Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 73

From Oklahoma to Malibu:
James Garner and The R ockford Files
The Rockford Files with James Gamer ran for five and one-half seasons
on NBC (1974-1980), and remarkably remains one of the most popular television
programs of all time. Reruns of the 118 original episodes have played without
interruption in syndication and on national cable TV over the past 20 years. The
Nostalgia Channel and A&E were homes for The Rockford Files for many years
and the series now airs on the TNN cable network and, of course, the series has its
own homepage on the web:
http://www.the sandbox.net/ arm/rockford/resources/index.html.
The Emmy-Award winning series returned to prime time in 1994 as a series of six
projected two-hour movies on CBS. The first one, “I Still Love L.A.,” was the
highest-rated TV-movie of the 1994-1995 season.1 The other movies that have
aired include “A Blessing in Disguise” (1995), “If the Frame Fits”, “Godfather
Knows Best”, “Friends and Foul Play”, “Crime and Punishment” (a