The credit sequence to the ABC sit-com Barney Miller (1974-1982) is without a doubt the first place I ever saw the image of the World Trade Center. WTC had only just opened its doors to tenants in 1973 — I never even learned its name until 1979. That was on my first trip to New York City, a field trip organized by my high school teacher — very probably the single person who changed my life the most.
New York! I’ve known since I was 13 years old that I was going to move here, lured mostly by Neil Simon movies, and 70s and 80s sit-coms like The Odd Couple, Taxi, and Barney Miller. It appeared to be a gritty place, a place where irritated, world-weary, vaguely ethnic people dealt with frustration and inconvenience by making irresistible wisecracks.
Barney Miller was an especially strange one. Hard on the heels of a whole spate of neo-realistic 70s crime dramas like Serpico and The French Connection, it attempted to make merry in the same milieu, as a ragtag bunch of Lower Manhattan plainclothesmen brought in an endless parade of prostitutes, drunks, hippies, flashers, litterbugs, peeping toms, shoplifters, vandals, and other colorful New York street types. The squad room was a smorgasbord of human types (and stereotypes): Fish, an elderly Jew (Abe Vigoda), Wojciehowicz, a dumb Polish guy (Max Gail), Yemana, a deadpan Asian (Jack Soo), Harris, a flashy, funky African American (Ron Glass), Dietrich, an intellectual (Steve Landesberg) and Levitt, a diminutive uniformed cop who aspired to make detective (Ron Carey).The first two seasons also featured Gregory Sierra as Chano, a moody, hot-headed Puerto Rican. They were all led by the patient, seemingly unflappable Captain Barney Miller, played by handsome Broadway star Hal Linden (whose real last name, we never tired of observing, was Lipschitz.)
Oh, and don’t forget James Gregory as Inspector Luger:
Every episode, the detectives would bring in a parade of entertaining perps off the streets of New York, conveniently one at a time, so we could hear their snappy, funny New York conversations. There would be occasional moments of seriousness and pathos, always cleaned up neatly (if implausibly) by the end of the episode. As a prime time show in the pre-cable age, it never got TOO close to truly troubling or controversial stuff. Thus as crime-ridden as it made New York seem, somehow the crooks came off as kind of lovable. Strung out junkies, knife fights, and things like that got downplayed. But even those would have heightened the glamour. New York is a candle, and the millions of us who move here — are moths.
By the way, I was also a huge fan of the spin-off series, Fish which we blogged about here.
(Travalanche) 
One of the great things about Barney Miller, was the way they used what amounted to a small rep company of seasoned bit players/character actors to fill those roles of perps and victims. People like Phil Leeds, Stanley Brock, Leonard Stone, Ken Tigar, and so on, would make an annual appearance in an episode. If you look at BM’s IMDB page, almost every guest star is credited with 4, 5 or 6 guest shots. They were the backbone of the show!
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Totally!
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