Shaft (TV series)


Shaft is a series of TV movies that aired along with Hawkins and other TV movies during 1973-74 television season on The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies. Broadcast every third week, the series is a continuation of the three films beginning with Shaft, and starring Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft.
Because it was aired on over-the-air television, CBS felt that the narrative needed to be toned down. Now instead of opposing the police, Shaft worked with them, creating conflicts with Hawkins, another police series with a starkly different viewership. The show was cancelled after one season. Contemporary analysts suggested that since the two shows—Shaft and Hawkins—appealed to vastly different audience bases, alternating them only served to confuse fans of both series, giving neither one the time to build up a large viewership. Richard Roundtree himself has publicly expressed his disdain for the small-screen version of Shaft.

Episodes