cult film freak: BURT REYNOLDS IN THE SLOWBURN COP SERIES 'DAN AUGUST'

Burt Reynolds on the series DAN AUGUST Years: 1970-1971 Rating: ***1/2

In two decades, Burt Reynolds went from being a TV actor to a movie star, and following both GUNSMOKE and HAWK, a Western and a cop series playing part Indian, he's in the latter's genre as pure white guy DAN AUGUST, a Southern California cop who seems to know everyone he's investigating...

Except a ragged, wrongly-accused hippie in Harrison Ford, featured here from THE MANUFACTURED MAN where his future STAR WARS co-scoundrel, Billy Dee Williams, is an idealistic reporter trying to convince Reynolds' Lt. August into blaming a governor and his flaky, boozing son (David Soul), blocked by token stern chief Richard Anderson while Burt's partnered with a mellow Norman Fell, later co-starring in THE END and PATERNITY...

Billy Dee Williams and Harrison Ford on DAN AUGUST with Burt Reynolds

All the episodes play out almost exactly the same... one person seems the likely candidate for a cold open murder (revealing everything but the killer's face) until the truth is revealed... as it's more of the Mystery genre than Thriller or Action while enveloped within a Neo Noir/Gumshoe mold of going from person to person, location to location asking questions and, until the end, getting nowhere answers from various red-herrings...

And while Reynolds is famous for being a talented actor who threw it away by having too much fun in car chase movies like SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT after being dramatically legitimized in DELIVERANCE, it turns out, by his cold and monotone, robotic persona as DAN AUGUST, a little levity was needed: and yet he looks and plays the role well enough... just not enough for more than one season.