The Rockford Files - Spinoffs

Spinoffs

• The limited-run series, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye was not technically a spin-off of The Rockford Files, as the character of Richie Brockelman, played by Dennis Dugan, first appeared in a 1976 TV movie produced by Cannell. However, Brockleman did appear in the 1978 Rockford episode "The House on Willis Avenue", which was broadcast the week before Richie Brockelman, Private Eye began its five-week run in The Rockford Files timeslot. The character of Richie Brockelman returned to Rockford in the 1979 episode, "Never Send a Boy King To Do a Man's Job."

• Universal made a back door pilot featuring the characters of Gandolph "Gandy" Fitch and Marcus "Gabby" Hayes (played by Isaac Hayes and Lou Gossett, Jr., respectively) titled Gabby & Gandy. The series never came to fruition, but the pilot was broadcast as an episode of Rockford called "Just Another Polish Wedding".

• A second back door pilot was made for a series that would have featured Greg Antonacci and Gene Davis as Eugene Conigliaro and Mickey Long, two humorously incompetent characters who were introduced in the Rockford episode "The Jersey Bounce" (the same character names are used in both episodes but they are clearly different characters as both of them and Rockford do not even know each other in the second episode, "Just A Coupla Guys"). The series pilot involved them trying to ingratiate their way into the New Jersey mob, and was aired under the title "Just A Coupla Guys" as the next-to-last episode of the The Rockford Files. David Chase, who wrote both these episodes, would later create The Sopranos, which also centered on the New Jersey mob.