first series created under this agreement was The Name of the Game, a drama with three rotating stars. It was followed by The Bold Ones and Four in One (the similar The Men was produced for ABC and involved series from three studios, although one of them was Universal). While it was a long and profitable collaboration, it finally succumbed to the changes of the commercial broadcast market regarding both structure and content by the end of the decade.
By the late 1970s, the increasing popularity of situation comedies, coupled with their lower production costs and much greater scheduling flexibility and resale opportunities, surpassed that of these feature-length (90–120 minute) drama anthologies. The anthologies could not reasonably be reduced for shorter broadcast times for the re-run market. They were not designed for casual or short-term viewers, who would have little interest in the characters or the story of an individual episode. Each episode and each series were of widely varying quality, making package re-sale difficult. However, by the early 1980s, various movie episodes from the former Mystery Movie series were rebroadcast on late night's The CBS Late Movie as a package with an earlier half-hour situation comedy series rerun. While they lasted, the best of them employed the finest actors, writers and production standards available.
Production history
Inaugural programs
The three original 1971–1972 season shows of The NBC Mystery Movie were: McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver as a rural Taos, New Mexico lawman temporarily assigned to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Inspired by the Clint Eastwood 1968 film Coogan's Bluff, the show debuted the previous season as part of the hour-long NBC wheel show Four in One. Columbo, starring Peter Falk as a deceptively bumbling Los Angeles homicide detective. The series was derived from a 1968 made-for-television movie, Prescription: Murder, which starred Falk in the same role. McMillan & Wife, starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a husband-and-wife crime-fighting duo. Hudson's character was a hep sophisticated San Francisco city police commissioner. Saint James later left the series and it was renamed McMillan.
The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1971–1972 season. Columbo was nominated for eight Emmy Awards and won four categories. This success prompted NBC to move the series to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening time period for the second season as The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. In addition, a fourth show was added to the rotation, lasting two seasons (1972–1974):
Hec Ramsey, starring Richard Boone as a gunfighter turned frontier forensic science detective in the Old West. This piece of the wheel series was produced by Jack Webb.