''The Mod Squad'' is an American
crime drama
Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as Drama (film and television), dr ...
series, originally broadcast for five seasons on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting
* Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...
from September 24, 1968, to March 1, 1973.
It starred
Michael Cole as Peter "Pete" Cochran,
Clarence Williams III
Clarence Williams III (August 21, 1939 – June 4, 2021) was an American actor. He played the character of Linc Hayes in the police television series ''The Mod Squad'' from 1968 to 1973. He also appeared in films such as '' Purple Rain'', '' 52 P ...
as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes,
Peggy Lipton
Margaret Ann Lipton (August 30, 1946 – May 11, 2019) was an American model, actress, and singer. She made appearances in many of the most popular television shows of the 1960s before she landed her defining role as flower child Julie Barnes i ...
as Julie Barnes, and
Tige Andrews
Tige Andrews (born Tiger Androwas; March 19, 1920 – January 27, 2007) was an American character actor. He is best remembered for his law-enforcement roles as Captain Adam Greer and Lieutenant Johnny Russo in two ABC crime drama television seri ...
as Captain Adam Greer. The
executive producer
Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the production of media. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights or royalties). In film ...
s of the series were
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling (April 22, 1923June 23, 2006) was an American film and television producer and occasional actor. His productions included the television series ''Family'' (1976–1980), ''Charlie's Angels'' (1976–1981), ''The Love Boat'' (1977� ...
and
Danny Thomas
Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz, (born January 6, 1912 – February 6, 1991) known professionally as Danny Thomas, was an American comedian, actor, singer, producer, and philanthropist. He created and starred in ''The Danny Thomas Show''. In additio ...
.
The
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
police series earned six
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
nominations, four
Golden Globe
The Golden Globe Awards are awards presented for excellence in both international film and television. It is an annual award ceremony held since 1944 to honor artists and professionals and their work. The ceremony is normally held every Januar ...
nominations plus one win for Peggy Lipton, one
Directors Guild of America Award
The Directors Guild of America Awards are issued annually by the Directors Guild of America. The first DGA Award was an "Honorary Life Member" award issued in 1938 to D. W. Griffith. The statues are made by New York firm, Society Awards.
Cate ...
, and four
Logies
The TV Week Logie Awards (known colloquially as The Logies) is an annual ceremony celebrating and honouring the best shows and stars in Australian television, sponsored and organised by the magazine ''TV Week''. The event is telecast live and b ...
. In 1970, the second-season episode, "In This Corner . . . Sol Alpert," script by
Rita Lakin and Harve Bennett, was nominated by the
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is a professional organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City.
The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday.
It presents the E ...
for an
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America which is based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards hon ...
in the category of
Best Mystery Teleplay, losing to the
TV-Movie
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a terrest ...
''
Daughter of the Mind
''Daughter of the Mind'' is a 1969 American made-for-television horror-thriller film starring Don Murray, Ray Milland and Gene Tierney. It was first broadcast on ABC on December 9, 1969 as the ABC Movie of the Week.TV Guide, December 6–12, 1 ...
''. In 1997, a 1970 episode "Mother of Sorrow" was ranked #95 on
TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time
100 Greatest Episodes of All Time (1997) and Top 100 Episodes of All Time (2009) are lists of the 100 "best" television show episodes on U.S. television as published by ''TV Guide''. The first list, published on June 28, 1997, was produced in c ...
.
Plot

They were The Mod Squad ("One black, one white, one blonde"), described by one critic as "the hippest and first young undercover cops on TV". Each of these characters represented mainstream culture's principal fears regarding youth in the era:
long-haired rebel Pete Cochran (Michael Cole) was evicted from his wealthy parents'
Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. A notable and historic suburb of Los Angeles, it is located just southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Beverly Hil ...
home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes (Clarence Williams III), who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the
Watts riots
The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. The riots were motivated by anger at the racist and abus ...
, one of the longest and most violent riots in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
history;
flower child
Flower child originated as a synonym for Hippie, ''hippie'', especially among the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and the surrounding area during the Summer of Love in 1967. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear a ...
Julie Barnes (Peggy Lipton), the "canary with a broken wing,"
was arrested for
vagrancy
Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, waste picker, scavenging, or petty theft. In Western ...
after running away from her prostitute mother's
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
home; and Captain Adam Greer (Tige Andrews) was a tough but sympathetic mentor and
father figure
A father figure is usually an older man, normally one with power, authority, or strength, with whom one can identify on a deeply psychology, psychological level and who generates emotions generally felt towards one's father. Despite the literal t ...
who convinced them to form the squad.
