Get Christie Love!, which only ran for one season from 1974-1975 on ABC, was a flop. Get Christie Love! featured Teresa Graves as a black undercover cop, and was the most similar in format to Police Woman as a police procedural. Get Christie Love! is an oft cited example of the failure of black television, especially shows anchored by black women. In a 1974 Washington Post article, Teresa Graves “emphasized the show will not make a big thing out of her being black” and said she thought the character was “too tough. She was too tough for me. We want her to be believable. She’s more Columbo than Mannix. She won’t do her her karate on 9-foot guys” (Base). Angie Dickinson said something similar of Pepper Anderson: “I’m kind of frail...It wouldn’t be believable, my being physical” (Kitman). But even a restrained Christie Love proved to be too much for network television of the time. Critics were also harsh concerning the low production values, cartoonish violence, and unpolished scripts. Police Woman, with its origins in the “realist” series Police Story, once again had a claim to quality.
Currently, Scandal (ABC, 2012-present) is the only show starring a black woman as the lead character on network television (and Deception, the NBC soap and crime drama slated to air January 2013). Scandal follows Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) unofficial crisis management team as they ward off political disasters, in a formula inspired by the experience of White House press aide Judy Smith. In a review of Scandal, Get Christie Love! was explicitly referred to as a failure in representation: “Portrayals of black women have come a long way from the blaxploitation-inspired characters like Teresa Graves, the last black actress to play a lead on network television, in Get Christie Love!” (Springer). Get Christie Love! deserves its own thorough examination, but the comparison between its reception and Police Woman is a marker of what boundaries could be successfully and profitably crossed in 1970s representations of women. Get Christie Love! was troubled and confused about its own representation of race and gender. Police Woman was glaringly white (and blonde) and always a little softer and maternally mature, made familiar and less threatening through the well-known figure of Angie Dickinson. Get Christie Love! was a groundbreaking attempt at what remains a difficult task, even today. Scandal’s success is highly contingent on creator/writer/producer Shonda Rhimes’ proven profitability with hospital melodrama Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-present).
