Time to fire up the DVRs: Spike TV is running a week-long marathon of the 1970s cop show Hawaii Five-O, including all twenty-two episodes from the show’s first season. Starring Jack Lord, James MacArthur, and Cam Fong, the series depicted an elite Hawaiian state police unit that fought the Mafia, foreign secret agents, and other sinister forces too powerful or obscure for the regular police.
The show ran for a dozen years (1968-80), the longest-running crime show except for Law and Order. Unlike that show and most other police dramas of its own time, however, Hawaii Five-O was tough and self-confident, filled with action and no nonsense about the cops anguishing over whether they’re on the right side of things. On the contrary, the crooks were real crooks, and the cops were the thin blue line that stood between the evildoers and the good, productive people who obeyed the law.
The show’s name entered the common parlance as a synonym for tough, no-nonsense cops: the Five-O, reflecting the unusually direct and clear-headed values the show represented.
CBS, which originally aired Hawaii Five-O, has scheduled an updated version of the series for this fall.