Jake and the Fatman

Jake and the Fatman is a television crime drama starring William Conrad as prosecutor J. L.(Jason Lochinvar) "Norm" McCabe and Joe Penny as investigator Jake Styles. The series ran on CBS for five seasons from 1987 to 1992. Diagnosis Murder is a spin-off of this series. Conrad guest starred as an aging prosecutor in a two-part episode of Matlock during its first season on NBC. Producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman decided to use this charact... more

Jake and the Fatman is a television crime drama starring William Conrad as prosecutor J. L.(Jason Lochinvar) "Norm" McCabe and Joe Penny as investigator Jake Styles. The series ran on CBS for five seasons from 1987 to 1992. Diagnosis Murder is a spin-off of this series. Conrad guest starred as an aging prosecutor in a two-part episode of Matlock during its first season on NBC. Producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman decided to use this character as a model for one of the main characters in a new show they were creating for CBS. Penny also guest starred in these episodes, but his character was not on the same side as Conrad's character in the storyline's legal case. Following the departure of Hargrove, executive producers David Moessinger and Jeri Taylor were brought on to run the series with Silverman. They also hired J. Michael Straczynski as story editor and, later, co-producer. Taylor and Moessinger ran the show for two years before finally leaving in a dispute over control over... less