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Our reliable detective is back on the case, but the spark is gone....
Paramount / 1214 Minutes / 1972-1973 / Unrated / Street Date: January 24, 2012
Another day, another detective show… Every once in a while, as I watch season after season of TV-on-DVD titles, I’ll contemplate just how much time I’ve spent in the company of fictional crime-solvers. Because these aren’t just finite two-hour films - these are multi-hour affairs, and I’ll sit through anything. Recently it’s been a little more contemporary than usual – some NCIS, catching up on The Mentalist – but while much of the stuff I’ve had the pleasure of sifting through has been really quite a bit of fun, I continue to find myself easily distracted when watching new Mannix DVD sets that come to the office: Even with this writer’s penchant for all things crime-TV, I continue to find the show to be a little dry.
It’s not Mike Connors’ fault. His performance as the title character has the kind of charisma and tough-guy veneer that makes the TV genre so appealing. Mannix , still head honcho at his own detective agency - with his punchy secretary, Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher) always ready to help out - is cool but completely with it. Not a hipster or a mod dinosaur, Mannix as a protagonist is flawed but reliable, a guy who has skeletons in his closet but is definitely the dude you want on the case.
But this Sixth Season TV-on-DVD release is a clear-cut example of auto-pilot television at its most mundane. There are few signs of life in the episode in which Peggy goes undercover as a prostitute to try and nab a drug trafficker (Out of the Night), but the investigations behind a Vietnam vet's amnesia (To Kill a Memory), a surgeon's murder (The Crimson Halo), and even an early-season highlight involving a priest who at one time heard a murder confession (Cry Silence) all start strong and then fizzle.