Police Woman (TV series)

infobox television
show_name = Police Woman


caption = "Police Woman" DVD cover
format = Action/Crime/Drama
runtime = 60 min.
creator = Robert E. Collins
starring = Angie Dickinson
Earl Holliman
Ed Bernard
Charles Dierkop
country = USA
executive_producer = David Gerber
network = NBC
opentheme =
camera =
first_aired = September 13 1974
last_aired = March 29 1978
num_episodes = 92 (1 unaired)
num_seasons = 4
tv_com_id = 631
imdb_id = 0071034
website =

"Police Woman" was an American television police drama starring Angie Dickinson that ran from September 13, 1974 to March 29, 1978 on NBC. It is not only considered to be the first successful series to focus on a female police officer, but also the first successful primetime drama series to feature a woman in the title role.

The show revolved around Sgt. Leanne "Pepper" Anderson (Angie Dickinson), an undercover agent working for the Criminal Conspiracy Unit of the LAPD. Sergeant William "Bill" Crowley (Earl Holliman) was her immediate superior, and Pete Royster (Charles Dierkop) and Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) were the other half of the undercover team that investigated everything from murders to rape and drug crimes. In many episodes, Pepper went undercover (as a prostitute, teacher, nurse, dancer, waitress, etc.) in order to get close enough to the suspects to gain valuable information that will lead to their arrest. (imdb.com says her character's name was Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson.)

As the first spin-off of the "Police Story" (1973-1978) anthology series, "Police Woman" was so successful in its first season in particular, that during that first Spring and Summer rerun season, the show hit Number One on the ratings charts Fact|date=April 2008. Its success paved the way for the more fanciful mid-'70s tough-girl programs that followed in its wake, such as "Charlie's Angels", "Wonder Woman", and "The Bionic Woman", as well as the more serious "Cagney and Lacey" in the 1980s.

"Police Woman" also caused an avalanche of applications for employment from women to police departments around the United States Fact|date=April 2008. Sociologists who have in recent years examined the inspiration for long-term female law enforcement officials to adopt this vocation as their own have been surprised by how often "Police Woman" has been referenced, thus neutralizing more strident feminist arguments from the 1970s that the initial portrait of "Pepper" was too sexualized to be constructive, suggesting that many women viewers found the character's balance of toughness in a male-oriented career with that of "traditional" femininity to be appealing Fact|date=August 2008.

In February 1976, President Gerald Ford re-scheduled a Tuesday press conference so as not to delay an episode of Police Woman, reportedly his favorite show Fact|date=August 2008.

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0071034|title=Police Woman
*tv.com show|id=631|title=Police Woman