If your looking for a dead serious crime drama with tons of suspense and intense drama, then with this show, your barking up the wrong tree, BUT if your looking for a fun light hearted crime drama which often times had a good dose of self deprecating humor and rarely took itself seriously, then this is the show for you.
Burke's Law was your basic murder detective show starring Gene Berry as LAPD homicide detective Amos Burke and the show had MANY similarities to Perry Mason. The first being each episode was basically a who dun it murder mystery that followed the same formula basically each time, and every episode would open up with the murder being committed with the murderer's face not being shown of course, and like Perry Mason, Burke and his team of police detectives would work hard as to find out "who did it" and they would always find out at the end of every episode and there would always be a twist as to who that murderer was that would ALWAYS be revealed at the end of every episode. BUT, the big difference between Amos Burke and Perry Mason is that Amos was ALWAYS surrounded by beautiful girls and there would literally be a smorgasbord of hot gorgeous girls in pretty much every episode (something that would lack in many of Perry Mason's episodes), But Amos never let any of those hot girls distract him from His line of work, and he always remained a bachelor during the duration of the whole show (something that was probably done on purpose by the creators and producers of the show) AND he was always an insanely rich millionaire who would drive around in a Rolls Royce and would live in a mansion as if he was getting paid millions to do his basic job that most real detectives probably got paid WAY less for (this changed for future PI shows like Mannix and Columbo, those shows showed Middle class detectives who never had rich lifestyles but always did their job very well, unlike Amos Burke who basically acted like he had tons and TONS of money to play around with).
But the show was almost never dead serious and there would always be hints of comedy with each episode making it different then other Police Detective shows of that same era. But the thing that's so attractive about the show are the slew of guest star appearances on the show from actors young and old (young up and coming actors who would later go on to have big careers in their own right and older ones on a career slowdown who were very much apart of Old Hollywood desperately trying to find work) who would appear as suspects in the weekly murders Amos Burke and his team would always solve. The young up And coming actors on this show included George Hamilton and William Shatner and Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and some of the older actors that appeared on the show included Aldo Ray and Mickey Rooney and Walter Pidgeon and Ida Lupino
Gary Conway also starred in the show as Amos's sidekick Dect Tim Tilsen who always seemed one step behind Amos as far as solving each crime (he too would score himself another two season series called Land Of The Giants later on in the 60's.) but as other reviews have mentioned, the series went through a complete overhaul when the Secret Agent craze happened so the rest of the supporting cast was dropped from the show for the third season and the whole premised was changed from him being a PD to a American government Secret Agent. This didn't work for the show and it was cancelled mid way through it's third season. In hein sight, I can understand why the network did this to the show as ABC was struggling to have their own hit Secret Agent show (they wouldn't really as CBS and NBC were having the most successful Secret Agent shows of that time). So they wanted their own strong entry into the Secret Agent genre, but unfortunately it was an unsuccessful experiment as it seemed like the viewers liked the show's previous format better then the proposed new one. But overall, this show is fun to watch mainly for it's Notable guest appearances and just to have a light hearted show to watch within this genre that doesn't depress you or make your brain think about what just happened or try to understand the plot of each episode in great detail. At the end of the day, it's good old fashioned mindless unrealistic TV and if you are in the mood for that, definitely watch this show. If you want the opposite of that for Crime Dramas (from the same era) check out Naked City or The FBI.
Burke's Law was your basic murder detective show starring Gene Berry as LAPD homicide detective Amos Burke and the show had MANY similarities to Perry Mason. The first being each episode was basically a who dun it murder mystery that followed the same formula basically each time, and every episode would open up with the murder being committed with the murderer's face not being shown of course, and like Perry Mason, Burke and his team of police detectives would work hard as to find out "who did it" and they would always find out at the end of every episode and there would always be a twist as to who that murderer was that would ALWAYS be revealed at the end of every episode. BUT, the big difference between Amos Burke and Perry Mason is that Amos was ALWAYS surrounded by beautiful girls and there would literally be a smorgasbord of hot gorgeous girls in pretty much every episode (something that would lack in many of Perry Mason's episodes), But Amos never let any of those hot girls distract him from His line of work, and he always remained a bachelor during the duration of the whole show (something that was probably done on purpose by the creators and producers of the show) AND he was always an insanely rich millionaire who would drive around in a Rolls Royce and would live in a mansion as if he was getting paid millions to do his basic job that most real detectives probably got paid WAY less for (this changed for future PI shows like Mannix and Columbo, those shows showed Middle class detectives who never had rich lifestyles but always did their job very well, unlike Amos Burke who basically acted like he had tons and TONS of money to play around with).
But the show was almost never dead serious and there would always be hints of comedy with each episode making it different then other Police Detective shows of that same era. But the thing that's so attractive about the show are the slew of guest star appearances on the show from actors young and old (young up and coming actors who would later go on to have big careers in their own right and older ones on a career slowdown who were very much apart of Old Hollywood desperately trying to find work) who would appear as suspects in the weekly murders Amos Burke and his team would always solve. The young up And coming actors on this show included George Hamilton and William Shatner and Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and some of the older actors that appeared on the show included Aldo Ray and Mickey Rooney and Walter Pidgeon and Ida Lupino
Gary Conway also starred in the show as Amos's sidekick Dect Tim Tilsen who always seemed one step behind Amos as far as solving each crime (he too would score himself another two season series called Land Of The Giants later on in the 60's.) but as other reviews have mentioned, the series went through a complete overhaul when the Secret Agent craze happened so the rest of the supporting cast was dropped from the show for the third season and the whole premised was changed from him being a PD to a American government Secret Agent. This didn't work for the show and it was cancelled mid way through it's third season. In hein sight, I can understand why the network did this to the show as ABC was struggling to have their own hit Secret Agent show (they wouldn't really as CBS and NBC were having the most successful Secret Agent shows of that time). So they wanted their own strong entry into the Secret Agent genre, but unfortunately it was an unsuccessful experiment as it seemed like the viewers liked the show's previous format better then the proposed new one. But overall, this show is fun to watch mainly for it's Notable guest appearances and just to have a light hearted show to watch within this genre that doesn't depress you or make your brain think about what just happened or try to understand the plot of each episode in great detail. At the end of the day, it's good old fashioned mindless unrealistic TV and if you are in the mood for that, definitely watch this show. If you want the opposite of that for Crime Dramas (from the same era) check out Naked City or The FBI.