Jake and the Fatman is an American crime drama legal drama television series starring William Conrad as prosecutor J. L. (Jason Lochinvar) "Fatman" McCabe and Joe Penny as investigator Jake Styles. Created by Dean Hargrove and Joel Steiger, the series ran on CBS for five seasons from September 26, 1987, to May 6, 1992.
Diagnosis: Murder, which aired from 1993 to 2001, was a medical-oriented spin-off of Jake and the Fatman that came to be a popular series of its own.CNN: Dick Van Dyke interviewEmmy TV Legends: Diagnosis Murder
Plot J. L. "Fatman" McCabe is a Hawaii-born, tough former Honolulu Police Department officer turned Los Angeles district attorney. He is teamed with a handsome, happy-go-lucky special investigator named Jake Styles. They often clash due to their different styles and personalities. "Fatman" travels hardly anywhere without Max, his pet bulldog. The show was set in Los Angeles during the first season. After the end of Magnum, P.I., the show was moved to Hawaii. The second and third seasons and half of the fourth season were filmed in Honolulu and some of the production sets from Magnum, P.I. were used. The show then returned to Los Angeles for the remainder of its run.
Cast Main cast William Conrad as District Attorney J. L. "Fatman" McCabe Joe Penny as Detective Jake Styles Alan Campbell as Assistant District Attorney Derek Mitchell
Recurring guest stars Lu Leonard as Gertrude Karen Keawehawaii as Audrey Durant Olga Russell as Lisbeth Berkeley-Smythe Jack Hogan as Judge Smithwood Melody Anderson as Sergeant Neely Capshaw
Guest stars on the series included Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Scott Marlowe, Ed Nelson, Robert Reed, Mitch Ryan, Ray Sharkey, and David Soul.
Production Development Conrad guest starred as an aging prosecutor in a two-part episode of Matlock during its first season on NBC. Executive producers Fred Silverman and Dean Hargrove decided to use this character as a model for one of the main characters in a new show they were creating for CBS. Penny also guest starred in these episodes, but his character was not on the same side as Conrad's character in the storyline's legal case.
Following the departure of Hargrove, executive producers David Moessinger and Jeri Taylor were brought on to run the series with Silverman. They also hired J. Michael Straczynski as an executive story consultant. Taylor and Moessinger ran the show for two years before finally leaving in a dispute over control over the show.
Straczynski has written that he was hired after pitching a story that let Conrad sit down for almost every scene, noting his own faux slogan for the show "Jake and the Fatman: He can't act, he can't walk, together they fight crime".
Rumors Joe Penny lost a large amount of weight after the show moved to Hawaii, which led to many rumors about his health, including the possibility that he had AIDS. In actuality, he had suffered from a gastrointestinal virus and was having difficulty regaining the weight he lost. When the show moved back to Los Angeles, it was suspected that it was on Penny's urging, which Penny denied.
Episodes
Home media CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first two seasons of Jake and the Fatman on DVD in Region 1 between 2008/2009. As of June 2015, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.
Visual Entertainment released Jake and the Fatman - The Complete Collection on June 23, 2017.'Jake and the Fatman - 'The Complete Series' DVD Set: Date, Cost, Package Art, More! Coming to North America from VEI in just two-and-a-half weeks!' 'Jake and the Fatman - The Complete Collection'
DVD nameEp #Region 1 Season One, Volume One11 July 8, 2008 Season One, Volume Two12 December 2, 2008 Season Two11 May 5, 2009 Season Three26 N/A Season Four24 N/A Season Five22 N/A The Complete Series106 June 23, 2017
Spin-off
The nineteenth episode of the fourth season of Jake and the Fatman, "It Never Entered My Mind", featured Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, a medical doctor who solves crimes. The success of that episode led initially to a series of three TV movies, and then a weekly television series Diagnosis: Murder that debuted on CBS on October 29, 1993.
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