Reaction
When the show debuted on September 18, 1986, following Miami Vice, the two-hour pilot had a 20.1 national Nielsen rating and a 32 percent audience share. The ratings dipped when it was counter-programmed against ABC's Moonlighting. By October, the show dropped below a 22 Nielsen share, where a series is deemed a "failure". Despite low ratings, Crime Story was picked up by NBC to finish the 1986–87 season. This prompted the network to move the show back to Friday nights after Miami Vice on December 5, 1986 where its ratings improved but it still lost to Falcon Crest. NBC temporarily pulled Crime Story off the schedule on March 13, 1987. In order to get more people to watch, Farina and other cast members promoted the show in five U.S. cities.
The New York Times wrote, "With its first-rate cast, Crime Story might have had the offbeat, compelling authenticity of an Elmore Leonard novel. But the show looks suspiciously as if it would be more than willing to settle for the mindless glitz of Miami Vice". In his review for the Washington Post, Tom Shales wrote, "When the smoke clears away, a viewer may feel impressed yet unmoved. But then, if all the smoke cleared away, there'd be no show". John Haslett Cuff, in his review for the Globe and Mail, wrote, "The characters and locales are as greasy as the rain-soaked streets, and in the show's best moments there is a dangerous glitter that happily transcends the cartoon violence of too much television". Time magazine's Richard Zoglin praised the show for being "the most realistic TV cop show in years, yet the emotions reach almost baroque heights".
Read more about this topic: Crime Story (TV series)
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
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