They Always Get Their Man

From the files of the FBI, some prime-time p.r.

Just as ham-fisted hoodlums are about to ignite the subpoenaed accounts of a corrupt union, federal agents burst in, guns drawn. Then, with split-second timing, other teams of FBI men miles away sweep up crooked businessmen, racketeers and a tainted state investigator. One key arrest comes after a manic broken-field chase through the pushcarts and costermongers of New York's Fulton Fish Market. The villain is nabbed just in time to save the life of an undercover agent whose fake identity has been blown.

That pell-mell derring-do is not for the courts but for the cameras. It is the climax of a television pilot called Today's FBI. Two Sundays ago the show's first appearance in its weekly time slot outdrew in ratings another durable American institution, Archie Bunker. As the age of antiheroes apparently gives way to a public hankering for heroism, FBI Director William Webster and his beleaguered colleagues are seeking to resume their legendary role. So Webster has given free use of the agency's name and seal to the ABC network and Hollywood Producer David Gerber, in exchange for approval of the stories. Said Assistant FBI Director Roger Young: "We'd like to think the show would reflect a respect for the FBI and demonstrate why it is important to contribute help to the FBI."

The pilot was a hit with G-men, at least. At a screening at the bureau for some of them, the show won knowing nods and murmurs, rueful laughs of recognition, cheers and even shouts during the hot-pursuit finale.

Today's FBI is not a resumption of the FBI's previous fictional venture The FBI, an ABC series from 1965 to 1974. Instead, the bureau wants the new show to stress how much crook catching has changed. Said Young: "We thought it would be an excellent way to tell people about the kinds of cases we're working on today [notably political corruption, white-collar fraud and organized crime] and to let people see there are women in the FBI, there are blacks in the FBI. This, we hope, would go a long way as a recruiting tool. It also is a way of telling people what they're getting for their tax dollar."

The new show's characters do not much resemble the gray-suited, close-cropped, lantern-jawed, devout, straight-arrow white males preferred by longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had iron control of the earlier series, personally approving every actor cast as an FBI agent to be sure he "looked the part." The ensemble includes a black recruited from military intelligence, played in the pilot by Charles Brown and afterward by Harold Sylvester; a smashing-looking woman psychologist who teaches pistol-marks-personship (Carol Potter); a salon-coiffed, hip-talking pretty boy (Joseph Cali); and a sarcastic, ever grinning preppie athlete (Richard Hill). Their boss, portrayed by Mike Connors, star of Mannix (1967-75), is a tough-but-sensitive older man whose marriage is imperiled by the demands of his career.

Except possibly for marital strains here and there, the real FBI does not altogether resemble that varied band. Of the bureau's 7,760 agents, only 351 are women, less than 5% of the total, and only 237 are black, or about 3%. When The FBI went on the air in 1965, however, there were 24 blacks and no women.

Though the bureau did not initiate the series and does not oversee the writing, its message is likely to get across. Stories will be drawn from actual, and successful, cases that are either disguised or safely past litigation. Said Young of the producers: "We sat with these guys and just talked FBI. We'd say, this is a case that would be great for you." It just happens to involve this gorgeous sharpshooting woman psychologist agent who...

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