Reception By Police Officers
Years after Danny Arnold ended production (because he could not see any way to continue without repeating storylines; the show was not cancelled by the network), Barney Miller retains a devoted following among real-life police officers, who appreciate the show's emphasis on dialog and believably quirky characters, and its low-key portrayal of cops going about their jobs. In an 2005 op-ed for the New York Times, real-life New York police detective Lucas Miller wrote:
- Real cops are not usually fans of cop shows. Many police officers maintain that the most realistic police show in the history of television was the sitcom "Barney Miller,"
- The action was mostly off screen, the squad room the only set, and the guys were a motley bunch of character actors who were in no danger of being picked for the N.Y.P.D. pin-up calendar. But they worked hard, made jokes, got hurt and answered to their straight-man commander.
- For real detectives, most of the action does happen off screen, and we spend a lot of time back in the squad room writing reports about it. Like Barney Miller's squad, we crack jokes at one another, at the cases that come in, and at the crazy suspect locked in the holding cell six feet from the new guy's desk. Life really is more like "Barney Miller" than "NYPD Blue," but our jokes aren't nearly as funny.
Similarly, during his appearance on Jon Favreau's Independent Film Channel talk show Dinner for Five, Dennis Farina, who worked as a Chicago policeman before turning to acting, called Barney Miller the most realistic cop show ever seen on television.
Hal Linden has told interviewers that he is still occasionally called "Captain" by working police officers.
Read more about this topic: Barney Miller
Famous quotes containing the words reception, police and/or officers:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“There are all sorts of ways of murdering a person or at least his soul, and that’s something no police in the world can spot.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“I sometimes compare press officers to riflemen on the Somme—mowing down wave upon wave of distortion, taking out rank upon rank of supposition, deduction and gossip.”
—Bernard Ingham (b. 1932)