Dog and Cat is an American television series that aired on ABC on Saturday night at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time in 1977.
Sgt. Jack Ramsey (Lou Antonio), an undercover detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, teams up with a partner named J.Z. Kane (Kim Basinger). Together they form a relationship based on friendship and trust (completely platonic) that leads them to capture many of L.A.'s criminals. Lieutenant Arthur Kipling (Matt Clark) is their boss.
"Dog and Cat" is a slang term used by police officers to denote a male-female partnership. The show is especially remembered for the car that Kim Basinger used in the series: a souped-up Volkswagen Beetle with a Porsche engine.
Lawrence Gordon pitched the show to ABC, who bought it. He took it to Paramount, who produced it. The show was one of the first supervised by Brandon Tartikoff when he was at ABC.
It replaced Most Wanted which moved to Monday night.
Walter Hill wrote the pilot which was then rewritten and Hill took credit under a pseudonym. Reviewing Hill's pilot script Filmink wrote "for all of HillâÂÂs stylistic uniqueness on the page, [it is] a perfectly serviceable âÂÂ70s American cop show. It moves along at a brisk pace and is logically worked out... Its chief flaw, in our opinion, is that Hill doesnâÂÂt do much with the central concept."
The New York Times described one of the earliest episodes, "Live Bait", about a rapist, as "a particularly repulsive tale" and thought the male lead was a rip-off of Baretta and the female lead too obviously inspired by Charlie's Angels.
The Washington Post said Antonio does "a nice, grumpy job" and Basinger was "a little saltier than Angie Dickinson's Pepper" but liked the fact it was not overly violent and "had a sense of humour. It could be around in the fall".
Filmink argued the lead actors were not well cast as a team.
The first episode after the pilot was meant to be "Live Bait" (directed by Steve Stern, written by Rudolph Borchert), about a rapist. However it was changed to be about a corrupt policeman. It got a 40% rating and was the 23rd most watched show of the week.
Joel Silver reported that Walter Hill's original pilot script inspired Shane Black to write Lethal Weapon.
Directed by:
Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Credited cast
The rest of cast listed alphabetically: