Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Joe Bash: Peter Boyle

Joe Bash aired from March until May 1986 on ABC.

Danny Arnold's dark comedy about a cynical old cop bore little resembance to his earlier police sitcom, Barney Miller. Joe ( Peter Boyle)was a balding, older New York City street cop near the end of his career, who just wanted to go out peacefully and with a nice, safe pension. Cynical about the system , he wasn't above a little larceny: in one episode he tried to keep the bag of cash he found in a dead woman's ratty apartment. Willie ( Andrew Rubin) was his enthusiastic young partner, who was supposed to learn from him, but spent most of his time keeping Joe more or less honest. Lorna ( DeLane Matthews)was Joe's hooker-girlfriend. A gritty " mean stretts" look and unappealing characters kept this series from attracting much of an audience.

A Review from The New York Times

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 17, 1986

''Joe Bash,'' on the other hand, is something else, something so unusual for a half-hour format in prime time that it could be either dismissed as a disaster or hailed as a breakthrough. After watching its first three episodes on Fridays at 9:30 P.M., I found myself getting used to its offbeat ways and actually beginning to like its oddball characters. ''Joe Bash,'' created by Danny Arnold, who is best known for the ''Barney Miller'' series, revolves around life as a policeman in a New York precinct in lower Manhattan. Joe Bash is nearing retirement and just wants to get through the rest of his tour with as little effort as possible. His new partner, Willie Smith, is young and still eager to help humanity. The two patrol their beat on streets that are clearly part of a studio set. There is no laugh track to signal the viewer as to whether Joe's misanthropy is really supposed to be funny. ''Joe Bash'' moves to its own special beat, apparently bent on demolishing every well-established cliche in sitcom territory.

The character of Joe Bash, developed by Mr. Arnold, Philip Jayson Lasker and Chris Hayward, has reached the conclusion that life is a mess and ''there is nothing I can do about it.'' Summing up, Joe declares that you come in with a slap on the rump and go out with a kick in the teeth - ''everything in between is toothaches and blisters.'' On his rounds with Willie, he copes with simmeringly hostile black and Hispanic people, old women found dead in their dreary apartments and old men who, lost in the ravages of Alzheimer's disease, remember actors like Fredric March (''when that man gives a performance, you believe every word from his lips''). While Willie tries to get a rise out of his grumpy partner, Joe goes about his business getting the local merchants to give him a free candy bar or another bowl of lima bean soup.

The title character is portrayed by Peter Boyle, the highly gifted character actor who in the 1960's brought another Joe, the hard-hat patriot, to vivid life in the film called ''Joe.'' With Andrew Rubin depicting his affable foil, Mr. Boyle manages to keep this Joe perfectly poised between being a scoundrel and a saint. In fact, on his own and off duty, Joe can be as sentimental as he is cynical. Divorced and lonely, he realizes that he doesn't have a ''knack for relationships,'' that he lacks a storehouse of comforting memories. ''Me,'' says Joe, ''I don't have much to remember . . . When I get old, unless I get senile, I'm screwed.'' Now being evaluated by ABC for further production plans, Joe may leave a good many viewers puzzled, but he is one of the most memorable characters to saunter through a television series in many a season. ''Joe Bash'' is to return the next Friday. Anyone interested in what is truly different on television entertainment these days should take note.

An Article from Time Magazine

Lonely Beat Joe Bash; Abc;
Monday, Apr. 21, 1986 By RICHARD ZOGLIN

A comedy series with no cackling studio audience, no laugh track--indeed, almost no laughs? Forget it. A police show in which cars never careen through the streets, drug pushers are strangely absent, and nobody draws a gun? No way. A network midseason replacement that tiptoes into the little-watched time period opposite Dallas for an unheralded six-show run? So long, Charlie.

Hello, Joe Bash. This ABC entry, created by Danny Arnold (Barney Miller), is not only the oddest new comedy of the season, it is also the smartest and most unexpectedly moving. Peter Boyle plays Joe, an embittered middle-aged New York cop who pounds the beat with a brash young partner, Willie (Andrew Rubin). The pair traverse the desolate city streets and cope with the unglamorous trivia of everyday police life. A woman is found dead in her apartment, and Joe and Willie debate what to do with the bag of money she has left. An old man wanders into a deli and orders a meal he cannot pay for; he turns out to be an Alzheimer's victim who has escaped from a senior citizens' home.

All of this swirls around the surly character of Joe, TV's most convincing misanthrope since Archie Bunker. In Boyle's sharp and unsentimental portrayal, crustiness never becomes cute, and there are echoes of authentic urban despair in the patter. "What are you gonna do over the weekend?" Willie asks Joe, whose wife left him 15 years ago. "Same as I always do. Sit it out till Monday," he replies. Willie nags him to get out of the apartment and make friends. "I had friends," Joe snaps. "I didn't like it." At the end of one episode, Joe is even found in bed with a prostitute, without apologies. Not exactly the stuff of Nielsen winners, but a TV breakthrough: the first sitcom about loneliness. R.Z.

For more on Joe Bash go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bash