| Genre: | Crime drama |
| Creator: | Dean Hargrove Joel Steiger Ann Doherty |
| Developer: | Douglas Stefen Borghi |
| Starring: | William Conrad Joe Penny Alan Campbell |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 5 |
| Num Episodes: | 106 |
| List Episodes: | List of Jake and the Fatman episodes |
| Executive Producer: | Dean Hargrove Fred Silverman Joel Steiger |
| Location: | Los Angeles, California Oahu, Hawaii |
| Runtime: | approx. 45 minutes |
| Company: | The Fred Silverman Company Strathmore Productions (1987–1988) Dean Hargrove Productions (1988–1992) Viacom Productions |
| Network: | CBS |
| Related: | Matlock |
Jake and the Fatman is an American crime drama television series starring William Conrad as prosecutor J. L. (Jason Lochinvar) "Fatman" McCabe and Joe Penny as investigator Jake Styles.[1] [2] [3] Created by Dean Hargrove, Joel Steiger and Ann Doherty, the series ran on CBS for five seasons from September 26, 1987, to May 6, 1992. was a spin-off of this series.[4] [5]
J. L. "Fatman" McCabe is a Hawaii-born, tough former Honolulu Police Department officer turned Los Angeles district attorney. He is teamed with a handsome, happy-go-lucky special investigator named Jake Styles. They often clash due to their different styles and personalities. "Fatman" travels hardly anywhere without Max, his pet bulldog. The show was set in Los Angeles during the first season. After the end of Magnum, P.I., the show was moved to Hawaii. The second and third seasons and half of the fourth season were filmed in Honolulu. The show then returned to Los Angeles for the remainder of its run.
Guest stars on the series included Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Denise Dowse, Scott Marlowe, Leigh McCloskey, Ed Nelson, Leo Penn, Stephen Quadros, Robert Reed, Mitch Ryan, Alan Scarfe, Dwight Schultz, Ray Sharkey and David Soul.
Conrad guest starred as an aging prosecutor in a two-part episode of Matlock during its first season on NBC. Executive producers Fred Silverman and Dean Hargrove decided to use this character as a model for one of the main characters in a new show they were creating for CBS. Penny also guest starred in these episodes, but his character was not on the same side as Conrad's character in the storyline's legal case.
Following the departure of Hargrove, executive producers David Moessinger and Jeri Taylor were brought on to run the series with Silverman. They also hired J. Michael Straczynski as an executive story consultant.[6] Taylor and Moessinger ran the show for two years before finally leaving in a dispute over control over the show.
Straczynski has written that he was hired after pitching a story that let Conrad sit down for almost every scene, noting his own faux slogan for the show "Jake and the Fatman: He can't act, he can't walk, together they fight crime".
Joe Penny lost a large amount of weight after the show moved to Hawaii, which led to many rumors about his health, including the possibility that he had AIDS. In actuality, he had suffered from a gastrointestinal virus and was having difficulty regaining the weight he lost. When the show moved back to Los Angeles, it was also suspected that it was on Penny's urging. This was also not true, as the move was CBS's decision.[7]
See main article: List of Jake and the Fatman episodes.
CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first two seasons of Jake and the Fatman on DVD in Region 1 between 2008/2009. As of June 2015, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.
Visual Entertainment released Jake and the Fatman - The Complete Collection on June 23, 2017.[8] [9]
| DVD Name | Ep # | Region 1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season One, Volume One | 11 | July 8, 2008[10] | |
| Season One, Volume Two | 12 | December 2, 2008[11] | |
| Season Two | 11 | May 5, 2009[12] | |
| Season Three | 26 | N/A | |
| Season Four | 24 | N/A | |
| Season Five | 22 | N/A | |
| The Complete Series | 106 | June 23, 2017 |
See main article: Diagnosis: Murder.
The nineteenth episode of the fourth season of Jake and the Fatman, "It Never Entered My Mind", featured Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, a medical doctor who solves crimes. The success of that episode led initially to a series of three TV movies, and then a weekly television series that debuted on CBS on October 29, 1993.