The F.B.I. was an American television series that was broadcast on ABC from 1965 to 1974. It was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company.
Produced by Quinn Martin and based in part on concepts from the 1959 Warner Bros. theatrical film The FBI Story, the series was an authentic telling of or fictionalized accounts of actual FBI cases, with fictitious main characters carrying the stories. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. played Inspector Lewis Erskine, while Philip Abbott played Arthur Ward, assistant director to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (although Hoover himself served as series consultant until his death in 1972, he was never seen in the series).
Stephen Brooks played Inspector Erskine's assistant, Special Agent Jim Rhodes, for the first two seasons. Lynn Loring played Inspector Erskine's daughter (and Rhodes' love interest) Barbara, in the first few episodes of the show. That romantic angle was soon dropped.
In 1967, Brooks was replaced by veteran actor William Reynolds, who played Special Agent Tom Colby until 1973. The series would enjoy its highest ratings during this time, peaking at No. 10 in the 1970-71 season. For the final season, Shelly Novack played Special Agent Chris Daniels.
Some episodes ended with a "most wanted" segment hosted by Zimbalist, noting the FBI's most wanted criminals of the day (this was decades before the Fox Network aired America's Most Wanted). The series aired on ABC at 8 p.m. Sunday from 1965 to 1973, when it was moved up to 7:30 p.m. for the final season.
The series was a co-production of Quinn Martin Productions and Warner Bros. Television (WB held the television and theatrical rights to any project based on the FBI). As it turned out, it was the longest running of all of Quinn Martin's television series, having aired nine seasons.
Mark Felt, then an assistant director at the FBI and later to become famous as the "Deep Throat" source in the Watergate scandal, is reported to have served as an unpaid technical adviser to the series, occasionally going onto the set with Zimbalist. Recent disclosures of memos by the FBI, under the FOIA, reveal that the real FBI had casting control over the show.
An updated and revamped version of the series, Today's F.B.I., executive produced by David Gerber, aired on ABC in 1981 in the same Sunday 8 p.m. time slot as its predecessor. A remake of the original series, produced by Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment for the Fox network, is set for air in Fall 2008.
Cases, based on real FBI files, were handled by Inspector Lewis Erskine and several coworkers over the years. Erskine reported to Arthur Ward, assistant to the director of the FBI. Written by J.E. McKillop