The concept was to take three rebellious, disaffected young social outcasts and convince them to work as unarmed undercover detectives as an alternative to being incarcerated. Their youthful,
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to dif ...
personas would enable them to get close to the criminals they would investigate. "The times are changing," Captain Greer explained. "They can get into places we (the regular police) can't." Examples included their infiltrations of a
high school
A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...
to solve a teacher's murder, of an
underground
Underground most commonly refers to:
* Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth
Underground may also refer to:
Places
* Buenos Aires Underground, a rapid transit system
* London Underground, a rapid transit system
* ...
newspaper to find a bomber, and of an acting class to look for a strangler who was preying on blonde actresses.
More than a year before the release of the film ''
Easy Rider
''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern. It was produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and the S ...
'', ''The Mod Squad'' was one of the earliest attempts to deal with the counterculture. Groundbreaking in the realm of socially relevant drama,
it dealt with issues such as
abortion
Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
,
domestic violence
Domestic violence is violence that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes r ...
,
child abuse
Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical abuse, physical, child sexual abuse, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse, psychological maltreatment or Child neglect, neglect of a child, especially by a p ...
,
illiteracy
Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...
,
slumlord
A slumlord (or slum landlord) is a slang term for a landlord, generally an absentee landlord with more than one property, who attempts to maximize profit by minimizing spending on property maintenance, and usually rents to tenants that they can ...
s, the
anti-war movement
An anti-war movement is a social movement in opposition to one or more nations' decision to start or carry on an armed conflict. The term ''anti-war'' can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during con ...
,
illegal immigration
Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of that country's immigration laws, or the continuous residence in a country without the legal right to do so. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upward, wi ...
,
police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or Public order policing, a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, b ...
,
student protest
Campus protest or student protest is a form of student activism that takes the form of protest at university campuses. Such protests encompass a wide range of activities that indicate student dissatisfaction with a given political or academi ...
,
sex education
Sex education, also known as sexual education, sexuality education or sex ed, is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, safe sex, birth ...
,
soldiers returning from Vietnam and
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster, traffic collision, ...
,
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
,
euthanasia
Euthanasia (from : + ) is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
Different countries have different Legality of euthanasia, euthanasia laws. The British House of Lords Select committee (United Kingdom), se ...
, and the
illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drug prohibition, prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibitionism, prohibit trade, exce ...
.
Spelling intended the show to be about the characters's relationships, and he promised that the Squad "would never arrest kids... or carry a gun or use one."
The show was loosely based on creator Bud "Buddy" Ruskin's experiences in the late 1950s as a squad leader for young undercover
narcotic
The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "I make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates ...
s cops, though it took almost 10 years after he wrote a script for the idea to be
green-light
In the context of the film and television industries, to greenlight is to give permission to proceed with a project. It specifically refers to formally approving its production finance and committing to this financing, thereby allowing the projec ...
ed by ABC Television Studios.
Impact
The shows ''
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...
'' (1966–69), ''
I Spy
I spy is a guessing game where one player (the ''spy'' or ''it'') chooses an object within sight and announces to the other players that "I spy with my little eye something beginning with...", naming the first letter of the object. Other players a ...
'' (1965–68), ''
The Bill Cosby Show
''The Bill Cosby Show'' is an American sitcom television series that aired for two seasons on NBC's Sunday night schedule from 1969 until 1971 under the sponsorship of Procter & Gamble. There were 52 episodes made in the series. It marked Bill C ...
'' (1969–71), ''
Room 222
''Room 222'' is an American comedy-drama television series produced by 20th Century Fox Television that aired on American Broadcasting Company, ABC for 112 episodes, from September 17, 1969, until January 11, 1974. The show was broadcast on 1969 ...
'' (1969–74), ''
Mannix
''Mannix'' is an American detective television series that originally aired for eight seasons on CBS from September 16, 1967, to March 13, 1975. The show was created by Richard Levinson and William Link, and developed by executive producer ...
'' (1967–75), ''
Mission: Impossible'' (1966–73), ''
Julia
Julia may refer to:
People
*Julia (given name), including a list of people with the name
*Julia (surname), including a list of people with the name
*Julia gens, a patrician family of Ancient Rome
*Julia (clairvoyant) (fl. 1689), lady's maid of Qu ...
