This '80s cop show would've reunited Kent McCord and Martin Milner from Adam-12

The show was set in Nashville and featured the pair as old partners.

Oh, what could've been...

According to a November 1988 edition of the entertainment news journal Broadcasting Magazine, we nearly got to see the Adam-12 officers back in a new series. The duo's natural chemistry made their original pairing a hit in the '60s and '70s, and Adam-12 has been on TV consistently in re-runs ever since. NAC and Buck Productions were looking to recapture that same magic with Nashville Beat

Early in the show's development, the production company negotiated with two basic cable networks to sell the broadcasting rights to the new series. Nashville Beat would've featured Kent McCord as a "hip" undercover LA cop who gets recruited by Martin Milner's "old-fashioned" chief detective.

The show would've used the vibrant music nightlife of Nashville as its backdrop. McCord and Milner were in talks for 26 half-hour episodes. 

The official Kent McCord archives feature an interview in the first edition of Nashville Beat Magazine in which McCord explains why the show felt important to him:

"My motive was twofold: I wanted to work with Marty Milner again and I wanted to do a detective show that had a strong moral to it.

"I've taken a subject matter that's interesting to me," said McCord. "That happens to be cop stuff... the cop genre. You deal with life and death situations all the time. I think the genre is very clear-cut as far as morals and morality are concerned. There is good and there is evil. There are good guys and there are bad guys." 

Unfortunately, Nashville Beat the series was never picked up. Instead, we did get the proposed two-hour made-for-TV movie which would've served as the show's pilot, introducing the audience to these new characters and their city. 

"The movie that I wanted to make," said McCord, "was based on a simple story in which the good guys find out who the bad guys are and put them in jail. The moral of the story is, basically, crime doesn't pay."

The resulting TV movie had Martin and Milner playing cops who were former partners, a fitting role for these Adam-12 alums. The story had McCord as LAPD widower Mike Delaney following a dangerous gang leader to Nashville. There, he teams up again with Martin Milner's Captain Brian O'Neil and the Nashville PD to put an end to the growing gang problem. 

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19 Comments

Wiseguy70005 6 months ago
Who's Martin and Milner? Amazed no one else spotted that.
LoveMETV22 Wiseguy70005 6 months ago
Sure others spotted it. They just don't comment on it.
Avie 6 months ago
Delaney and O’Neil? Too Irish! THAT’S why the show never went to series! There’d have to be SOME cross-ethnic friction between them, but instead, every episode would’ve been St Patrick’s Day.

Would they have driven around in a green patrol car?
PaulaHarman Avie 6 months ago
I think the show would have been better for them to have been Reed and Malloy, that's who they were. I watched the movie but the names was not right. I probably would not have watched the series.y
Moverfan Avie 6 months ago
I suppose one of them could have been Scots.
bdettlingmetv 6 months ago
I suppose if we could accept Don Johnson as aging cop Nash Bridges many years out of Miami Vice, we could have accepted these guys 13-14 or so years out of Adam-12. I do agree with McGillahoola that a long series would have worked against their legacy. I'd like to see this pilot and will go see if the dreaded YT has it.
JERRY6 bdettlingmetv 6 months ago
it is on YT long and sort of drawn out but worth it just to see them together
McGillahooala 6 months ago
Great idea to reunite these two fine actors but maybe a movie was enough. I wouldn’t want anything to diminish their work on Adam 12.
Mark McGillahooala 6 months ago
Obviously, not enough, because Milner and McCord worked together again as detective partners in an episode of Diagnosis: Murder, "Murder Blues", where all the main guest stars were actors known for playing LAPD cops (James Darren, Angie Dickinson and Fred Dryer also appeared in the episode).

They also appeared in the dreadful New Adam-12, McCord as LIEUTENANT Reed and Milner as CAPTAIN Malloy, but I'm not sure whether they appeared in the same episode or not.
MrsPhilHarris 6 months ago
Has METV ever aired the black & white episodes of Dragnet?
I don’t think they have. You can find them on Roku. They are old lower quality black and white so they may not be particularly popular but I would think MeTV could find an audience for them during a super late or super early time slot.
Yep, and because the 50's episodes are public domain, they're very easy to find on the internet!
Thanks. I think I’ll look for them.
Mark cperrynaples 6 months ago
Only certain B&W Dragnets...I would say about 50 or so are in circulation. They're on YouTube, Pluto TV, countless cheap DVDs and every streaming platform. There's also one that is only on one of Shout! Factory's Dragnet sets.
They're lower quality because they are copies. If Universal could find the original films and restore them they would look as good as the color episodes.
cperrynaples 6 months ago
Fun Fact: McCord would have been Jack Webb's partner in a '80's reboot of Dragnet, but Webb died before it was made!
Wiseguy70005 cperrynaples 6 months ago
Yeah, that's such fun, an actor died. And your exclamation points indicates it makes you happy. Doesn't your keyboard have a period key, what most people use to end sentences?
JERRY6 Wiseguy70005 6 months ago
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LoveMETV22 Wiseguy70005 6 months ago
Exclamation point, and most people don't start sentences with "And".
Wiseguy70005 6 months ago
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