Kojak

Kojak
Kojak title screen, from the first season
Created by	Abby Mann ("suggested by" the book Justice in the Back Room, written by Selwyn Raab)
Starring	Telly Savalas Dan Frazer Kevin Dobson George Savalas Mark Russell Vince Conti Andre Braugher
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	118 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Abby Mann James Duff McAdams Matthew Rapf
Running time	60 minutes
Production company(s)	Universal Television
Distributor	NBCUniversal Television Distribution (current)
Release
Original network	CBS
Original release	October 24, 1973 (1973-10-24) – March 18, 1978 (1978-03-18)

Kojak was an American crime drama television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. Taking the time slot of the popular Cannon series, it aired on CBS from 1973 to 1978. In 1999 TV Guide ranked Theo Kojak number 18 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list.

The show was created by Abby Mann, an Academy Award–winning film writer best known for his work on drama anthologies such as Robert Montgomery Presents and Playhouse 90. Universal Television approached him to do a story based on the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert Career Girls Murders, the brutal rape and murder of two young professional women in Manhattan.

Owing to poor police work and the prevailing casual attitude toward suspects' civil rights, the crimes in the Wylie-Hoffert case were pinned on a young African-American man, George Whitmore, Jr., who had been arrested on a separate assault charge. After illegally obtaining a confession, the police had the suspect all but convicted until a second investigation by a different team of detectives exonerated the suspect and identified the real killer, a Puerto-Rican drug addict.

Mann developed the project as a gritty police procedural, but with a subtext focusing on institutionalized prejudice and the civil rights of suspects and witnesses. The result was the 1973 made-for-TV movie, The Marcus-Nelson Murders. The opening and closing titles of the film emphasized the point that it was a fictional account of the events that led to the creation of Miranda rights by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. Selwyn Raab's book Justice in the Back Room also provided Mann with some of his inspiration for the story of The Marcus-Nelson Murders, and the series subsequently included a credits reference to having been "suggested by a book by Selwyn Raab."