Sunday, March 22, 2009

O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971) TV Movie

"O'Hara, U.S. Treasury" starred David Janssen (whose company co-produced the show with Mark VII) as the title character, Treasury Agent Jim O'Hara. Jim O'Hara was a county sheriff from Nebraska whose wife and child died in a fire, and to cut all ties with his past life, he put an application in with the United States Department of the Treasury and was accepted. As a "T-Man," O'Hara was available for assignment to any of the various law enforcement agencies which were then part of the Treasury Department, all of which cooperated in this positive portrayal of their various organizations, much in the manner of the Los Angeles Police Department with Webb's "Dragnet" and "Adam-12". These included the Secret Service, the Intelligence Unit of the Internal Revenue Service, the then-Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of IRS, and the then-Customs Bureau. O'Hara sometimes worked undercover and sometimes overtly. Janssen was the series' only regular, as he was given a different assignment at the start of each weekly episode.

O'Hara marked the first Mark VII show to run a full hour in length; all of Webb's previous efforts (excepting the TV-movie pilot for "Dragnet" 1967) ran in half-hour episodes. It was also one of the few he did not package for NBC. The show failed in the Nielsen ratings against ABC's "Partridge Family" and "Room 222" and ended after a one-season run. Reruns were later shown on the A&E Network in the 1990s.

AKA - O'Hara, U.S. Treasury: Operation Cobra

O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971) TV Movie
Cast: Charles McGraw, David Janssen, Gary Crosby, Lana Wood, Stacy Harris, William Conrad

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