'One Adam-12, One Adam-12, robbery in progress at Sweetzer and Rosewood. Can you respond? Over."
"Negative on that, dispatch. We're on our way to Nashville, over."
Nashville? Reed and Malloy are going to Nashville? Well, Reed and Malloy aren't going to Nashville, but their actor alter-egos, Kent McCord and Martin Milner are. In a television movie made exclusively for The Nashville Network, the pair are teamed once again in Nashville Beat, which airs Oct. 21.
In the movie, Milner plays Brian O'Neal, retired from the Los Angeles police department and now a captain of detectives with the Nashville police department. McCord is Lieutenant Mike Delanay of the L.A.P.D.'s gang activities section. In tracking a suspect to Nashville, Delanay finds himself working once again with his old partner, O'Neal.
Like the two cops they play, McCord and Milner have been close friends for many years and when the concept for this movie was tossed around it seemed natural for the two to pair up again.
"One of the things that I have really wanted to do over the years since we did Adam-12," says McCord who is co-creator, co-producer and co-executive producer on the show, "was again work with Marty and the opportunity came up to put this project together."
When it is brought up that although the series is set in Nashville, the bad guys are brought in from Los Angeles, Milner jumps in to explain. "This is what is happening now," he says. "The street gangs from major cities are finding that there is too much competition for business for them on the streets and are moving into areas where they find it easier to deal with local gangs. We shot a scene in the Nashville jail and they had six members of the L.A. Crips (a street gang) in that jail."
But why Nashville?
The original concept of the show when we developed it was Nashville. I'd been there several times and thought it was a terrific place to base a series. It hasn't been over exposed as far as television is concerned and I think it gives us a new look."
"The people are a little nicer," adds Milner. "They like to talk to you here. I told Kent he was going to have to add a few minutes here and there to the shooting schedule because everyone is going to want to stop and chat."
McCord and Milner are hoping that the ratings for Nashville Beat will be good enough to see it continue as a half-hour weekly series. David Hall, the general manager of The Nashville Network is also hoping that audiences are interested in the movie.
"I think we're venturing into a new area to do a project of this type, to do a movie, to do an adventure series,"he says. "If the audience accepts it, and it appeals to them, we'll move forward. Our audience likes a good story and stories that are realistic and our research showed that this was realistic."
Country music fans won't be disappointed by what they see and hear in Nashville Beat either. "We have developed a place where the cops hang out on their off hours," says McCord. "It's a place we call Jackson's and you'll see some country acts get up and do a song or two."
"I would also think," adds Milner, "that not a regular basis but once in long while we might have to answer a call that Barbara Mandrell's house got robbed. We may be able to use star entertainers like that ocassionally."
"Wait a minute," laughs McCord. "Only if we can afford it."
McCord and Milner, who have been close friends since they starred in Adam-12 in 1968--it went off the air in 1975--were asked about the "straight-arrow image" that they developed on that series and that seems to be continuing on Nashville Beat.
"I don't think there is any obligation on our part to maintain a straight-arrow image," says McCord, who is dressed in a dark jacket and white golf shirt. "I think what it is, is an obligation to portray the reality of most police officers out there who are doing the job day in and day out."
"We're not trying to emulate Adam-12 here," says the gray-haired but still youthful-looking Milner. "We wouldn't and we couldn't."
Seeing Milner in his sequined and hand painted City of Nashville denim jacket, you have to believe that Pete Malloy is dead and gone.