Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Bakersfield P.D. : Cast Photo

Bakersfield P.D. aired on Fox from September 1993 until August 1994.

Most of the episodes of this screwball police comedy opened with morning roll call, as had the critically acclaimed Hill Street Blues, but that's where the similarities ended. The crazy series more closely resembled Police Squad!

The central character was Det. Paul Gigante (Giancarlo Exposito),, a reserved officer who relocated from Washington, D.C. following a separation from his wife, to start a new life on the police force of Bakersfield, California.

Paul was half Black and half Italian and was the only black cop on the force - therefore, he was often taken for a suspect simply because of his race. Wade ( Ron Eldard), , his partner, was a well-meaning redneck and a trivia freak. Sgt. Hampton ( Brian Doyle-Murray), a 22-year veteran of the force, was the long-suffering aide to inept, indecisive Capt. Stiles ( Jack Hallett). Hampton spent much of his time covering for Stile's mistakes and making decisions for him.

Also seen were Officer Boyer ( Chris Mulkey), a hunky but incredibly dumb officer and his partner, Ramirez ( Tony Plana), who was highly emotional and sensitive.

This half-hour comedy series did not have a laugh track.

A Review from Variety

Bakersfield P.D.
(Tues. (14), 8:30-9 p.m., Fox)
By TONY SCOTT

Filmed in L.A. by Rock Island Prods. Inc. and Touchstone TV. Exec producer-writer-creator, Larry Levin; co-exec producer, Dennis Klein; producer, Paula Mazur; director, Dean Parisot.

Cast: Giancarlo Esposito, Ron Eldard, Brian Doyle-Murray, Chris Mulkey, Jack Hallett, Tony Plana, Cynthia Bond, Shaun Baker, Tim Dezarn, David Basulto, Rick Najera, Wendy Gordon, Abe Adams.

Cops are in for another run at comedy, but this opening chapter, written and created by Larry Levin, works too hard and comes up with too little genuine humor to make an arrest. Chances of anyone sticking around to size up how three pairs of cops kick up dust in Bakersfield are negligible.
Levin has developed six types: Ron Eldard's overly enthusiastic Wade Preston; Giancarlo Esposito's half-black, half-Italian Paul Gigante; Chris Mulkey's slow-witted Denny Boyer; Tony Plana's emotional Luke Ramirez; Brian Doyle-Murphy's reliable Sgt. Hampton; and Jack Hallett's indecisive Capt. Stiles. However, their weaknesses are pounded into the pavement.

One of the show's gimmicks is that Gigante's black and Bakersfield majors in white. His eager partner Preston, who thrives on cop TV shows, expects black lore from cultivated Gigante, who knows none.

The sight gags don't earn many laughs. Director Dean Parisot and writer Levin are stronger in the personal touches than in the high jinks, though even the former don't add up to much. As it is so far, "Bakersfield P.D." earns no stripes.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
NIGHT SHTICKS
BANTERING 'BAKERSFIELD' COPS ARE OFFICERS YOU CAN'T REFUSE

An unexpectedly original charmer, Bakersfield, P.D. (Fox, Sept. 14, 8:30-9 p.m.) is about Paul (Giancarlo Esposito), a Washington, D.C., cop who is transferred to a most eccentric police department in Bakersfield, Calif. Paul is paired with Wade (Ron Eldard), a genial doofus who apparently based his decision to join the force solely on his fondness for TV cop shows like The Mod Squad and Mannix, whose plots he lovingly recounts for his nonplussed new partner. Bakersfield, P.D. is one of the few sitcoms whose jokes and dialogue about race-Paul is black, Wade is white-carry an air of innocence and affection. Wade is no racist, but he asks Paul gauche questions about what it's like to be black because he's genuinely curious. Chris Mulkey (Hank Jennings on Twin Peaks) brings his knack for handsome dim-wittedness to the role of an officer who'd rather work the night shift: ''Hey, if I wanted to work 9 to 5, I'd have finished high school.'' Combine these characters with an amusing superior officer-Captain Stiles (Jack Hallett), an insecure man who is incapable of making a firm decision-and you've got one of the season's more pleasant surprises. B+

An Artcle from USA TODAY
Published on October 26, 1993

TV shows don't tend to get ratings much lower than those for Fox's quirky little gem of a cop comedy, Bakersfield P.D.

Last week the series ( airing tonight at 8:30 ET/PT) ranked 89th of 91 shows. But also last week, it got picked up for a full season of 22 episodes-this in an era of the network itchy-tringer-finger.

What gives? And why do we celebrate?

Fox says it believes in the show and its creator, Larry Levin, and thinks Bakersfield will enhance the network's prestige and improve its reputation in Hollywood's creative circles. Not jerking the show and its small audience around, Fox says, sends a signal that every so often quality-not numbers-can be the bottom line.

Lets hope its true. Lets hope it works. Lets hope its contageous.

" It is important to us to succeed with this show ," says Dan McDermott, Fox's senior vice president of current programing and specials. " We see it as funny, distinctive and original." Reminded how different this quality is from Fox's regular raucous fare, McDermott contends, " That's why this is an important show for us. It can broaden our audience and make us more diverse and flexible."

If people watch. He says Fox will devote more energy to promotion and other strategies to increase awareness-as in this week's " double-pumped" episode, to repeat Thursday at 9:30 ET/PT.

