... and I've never seen it since then. The rabbi (Stuart Margolin) finds his housekeeper dead in his house, after having slept in that morning. Lanigan (Art Carney) is the detective assigned to the case.
I remember them all - the rabbi, the detective, their wives (can't remember what they were doing in this scene) talking about the case and being asked to raise their hand if they thought the rabbi did it based just on the circumstantial evidence. One by one they do. I remember even forty years ago I thought they were building a moment of false tension, because it was obvious that none of them - not even seasoned detective Lanigan - thought that the rabbi was guilty, nor did the investigation even go in that direction.
This was the pilot to a short lived series. It might have worked out if Stuart Margolin had continued on in the series as the rabbi, but a different actor took his place and he and Art Carney just did not have the same chemistry.
Art Carney enjoyed a bit of a career renaissance in the 1970's after he won the Best Actor Oscar for Harry and Tonto, especially in the realm of television. Often Best Actor/Actress Oscars lead nowhere as to the future career of the winner if the winner is not a mainstream player in the first place. F. Murray Abraham and Ben Kingsley come to mind.
If you can ever find this pilot I recommend it. It kept me engaged enough to stay up late one night in the 1970s to see how it turned out.
I remember them all - the rabbi, the detective, their wives (can't remember what they were doing in this scene) talking about the case and being asked to raise their hand if they thought the rabbi did it based just on the circumstantial evidence. One by one they do. I remember even forty years ago I thought they were building a moment of false tension, because it was obvious that none of them - not even seasoned detective Lanigan - thought that the rabbi was guilty, nor did the investigation even go in that direction.
This was the pilot to a short lived series. It might have worked out if Stuart Margolin had continued on in the series as the rabbi, but a different actor took his place and he and Art Carney just did not have the same chemistry.
Art Carney enjoyed a bit of a career renaissance in the 1970's after he won the Best Actor Oscar for Harry and Tonto, especially in the realm of television. Often Best Actor/Actress Oscars lead nowhere as to the future career of the winner if the winner is not a mainstream player in the first place. F. Murray Abraham and Ben Kingsley come to mind.
If you can ever find this pilot I recommend it. It kept me engaged enough to stay up late one night in the 1970s to see how it turned out.
