297 Cannon

First watched : June  1977

This  U.S.  detective  series  had  already  ceased  being  made  by  the  time  I  first  caught  it  on  Saturday  evenings  but  I  thought  it  was  one  of  the  better  ones.

Frank  Cannon  was  an  ex-police  detective  in  L.A. who  becomes  a  P.I.  after  the  death  of   his  wife  and  child. He  was  played  by  William  Conrad  a  rather  portly  individual  with  a  deep  voice. like  a  cut-price  Orson  Welles. In  sharp  contrast  to  Jim  Rockford, Cannon  liked  big  cars  and   fancy  restaurants  so  tended  to  take  high  value  cases  particularly  if  the  client  was  female.

I  remember  one  episode  where  he  was  acting  for  some  girl  who'd  aggravated  a  local  cult  and  saved  her  from  a  gang  of  murderous  hippies  who  cut  her  phone  wire  and  threw  a  noose  around  her  beams. I  found  the  scene  absolutely  terrifying  and  had  no  idea  at  the  time  it  was  based  on  the  real-life  Sharon  Tate  murders.

The  series  ran  for  124  episodes  between  1971  and  1976. Conrad  went  on  to star  in  two  more  TV  series  Nero  Wolfe  and  Jake  and  the  Fatman  ( neither  of  which  mean  anything  to  me )  and  a  lot  of  voiceover  work  before  his  death  in  1994  aged  73.