No one is more stunned than Levin, who saw his last offbeat series, ABC's Arresting Behavior, perish after three airings.

" I was surprised when they bought this pilot, amazed when they made it into a series and now I guess I'm astonished," says Levin, who considers Bakersfield " a challenge to watch, and to write." He definately considers it less a cop show than a wry look at male relationships and emotions.

" Most people find it funny. But it seems to make others uncomfortable." Furthermore, Levin muses, " I've been feeling lately that in a day of crime with people fearful for their lives, and clubs on the car and carjackings that maybe people don't want to see cops who are not effective...Maybe they don't want to see the thin blue line any thinner."

He's not falsely hopeful. " I don't expect a major hit, just a small niche. Shows like this will hopefully succeed until the days of interactive TV where people can phone up and order shows on demand...The consumer won't have the Tartikoffs and Littlefields telling them when and what to watch."

A pipe dream, maybe.

But who'd have predicted Bakersfield would get this far? For a change and for a moment, anything seems possible.

An Article From Time Magazine

Hill Street Blues on Happy Juice
Monday, Nov. 22, 1993

By RICHARD ZOGLIN

Frustrated at doing police work by the book, detective Wade Preston likes to hark back to the cops he idolizes: "Baretta, Starsky and Hutch, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin -- those guys had fun!" His partner replies impatiently, "Those are TV cops. They're not real." Whines the TV junkie: "Who says everything has to be real?"

Just so. Very little in Bakersfield P.D. qualifies as real, at least by TV's usual standards. In the pixilated police department where this sitcom is set, the captain is a nervous Nellie who can't make a decision without the approval of his protective aide-de-camp. One sentimental cop causes a ruckus when he takes to bestowing kisses on his partner. A crazed gunman barricades himself inside a building and holds off a SWAT team but seems at a loss to explain why. "I want you to send somebody in," he finally calls out, "to help me think of my demands." Even odder, all of this doesn't blast away at viewers with the firepower of a typical sitcom Uzi; devoid of a laugh track, it floats along like an errant Wiffle ball.

Bakersfield P.D. is the best-kept secret of the new season. To find the show on the weekly Nielsen chart, one practically has to turn the newspaper upside down: for the season to date, the Fox show ranks 99th out of a possible 101. Despite the bleak numbers, Fox programmers have renewed the show for the entire season -- evidence of either a sorry lack of replacements on the bench or a heartening faith in what is easily the best new comedy of the season.

Executive producer Larry Levin, a former writer for It's Garry Shandling's Show and creator of last season's cop spoof Arresting Behavior, concedes that even in the best circumstances, Bakersfield P.D. is unlikely to become a Top 10 hit. "I'm asking viewers to look sideways at stuff instead of dead-on, and it throws most people," he says. "My feet are firmly planted in sand. Nothing is black and white to me."

Certainly not the sensitive subject of black-and-white relations. Bakersfield P.D. focuses on Paul Gigante (Giancarlo Esposito), a black police detective newly transplanted from Washington. His race makes him a curiosity in Bakersfield's white-bread station house, and his new colleagues are naive enough to say what's on their mind. His TV-obsessed partner (Ron Eldard) admits to feeling "a little gypped" that the first black man he has worked with is so lacking in flash. In a sting operation to nab a call-girl ring, Gigante is picked to go undercover as a pimp. He bristles, saying, "I don't see why the color of my skin automatically makes me a prime candidate to portray a pimp." (The captain, bristling back, says he'll get someone else for the job: "We've got plenty of guys in this precinct who are very much at home around prostitutes.") Rarely has TV portrayed casual racial stereotyping with as much humor or human understanding. Cop-show stereotypes come in for even more satire. The police in this California backwater are a far cry from the cool, macho professionals who have populated TV dramas from Kojak to NYPD Blue. Mostly they are wimpy, neurotic, overemotional misfits, more obsessed with interpersonal trivia than the demands of police work. Not that the police work is very demanding. The morning roll call in Bakersfield P.D. is like Hill Street Blues on happy juice: "We've got two officers down and another squad car in the shop," announces the gruff sergeant (Brian Doyle-Murray). "Try and remember that new speed bump by the junior high."

Gigante is the island of professionalism in this sea of looniness -- dumbfounded by the nuts around him but eager to be accepted by them. Invited for the first time to join their weekly poker game, he innocently ups the stakes, then proceeds to clean everybody out. "This is more about bonding than poker, isn't it?" he asks. Precisely: the next day, he's ostracized like Fast Eddie Felson at the neighborhood pool hall. One has to go back to The Andy Griffith Show to find a more astute, affectionate satire of small-town provincialism.

Does Bakersfield P.D. have a future? The show is probably too gentle and unassertive to inspire the sort of grass-roots campaign that saved or extended shows like Brooklyn Bridge and Cagney & Lacey. Levin thinks the subject matter makes it a tough sell. "Nobody wants to see ineffective cops," he theorizes. "In the days of Car 54, Where Are You? people didn't have to lock their doors or their car. Today there's violence and fear and crime everywhere, and nobody wants to see a cop who can't make a decision." Maybe not, but who says every show has to be real?

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles

For more on Bakersfield P.D. go to www.allyourtv.com/shows/b/showguidebakersfieldpd.html