Director Robert Butler concocted together this 188-minute TV series, which may have been the blueprint for the better known and orchestrated HILL STREET BLUES series that enjoyed some considerable success in the 1980s.

Cinematography is strictly competent and fitting, featuring mostly drab surroundings and down and outers in the seedier parts of a major US city.

William Holden holds those 188 minutes together thanks to a masterful performance and dry delivery. It is a pity that an actor of his immense quality should have made so many poor choices, but certainly THE BLUE KNIGHT deserves watching for his contribution alone.

The script is rather thin. Nothing much happens. The character of Bumper Morgan, the street cop played by Holden, is fairly well etched and credible. I found it more difficult to understand Lee Remick's part. Beautiful woman that she was, a university lecturer to boot, why would she bother with a bottom of the barrel cop struggling with ghosts from the past like his failed marriage and his dead son? And when he seems to have made a place for her and a kid in his life, he kicks it all out and goes back to his lonely street cop job even though he is on his last day and about to hang up holster, gun and badge. Baffling, to say the least.

I give this a very generous 7/10 because of Holden. The rest is completely forgettable.