When NBC was trying to cast a new Jim Rockford a couple of years ago, I was interested.
A remake of “Ironside”? I cannot quite bring myself to give a shit. The only thing I care about from that series was Quincy Jones’ opening theme, and the post-cancellation life it’s gone on to in “Kill Bill” and this wonderful YouTube video:
Still, for the record, they’ve cast Blair Underwood (“In Treatment,” “The Event”) as the title wheelchair-bound lawman in NBC’s just-greenlighted “Ironside” pilot written and produced by Michael Caleo, who wrote an episode of “The Sopranos” and an episode of “Rescue Me” before he wrote and directed the 2006 Michael Keaton movie “The Last Time” (0% positive among top critics on Rotten Tomatoes).
This is at least the third time in the last year or so that an African-American has been cast in a movie or TV role long associated only with Whitey. “Matrix’s” Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne, plays newspaper editor Perry White in the upcoming “Man of Steel” and FBI profiling chief Jack Crawford in NBC’s fast-approaching “Hannibal” Lecter series.
