Set in a cluttered police precinct squad room — scenes were rarely shot elsewhere — Barney Miller was unusual, a cop sitcom known for realistic detective work, a dearth of car chases or shoot-outs and an occasional focus on appalling cases like spousal rape. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the ABC series, which ran from January 23, 1975, to May 20, 1982.
Danny Arnold (That Girl, Bewitched) and Theodore Flicker (Night Gallery, Mod Squad) created the show, and Arnold ran the New York–set series with perfectionism and a talent for quirky casting.
Choosing Hal Linden to play Captain Barney Miller wasn’t quirky, though. Arnold had seen him on Broadway starring in The Rothschilds as prosperous patriarch Mayer Rothschild. The houses were packed and Linden’s reviews sublime. In 1971, he took home a Tony for the role.
Today, Linden and Max Gail (Detective Stan "Wojo" Wojciehowicz) are the only surviving members of Barney Miller’s original, diverse cast. Emmy contributor Jane Wollman Rusoff recently spoke with Linden, 93, about his adventures portraying the fair-minded captain for eight seasons.
On Crafting a Character
My character was very loose. He never told anybody how to do an assignment. Barney was a little too perfect for my taste, but you had to [portray] a legitimate police officer and deal with the problems. That was the difference between, say, Car 54, Where Are You? and us.
Danny told me, "I want to infuse the character of Barney Miller with a sense of Talmudic justice — to look at every perp or complainant as “There but for the grace of who-knows-what goes all of us."
'X' Marks the Spot
We weren’t an instant success. Then came our fifth episode ["Courtesans"], where Wojo fell for a hooker. He would repeatedly bust the whole house, so we had hookers at every desk making statements. He asks the girl he's stuck on for a date. "Sure, 50 bucks," she says. He’s destroyed. Starting to leave, he turns back and says to Barney, "Can you lend me 50 bucks 'til payday?"
The network said, "You can't say that." Danny said, "I'm shooting the show the way it's written. If you don't put it on, I'm not going to make any more."
The network put it on — with an "X" rating. Word got out there was an X-rated sitcom, and we went from about 51st place to 21st.
Working Day and Night
Danny worked on a script until the minute we were in front of the camera. We had extremely long taping sessions, which went on even after the audience left. We soon stopped using a studio audience. I think the longest session we had was till 6:30 in the morning.
Quickfire Cast Takes
Max Gail was a hippie. He settled down to play a police officer.
Ron Glass [Detective Ron Harris] was probably the most trained of all of us. He was a Shakespearean actor.
James Gregory [Inspector Frank Luger] came to work prepared to the letter. We were a little more relaxed, and he’d roll his eyes.
Danny created Detective Phil Fish, with that hangdog look, played by Abe Vigoda. The network insisted on spinning him off, so he left [to topline the series Fish], but that show lasted only 13 episodes.
Jack Soo [Detective Sergeant Nick Yemana] used humor to deal with anything that was painful. In his nightclub career, he was billed as "The Asian Bing Crosby." Jack died while we were in production. We did a memorial show, sitting on set, giving speeches we’d written about how we felt about him.
Gregory Sierra [Detective Sergeant Chano Amenguale] was a bigger name than I when we started. He was waiting for his own show in a deal he'd made. I never found any problem with Gregory, but he found one with me.
George Murdock [Lieutenant Ben Scanlon] was actually a happy-go-lucky guy, but he played the enemy. He kept trying to catch us doing bad things.
Steve Landesberg [Detective Sergeant Arthur Dietrich] originally played a phony priest who sold bibles on the street that he’d steal from hotels. Danny liked him so much he brought him back as Dietrich to replace Fish.
Ron Carey [Officer Carl Levitt] first played a mole who dug his way into banks to rob them. He played the whole show coughing dirt at people. Then Danny gave him the part of the officer from downstairs who always wanted to be a detective.
High Times
["Hash"] was probably the quintessential episode. Wojo brought in hash brownies. I was the only one who didn’t eat them. Everybody else got stoned, and Jack sang "What a Day This Has Been." Ron giggled. Abe jumped across an alley from one building to another to catch a perp.
The End of the Road
Danny Arnold ended the show. In the next-to-last season, we were having script problems. Every year we lost writers because they left to do their own shows. Danny sent an open-submission [call] to every college English major potential writer. He told us, "If I can find two or three, we’ll keep going."
After a month, he said, "All they’re doing is repeating what we just did, so we’re going to close up shop. There’s no reason to do this show unless we can do it well."
I was having a terrific time. I was ready to keep at it. But Danny was right.
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #1, 2025, under the title "Remembering Barney Miller."
