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The Streets
of San Francisco Television Series Overview
The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television police
drama series filmed on location in San Francisco,
California, USA. The Streets of San Francisco TV show was
produced by Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season
produced in association with Warner Bros. Television (QM
produced the TV show on its own for the remainder of its run).
The Streets of San Francisco TV show starred Karl Malden and
Michael Douglas as detectives in the Bay Area. The Streets
of San Francisco television show ran for five seasons,
between September 16, 1972 and June 9, 1977 on ABC network, for a
total of 120 episodes.
Streets of San Francisco Television Series on DVD
 More career-making than groundbreaking TV, The
Streets of San Francisco is an efficiently
entertaining old-school cop show from Quinn Martin,
master of the four-acts-and-an-epilogue hour drama
(The Untouchables, The Fugitive). Old Hollywood
meets new with the casting of Oscar-winning
character actor Karl Malden (A Streetcar Named
Desire, On the Waterfront) and, in the role that put
him on the map, future Oscar-winner Michael Douglas
(Wall Street) as partners in San Francisco's Bureau
of Inspectors. Malden is 23-year-veteran Lt. Mike
Stone. Douglas is Inspector Steve Keller, whose
"fancy degrees in criminology" don't impress Stone.
The generational conflict is more pronounced in the
pilot episode. When Keller questions whether a
deceased woman found floating in the bay is a
suicide, Stone derisively responds, "If you were
born in this town, you'd know that the current under
the bridge flows out to sea and not in." Though the
t wo have their differences (Stone, a self-described
"slob," wears the classic trench coat, while Keller
is "the best dressed cop on poverty row"), Stone is
a more patient mentor in the 1972 series' first 14
episodes (13 plus the pilot) that are contained in
this set's four discs.
One of this series' retro-TV delights is the
veteran/rookie casting dynamic that extends to the
series' guest stars. The pilot episode features
Robert Wagner as a slick and initially suspect
lawyer, and a pre-Happy Days Tom Bosley as the
victim's landlord. The future Starsky & Hutch show
up, albeit in separate episodes. David Soul is a
racist cop with a surprising genealogy in "Hall of
Mirrors" and in "Bitter Wine," Paul Michael Glaser
stars as a man who spent 12 years in San Quentin for
his brother's crime. Other familiar faces from TV
Land include Vic Tayback (Alice), Victor French
(Little House on the Prairie), Edward Mulhare (The
Ghost and Mrs. Muir), and Di ck Van Patten (Eight Is
Enough). But perhaps this series' real star is San
Francisco, an offbeat location for a cop show.
Ghirardelli Square, the Golden Gate Bridge, and
other landmarks are intriguing backdrops as the
gruff but compassionate Stone and the more hotheaded
Keller pursue criminals and killers, some of whom
are as deeply twisted as Lombard Street. Throw in a
vintage show-launch interview with Malden and
Douglas conducted by former Hollywood columnist and
Oscars red-carpet emcee Army Archerd, and you have a
set that's a real San Francisco treat. - Donald Liebenson
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 These 11
gripping episodes that comprise the first half of
season two went a long way toward putting The
Streets of San Francisco on the map. The series
would earn Emmy nominations for Best Actor (Karl
Malden), Supporting Actor (Michael Douglas), and
Outstanding Drama. Streets is an efficient, old
school police procedural series. Rumpled 20-year
veteran Mike Stone and his younger, snappier,
college-educated partner, Steve Keller, rely on
old-fashioned legwork, gut hunches, and plain luck
to crack some particularly heinous crimes. Stone and
Keller have by now bridged their generation gap.
Stone still calls Keller "hot shot" and "buddy boy,"
but it is done with paternalistic affection, while
Keller is benefiting from Stone's streetwise
"axioms," such as "Ask (a suspect) the time of day,
you'll learn a lot more what he thinks about than
the weather." Uniformly well acted and sharply
written, these episodes also feature some memorable
guest stars. In "Betrayed," Martin Sheen is as a
small-time Wall Street broker who uses a lonely and
unwitting teller to rob a bank to finance his
relationship with a wealthy girlfriend. In "Shield
of Honor," Mariette Hartley is a vice cop and former
Academy classmate of Keller's who may be leaking
information to a crime syndicate. Leslie Nielsen is
a terminally ill cop who is bent on assassinating
the mobster who has eluded him in "Before I Die."
