Amazingly,producer Aaron Spelling brought back his most famous show which produced 27 episodes and ran for one season on CBS from 1994-1995. The title again became "Burke's Law",and Gene Barry was back in his most famous role as Chief of Detectives,Amos Burke,who was still head of operations for the Los Angeles Police Department. This time around,Burke is assisted by his son,Peter Burke(Peter Barton). The revival,even more than the original program,was widely regarded as camp,but it was still a good murder mystery with a cast of "whodunits" leading up to Burke and his son to solve the crime and catch the killer. Also,Gene Barry's character was back chasing crooks in his fabulous Rolls-Royce only this time the producers along with some of the writers including Richard Levinson and William Link along with Harlan Ellison,Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts along with Ernest Kinmoy dusted off the original scripts for this new incarnation. Only on occasion did we see the old spark of creatively that made the original show from the early 1960's so great. Some of these episodes did have a touch of a 90's retrospective,such as a victim freezing to death on the hottest day of the year;an ambulance chasing lawyer getting run over by an ambulance. Who would have thought of bringing back guest stars such as Efrem Zimbalist,Jr. as a greedy tycoon accused of murder while practicing his golf swing from the roof of a building and doesn't care who it falls on?
And other stars such as Brian Keith,as an ex-marine turned novelist accused of first degree murder,who puts on a dress just to get into the mood to write? And other stars as suspects such as Hugh O'Brian, Richard Crenna,Stella Stevens,and Carolyn Jones to name a few. This show also featured guest appearances by many of Gene Barry's peers from the 1960's spy-fi genre including Patrick Macnee(The Avengers), Robert Culp(I Spy),David McCallum(The Man From UNCLE),Peter Lupus and Barbara Bain(Mission:Impossible),and Anne Francis(Honey West). It also have some well-known detectives including Mike Connors(Mannix)and Karl Malden(The Streets of San Francisco). After one season on the air,CBS cancelled it and replaced it with the Dick Van Dyke mystery series "Diagnosis Murder",which was the greatest travesty of its kind and to say CBS kept it on the air for seven years killing one of the greatest mystery shows of all time.
