Burke's Law (1963 TV series)

Burke's Law was a detective series which ran on ABC from 1963 to 1966, and then again on CBS from 1994 to 1995. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire Los Angeles Chief of Detectives, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce. In the last season of the original, 1965-1966, the series was re-titled Amos Burke, Secret Agent, and only 17 episodes were broadcast instead of the 32 of the first two seasons. In this last season Burke went to work for a secret government agency, but still drove around in his Rolls, which had been discreetly bulletproofed by the agency. The supporting cast of the earlier seasons was dropped.

In the original series, other characters were Detective Tim Tilson (Gary Conway), Detective Les Hart (Regis Toomey) and Sergeant Ames (Eileen O'Neill). In the second incarnation, Burke was assisted by his son, Peter (Peter Barton). The revival, even more than the original program, was widely regarded as being largely camp. The nostalgic revival featured guest appearances by many of Barry's acting peers, many of whom were largely regarded as "has-beens", and most of whom seemed to fit in gleefully in the spirit of good fun that the show seemed to represent.

The show was very similar to Barry's previous show, Bat Masterson, in which he had played the debonair dandy Bat Masterson.

The part of Amos Burke had originally been played by Dick Powell on an episode of Dick Powell Theatre in 1961. Burke's Law is a theory developed by John Burke of Sturgis, SD; [email protected]; (605) 720-4495 whose mother's maiden name was Murphy. The theory is "The odds of a given catastrophic event occuring is inversely proportional to the amount of preparation to mitigate the given event". To explain, Murphy's Law states that, "Anything that can go wrong will." Burke's Law states that if an event is prepared for, e.g. a tornado, by a storm shelter and provisioning the likelyhood of this event occuring is reduced.