Ironside is an American television crime drama that ran on NBC from September 14, 1967, to January 16, 1975. The series starred Raymond Burr as a paraplegic Chief of Detectives, Robert T. Ironside. The show consists of a movie-length pilot, eight seasons of episodes, and a reunion TV-movie.
Series overview
At present, the first four seasons have been released on DVD by Shout! Factory.[1]
Chief of detectives Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr) is gunned down by a sniper. He recovers, but remains paralyzed from the waist down. Assembling a "special unit" around him, he sets out to find the sniper, and at first there is no shortage of suspects, considering how many people had sworn to kill him. Then, the analysis of an old ammunition shell leads the team to a troubled young genius, but their search is far from over.
While Ironside takes a vacation, he's forced to tangle with three men bent on killing him to cover up their previous murder—and implicate Mark in the Chief's murder.
Barbara Jones comes back into Ironside's life to ask him to rescue her kidnapped daughter, but the case is complicated by an overeager sheriff, a jealous husband and the Chief's personal feelings.
Ironside is trapped in a cabin during a blizzard with an old friend who's become a heroin addict. This is the only episode in which Don Galloway does not appear.
Mark writes a hypothetical brief about a convicted murderer for his law class, which results in the case being reopened and the convict accusing Ed of framing him.
Ironside helps an elderly Armenian tobacconist who is being blackmailed by two nephews who are using his shop to manufacture cigarettes laced with PCP.
Ironside finds it suspicious that a hood is eager to vindicate a dead police captain accused of working with gamblers. Elizabeth Baur makes her debut as Fran Belding in this episode.
A woman who appears to be the target of a stalker with no apparent motive for attacking her. The stalker may be just a trick, the woman has a connection to a former cop killer recently released from prison who has a grudge against Ironside.
Dr. David Craig (E. G. Marshall) and Dr. Paul Hunter (David Hartman) work to save Ed when he's hit a by a sniper, while Ironside remembers the same circumstances that left him paralyzed. This episode continues on The Bold Ones: The New Doctors.
Chief Robert Ironside comes out of retirement when the chief of the Denver police department, where Ed Brown now works, dies prematurely and the daughter of Eve Whitfield is suspected of murdering her boyfriend.
