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Cast:

Gene Barry as Captain Amos Burke
Gary Conway as Detective Tim Tilson
Regis Toomey as Detective Les Hart
Leon Lontoc as Henry, Burke's chauffeur
Eileen O'Neill as Sergeant Gloria Ames

About This Series:  It's one of Aaron Spelling's series, so don't expect depth (Ha!).  This is more of a comedy series than it is a detective series.  The strength of the series actually comes from its guest stars.  If the guests were crap, it was a bad episode, if the guests were good, it was a great episode, and that's pretty much how it worked.  As popular as this series is to this day, it's hard to believe that it ran only two seasons.  True, Amos Burke did return in the ill-fated spinoff "Amos Burke: Secret Agent" from 1965-1966, and again in the terrible "Burke's Law" series of 1994-1995, but the original series lasted only two seasons.

    Amos Burke was a police captain who happened to be very wealthy.  Apparently he didn't need the money, so he did it for kicks.  Burke was older, about mid-forties or early-fifties, but ever the swinger.  Throughout the series, he had more young ladies than James Bond had in 22 films.  Burke was very suave and well-versed, but a bit arrogant.  It made for snappy repertoire, but he isn't a guy I think a lot of people would want to hang around after hours.  He's condescending, but funny given the cast of characters he has to deal with.

    Burke is chauffered by Henry, an Asian man-servant of some sort.  Henry is a likable character, and I wish we knew more about him.  He really wasn't given the back story he deserved.  The car he drove Amos in was a beautiful Rolls Royce.

    Detective Tim Tilson was Amos Burke's scrappy young underling.  Burke got to play the "older and wiser" card on Tilson many times as it was seen that Burke's more subtle methods were the best.  The old guy detective of the police department was Les Hart, who was older than even Burke by quite a shot.  Hart was really an additional character, and didn't really bring much to the show besides the fact that he was a kindly old grump and a seasoned detective.  The woman of the team was the stunningly beautiful Sergeant Gloria Ames who, besides a great personality, also didn't do much but be the messenger and caterer for the guys.

    "Burke's Law" operated as almost pure fantasy.  You got to see lots of attractive women, pretty scenery, nice houses, funny guest stars...there was barely any connection to reality, but that was the point.  A fabulously wealthy police captain is about as outrageous as an astronaut cowboy or a spy that works at McDonald's, but it's fun.

    Gary Conway as Detective Tim Tilson was a good opposite for Gene Barry.  "Burke's Law", in any format, after this series was never the same because of Conway's absence.  As a matter of fact, the complete dismissal of all the other regulars was a mistake.  This series morphed into "Amos Burke: Secret Agent" for the 1965-1966 season.  In the new series, all other regulars were dropped except for Gene Barry.  Amos Burke was now a spy, and his Rolls-Royce was bulletproofed by the agency.  The spy version of Amos Burke didn't even last a full season and is not fondly remembered by a lot of people.  In 1994, a new "Burke's Law" series started, with Gene Barry reprising his role.  At first, this seemed promising.  I was excited to see this new series when it first came out, but the show fizzled and was quickly cancelled in 1995.  Amos Burke was now a police chief (what, he was demoted from spy?).  The whole secret agent thing was completely disregarded.  That was probably the only good decision made with this new series.  It reached a whole new height of cheese.  The original series wasn't even cheesy, just "cutesy" funny.  This new show was just dumb.  Burke's son Peter is his partner, and his son looks about 20 years too young.  It's a shame, because I liked Peter Barton (Peter Burke) as an actor, but it just didn't work.  On top of all that, the writing was terrible and the mysteries were predictable; it just didn't match up with the 1963-1965 run.

    Watch the original series.  It's a lot of fun!

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