The Mod Squad

The Mod Squad is an American crime drama series, originally broadcast for five seasons on ABC from September 24, 1968, to March 1, 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Peter "Pete" Cochran, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas. The counterculture police series earned six Emmy Award nominations, four Golden Globe nominations plus one win for Peggy Lipton, one Directors Guild of America Award, and four Logies. In 1970, the second-season episode, "In This Corner . . . Sol Alpert," script by Rita Lakin and Harve Bennet, was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award in the category of Best Mystery Teleplay, losing to the TV-Movie Daughter of the Mind. In 1997, a 1970 episode "Mother of Sorrow" was ranked #95 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. Plot They were The Mod Squad ("One black, one white, one blonde"), described by one critic as "the hippest and first young undercover cops on TV". Each of these characters represented mainstream culture's principal fears regarding youth in the era: long-haired rebel Pete Cochran (Cole) was evicted from his wealthy parents' Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes (Williams), who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the Watts riots, one of the longest and most violent riots in Los Angeles history; flower child Julie Barnes (Lipton), the "canary with a broken wing," was arrested for vagrancy after running away from her prostitute mother's San Francisco home; and Captain Adam Greer (Andrews) was a tough but sympathetic mentor and father figure who convinced them to form the squad.