Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Well, I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. THIS beholder still finds Barney Miller THE most overrated "comedy" show in the history of television -- even after 40 years. It's even worse than Night Court, no mean feat. (Interestingly[?], Night Court was created by Reinhold Weege, who worked earlier on Barney Miller.) The writing is stilted, the dialog dull, and the situations contrived. The cramped set looks like it's smaller than a walk-in closet. The laugh-track runs on steroids. The characters are walking clichés, and there are usually too many per episode. Hal Linden as B.M. is miscast; so is Barbara Barrie as his wife. Abe Vigoda's character makes me want to hurl the moment he appears on screen. Max Gail's mentally-challenged "Wojo" is an affront to Polish folks everywhere. I could go on, but why beat a dead horse?

Barney Miller is my favorite show of all times. It's too bad that this show is locked away in some studio vault rather than being shown as re-runs. Unlike M*A*S*H, which started to get dry past the 1976 season and focused less on comedy and more on leftist views, Barney Miller got better. Although it was completely unrealistic in the way detectives work, handling calls that patrol officers, not detectives handle, it was very realistic into the type of people that police officers deal with on a daily basis and the human emotions that go along with it. The show continued to stay solid, despite losing some excellent regular cast members like Gregory Sierra (reasons unk), Abe Vigoda(TV show Fish) and Jack Soo(passed away). My fault with the show is that they brought in so many new detectives that you came to like but were gone after a few episodes - Detectives Wilson, Licori, Wentworth, Battista and Dorsey, but it's still not enough to diminish my feelings about what a great show this was and I still enjoy watching it on DVD today, as I did on regular TV when it first aired.

I've always thought of the 1970s as something of a lost decade for television. In the 1950s and 1960s we had quality shows like "The Ed Sullivan Show", "The Twilight Zone", "Perry Mason", "Route 66" and others (of course, there were some duds, like the immortal "My Mother the Car"). However, the 1970s featured mostly loud, lowest-common-denominator sitcoms and cop shows. The sitcoms could easily be called "candy for the mind", since the viewer didn't have to pay much attention, the stereotypical characters were easy to take, and the episodes were predictable and didn't vary too much.At the risk of being branded a heretic, I believe that "Barney Miller" was a very typical 1970s sitcom. The show consisted of police officers and detectives exchanging one-liners in an urban police precinct station, and the usual laugh track would tell the viewer what was funny. It didn't matter if the viewer missed part of the dialogue; it was all pretty much the same from week to week. The show had predictable characters and was very undemanding of the viewer, which probably provided a lot of its appeal. I never did like the show very much, but my mom loved it, so I ended up watching it often in the late 1970s.Anyone from another planet who reads the rhapsodic reviews of "Barney Miller" posted here would probably think that Hal Linden and company descended from heaven in 1975 to bless us with eight years of televised nirvana. I believe that everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it appears that "Barney Miller" is still pretty popular. While I don't think the show was as bad as, say, "Laverne and Shirley", "Happy Days", "Welcome Back, Kotter", or "Three's Company", it wasn't that good, folks. Like I said, it was just another 1970s sitcom, no more and no less.

If there was a great TV show that emphasize the decade of the 1970's,the situation comedy series "Barney Miller",was just that. This was a quality series that became one of television's greats. In perspectives,"Barney Miller" was a show that changed dramatically during the course of its seven year run,despite the fact that its plot,setting and basic cast remained the same. This was a show that quickly became one of the biggest hits for the ABC-TV network,producing 170 episodes during its seven year run on the network from the premiere episode on January 23,1975 until the final episode of the series on May 20,1982. The series was created by Danny Arnold,who served as the executive producer along with Theodore J. Flicker. Arnold also served as one of the writers of the show along with Chris Hayward. The series was produced by Arnold's production company Four D Productions in association with the ABC Television Network(the series was filmed in front of a studio audience at ABC Television Center in Hollywood).The show was about a detective squad at a precinct house in New York City's Greenwich Village,and often the strange people from the community went in and out their door each week. At the beginning of the series,the pace of the police department was fast and the comedy a bit loud.,and the emphasis was one-on-one liners and quirkiness rather than on real characters. Captain Barney Miller(Hal Linden)was head of the precinct,very put-upon and overworked,but nevertheless always wise and friendly. Wojo(Max Gail)was the well meaning detective who was a bit lacking in smarts. Harris(Ron Glass)was funny,fashion-conscious,and cool,while Yemana(Jack Soo)was much more introverted,though he also would provide the occasional witty commentary. Fish(Abe Vigoda,who was on the show for two seasons before being spun off into their own show "Fish")was the elder statesmen,the old man on the verge of retirement who had more ailments than you could imagine. Chano(Gregory Sierra)was the normal of the bunch after Barney,and always tried to have a positive outlook despite being constantly exposed to the less inspiring side of life. Other characters that appeared were Barney's wife Liz(Barbara Barrie),Barney's supervisor Chief Inspector Frank Luger(James Gregory),and Officer Carl Levitt(Ron Carey),and Detective Arthur Dietrich(Steve Landesberg).The detectives were racially mixed,which,at the show's inception,would occasionally provide for some comedy. Other detectives came and went after an episode or two,especially during the very early years of the series. Its amazing that "Barney Miller" survived,but it laid the groundwork for what was great comedy and the awards that this show received: It won the DGA Award from the Directors Guild of America in 1981,and it won back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series(Hal Linden)in 1979,1980,and 1982. Not to mention winning the Peabody Award in 1979,and the Golden Globe for Best Television Comedy or Musical Series twice in 1976 and 1977.Almost all of the action took place in the squad room and Barney's adjoining office,despite the fact that the station seemed very small considering its location. "Barney Miller" during the seven seasons that it ran on ABC,became a literate,well-written show with interesting characters and story lines mixed in with some grand comedy. In its later years it unfortunately suffered from "social-cause-of-the-week",syndrome by way of a'la' Lou Grant and every other socially conscious show that exploded onto TV screens in the mid-1970's and early 1980's. This was a series that is highly recommended as one of the best to come out of the 1970's and survived until its demise in the early 1980's.