And if you bought Rick Nelson as a gunslinger in Rio
Bravo, then it won't be too much of a stretch to see
him as a flute-playing pied piper who lures teenage
runaways into prostitution in "Harem." Filmed on
location, Streets has a palpable sense of place.
Malden and Douglas, too, seem right at home. Their
chemistry elevates this series above the standard
issue cop show. If you're going to San Francisco for
the first time, this three-disc set is a solid
introduction. - Review by Donald Liebenson
 These 13
chronological episodes that concluded season 1 were
just the ticket to launching one of the 1970s' most
arresting cop shows. The first season of The Streets
of San Francisco was nominated for an Emmy for Best
Drama Series and its stars, Karl Malden and Michael
Douglas, were nominated for Best Actor and Best
Supporting Actor, respectively. But as this
inaugural season unfolded, the veteran cop/rookie
cop dynamic that charged the first 14 episodes
matured into a more paternal mentor/student
relationship (Malden's Mike Stone refers to
Douglas's Steve Keller, throughout as "the boy" and
"buddy-boy"). These episodes are particularly
engrossing, and provide Malden with some of his
finest primetime hours. In "Trail of the Serpent," a
street gang bent on freeing their captured leader
takes Stone hostage. Stone plays it cool, appealing
to the humanity of one of the more sensitive gang
members, while the more hotheaded Keller almost
jeopardizes his rescue. In "Legion of the Lost,"
Stone goes undercover on skid row to investigate the
murders of three homeless men. In two episodes,
Stone does not allow personal relationships to
compromise his sense of duty. In "Deadline," a
newspaper editor tries to cover up the murder of his
mistress, and in the process, unwittingly implicates
his own son, who was also the victim's lover. In
"Shattered Image," a woman from Stone's old
neighborhood is now the socialite wife of a murdered
senatorial candidate. "Beyond Vengeance" echoes Cape
Fear as a vengeful sociopath, freed on parole, seems
to be stalking Stone's daughter.
Malden and Douglas are a terrific team, and they are
aided and abetted by literate scripts ("Room with a
View" alludes to Hemingway's story "The Killers"),
with clever twists. In "The Albatross," a killer is
freed when it turns out he wasn't wearing his
hearing aid and did not hear Keller when he read him
his rights. In the Emmy-nominated "The House on Hyde
Street," an elderly recluse becomes the prime
neighborhood suspect in the death of a young boy.
Guest stars in these episodes read like a
Hollywood's Most Wanted List, with veteran character
actors (Joseph Cotten, Jack Albertson, Leslie
Nielsen, Barbara Rush) and future TV Land favorites
(Victor French from Little House on the Prairie and
Highway to Heaven, a pre-Cheers Nicholas "Coach"
Colasanto, Jamie Farr, and Clint Howard). Of course,
the real star is San Francisco, an intriguing
backdrop with its roller coaster hills and funky
neighborhoods. For series fans who left their hearts
here, Streets still calls to you. - Review by Donald Liebenson
 By the end
of The Streets of San Francisco’s sophomore
season, the relationship between veteran cop Mike
Stone (Karl Malden) and hotshot rookie Steve Keller
(Michael Douglas) has deepened, with none of the
generational tension that underscored Season One.
They are partners and genuine friends (Stone still
calls Keller "buddy boy," and Keller needles Mike
about only reading the sports pages), but Stone
still has much to teach him. In the episode,
"Rampage," Keller discovers that a former Berkley
classmate might by one of a group of neighborhood
vigilantes. He may have mellowed towards Keller, but
he’s still the old hardnosed Mike Stone while
questioning suspects. In "Death and the Favored
Few," he stands up to a socially connected blue
blood who knows more than she’s telling about a
sleazy, scandal sheet publisher’s murder. In "A
String of Puppets" (one of two episodes directed by
Richard Donner), Stone suspects that the best parole
officer in the whole department is the ringleader of
a gang of thieves. "You’re way off on this one," a
colleague protests. (He's not.) Streets is a by the
book police procedural; nothing flashy. Some cases
unfold like mysteries, others clue viewers in as to
who the culprit is, and still others hit close to
home, as witness "Commitment," in which Stone is
framed for the murder of an undercover cop. A
fortuitous partnering of old and new Hollywood,
Malden and Douglas are able to carry this series
without backup, although some stellar guest stars
work the Streets in these episodes, including Nick
Nolte, Leslie Nielsen, Charles Martin Smith (Toad in
American Graffiti), Claude Akins, and dynamite
entertainer Lola Falana. - Review by Donald Liebenson
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