McCloud

Cowboy in New York City

McCloud first aired on NBC from 1970 to 1977. The title role was played by Dennis Weaver as Marshal Sam McCloud, a law officer from Taos, New Mexico on semi-permanent assignment with the New York City Police Department.The pilot, "Portrait of a Dead Girl", aired on February 17, 1970, and established the premise by having McCloud escort a prisoner from New Mexico to New York City, only to become embroiled in solving a complicated murder case.

This premise of the show was more or less adapted from the 1968 Don Siegel film Coogan's Bluff, starring Clint Eastwood. Herman Miller was responsible for the story of Coogan's Bluff and co-wrote the screenplay with Dean Riesner and Howard Rodman (indeed, Miller's work on Coogan's Bluff is credited with inspiring McCloud ).  Like Coogan, McCloud galloped the length and breadth of Manhattan (he was joined by a mounted unit in "The 42nd Street Cavalry"), and the absurd sight of McCloud on horseback riding down the middle of a busy street (taken from an early episode) became one of the series' iconic images.

NBC renewed the show for six 60-minute episodes in the fall of 1970.

NBC rotated the airing of McCloud, with two other new series, McMillan and Wife and Columbo, and the running time of each episode was increased to 90 minutes. 

Starting in the fifth season in the fall of 1974, the episodes were two hours long, but were dropped again to 90 minutes for the seventh and final season starting in the fall of 1976. The forty-sixth and last episode, "McCloud Meets Dracula", was aired on April 17, 1977.

The character was brought back for a made-for-television movie, The Return of Sam McCloud, which aired on November 12, 1989.

The executive producer was Glen A. Larson, who also wrote for the series (as did Peter Allan Fields, Lou Shaw, Jimmy Sangster and others). Larson won an Edgar Award for "The New Mexican Connection".