First, credit where it's due - the opening and closing theme music from Mannix was written by the well-known film and TV composer, the guy who wrote memorable themes for TV's Mission: Impossible, and of course, one of the best TV themes ever, Mannix, Lalo Schifrin. And I can't take credit (or the blame) for the 'Summary' or 'Title' of this review. My old friend, the late Gary Owens, was responsible for that. Mr. Schifrin even credited Gary, when he used the above title for a vinyl LP of some of Schifrin's music.All that being said, I have always thought Mannix was one of the all-time great detective shows ever to hit TV. Mike Connors (known in the 1950's as "Touch" Connors! Figure THAT out!) was just terrific as the tough guy/nice guy detective, Joe Mannix. His secretary, Peggy Fair (played by Gail Fisher - and I don't think the character's last name was mentioned more than once in the entire run of the episodes in which she appeared, from its second season, starting in September of 1968, to its eighth season, which finished in April of 1975). In its first season, Mannix was working in the rather contrived situation of a large, "computerized" detective agency with many employees. Thankfully, the producers (Desilu, at the time, soon to become Paramount Television) had the sense to dump all the phony baloney bells and whistles of all that. Starting with season two, they got rid of the unnecessary characters, and had our hero Joe Mannix become self-employed, with Peggy holding down the fort whenever Joe left the office, which was quite often.When you watched Mannix, you'd see lots of action, a fair amount of suspense, and even when the scripts weren't great, they were always good. So if you have yet to see this series, as of this writing, the show is running on MeTV, seen all over the US, originating in Chicago.If you'll allow me this, dear reader, Three Cheers For DESILU Productions, which, with Mannix, went out with a BANG!!!

Barely a week went by without the usual "Mannix gets hit by a car" scene. It was so predictable, it was like clockwork. I was even able to mimic the "Mannix roll" as a teenager. I'd walk home from school with my friends & see an abandoned auto. "Here's Mannix getting hit by a car"! Throw myself onto the front of the hood & roll off to the side. Joe Mannix looked pretty good for someone who got "run over" as often as he did, LOL!For some reason though, I have no recollection of "Mike Brady" playing a cop on this show, especially considering that the series' run coincided with that of "The Brady Bunch". I thought he was so "busy with three boys of his own"!

the first season was nothing like the subsequent seasons. In the first season Mannix worked for a computer detective organization known as intertect. For some reason this idea was dropped and for the next seven seasons he was nothing more than a regular private detective. i think that the first critique is from someone who never saw the first season.The first season also had joe campanella as Manniz's boss. These two had a good time working together as evidenced by some bloopers that were shown in the 1980's. This show was known for being violent and again the first season was probably the most violent as opposed to the subsequent seasons.

If you ever get a chance to see an episode of Mannix, you'll see a picture of a car exploding in the opening sequence. The episode that is from is one of my favorite examples of stupidity in movies and television. Here's how the sequence begins:Victim has brake lines cut in car. Of course, down shifting, shutting the engine off, or pulling the emergency brake are all way too obvious for our hero, who careens out of control and finally crashes through a fence and flies off the mountain. The car explodes into a fireball in mid-air. It doesn't have to hit anything, it just blows up. Now, any poor quality director could have produced that sequence. It took real bottom-of-the-barrel power to add the next touch:Mannix is sitting in his office reading the paper. On the cover is a picture of the exploding car IN MID-AIR. Not only did the car explode, there was a news photographer sitting around waiting for it to happen. What a scoop!