'' (1968–71), ''
The Flip Wilson Show
''The Flip Wilson Show'' is an hour-long variety show that originally aired in the US on NBC from September 17, 1970, to June 27, 1974. The show starred American comedian Flip Wilson; the program was one of the first American television programs ...
'' (1970–74), and ''The Mod Squad'' (1968–73) were among the first programs to feature African-Americans as stars since the stereotyped roles of ''
Amos 'n' Andy
''Amos 'n' Andy'' was an American radio sitcom about black characters, initially set in Chicago then later in the Harlem section of New York City. While the show had a brief life on 1950s television with black actors, the 1928 to 1960 radio sho ...
'' and ''
Beulah'' (ABC, 1950–53). Significantly, ''The Mod Squad'' presented an African-American character (Linc) as being on an equal footing, as roles went, to the Caucasian characters (Barnes and Cochran). In one ''Mod Squad'' episode, the script called for Linc to give Barnes a "friendly kiss". Since the
first interracial kiss on an American television show was in 1968, this was still fairly new territory in popular culture. The studio was frightened of a negative public reaction, so they asked Spelling to cut it:
"You can't do that," I was told. "You can't have a black man kissing a white girl." I won and ABC agreed to let it in, but they warned me I'd receive thousands of complaint letters. I didn't get one.
Linc's famous "solid" and "keep the faith" were among the current-day slang used on the show, which included "pad", "dig it", and "groovy."
The "kids" traveled in Pete's old
station wagon
A station wagon (American English, US, also wagon) or estate car (British English, UK, also estate) is an automotive Car body style, body-style variant of a Sedan (automobile), sedan with its roof extended rearward over a shared passenger/cargo ...
, "Woody": a green
woodie-style
1950 Mercury which became famous until it burned up in a fire after going over a cliff during a chase at the end of the second-season episode "The Death of Wild Bill Hannachek".
Among the series guest stars were Spelling's ex-wife
Carolyn Jones
Carolyn Sue Jones (April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) was an American actress of television and film. She began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Awa ...
,
Leslie Nielsen
Leslie William Nielsen (February 11, 1926November 28, 2010) was a Canadian actor and comedian. With a career spanning 60 years, he appeared in more than 100 films and 150 television programs, portraying more than 220 characters.
He made his a ...
,
William Windom William Windom may refer to:
* William Windom (politician) (1827–1891), U.S. representative from Minnesota
* William Windom (actor) (1923–2012), his great-grandson, American actor
See also
* William Windham (disambiguation)
{{hndis, Wi ...
,
Ed Asner
Eddie Asner (; November 15, 1929 – August 29, 2021) was an American actor. He is most notable for portraying Lou Grant on the sitcom ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' (1970–1977) and drama '' Lou Grant'' (1977–1982), making him one of the few ...
(three episodes in three different roles),
Vincent Price
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor. He was known for his work in the horror film genre, mostly portraying villains. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price ...
,
Sammy Davis Jr.
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, actor, comedian, dancer, and musician.
At age two, Davis began his career in Vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which t ...
(three episodes in three different roles),
Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012) was an American actor, comedian, television producer, singer, and writer whose career spanned seven decades in music and television. Known for his Southern drawl, his characters with a folksy ...
,
Joe Don Baker
Joe Don Baker (February 12, 1936 – May 7, 2025) was an American actor, known for playing "tough guy" characters on both sides of the law. He established himself as an action star with supporting roles in the Westerns '' Guns of the Magnificent ...
,
David Cassidy
David Bruce Cassidy (April 12, 1950 – November 21, 2017) was an American actor and musician. He was best known for his role as Keith Partridge in the 1970s musical-sitcom ''The Partridge Family''.
After completing high school, Cassidy purs ...
,
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Known for reaching a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, he is widely regarded ...
,
Lee Grant
Lee Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal; October 31, during the mid-1920s) is an American actress, documentarian, and director. In a career spanning over seven decades, she won an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Directors Guil ...
,
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Stephen Dreyfuss ( ; Dreyfus; born October 29, 1947) is an American actor. He emerged from the New Hollywood wave of American cinema, finding fame with a succession of leading man parts in the 1970s. He has received an Academy Award, a ...
(two episodes in two different roles),
Jo Van Fleet
Jo Van Fleet (December 29, 1915["The Birth of C ...](_blank)
,
ic]"">"The Birth of C ...
, Tom Bosley, Marion Ross">Tom Bosley">ic]"">"The Birth of C ...