In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: 1978’s A Chance To Live, a movie-length episode of the groundbreaking anthology TV series Police Story, starring David Cassidy.
Okay, this is not officially a telemovie, but it is a stand-alone, movie-length episode of an anthology series that plays in almost every respect just like a telemovie, so we’re going to bend the rules just a little bit to include it here. Running regularly from 1973 through to 1977 (and then less regularly in 1978, with three revival telemovies broadcast several years later), the TV series Police Story was created by former cop turned novelist Joseph Wambaugh, who famously mined his experiences on the mean streets of LA for seminal, genre-busting books like The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, The Choirboys, The Black Marble, The Glitter Dome and The Onion Field, with all of the aforementioned adapted for the screen. Like Wambaugh’s books, Police Story was a highly authentic mix of the police procedural and personal drama, with cops showcased in all their bruised, battered, complicated non-glory.
Boasting a gritty, naturalistic style that ran counter to most of the cop shows that preceded it, Police Story featured a new, self-contained story broadcast each week on major US network NBC. Though there was minor continuity, with some characters reappearing across episodes, watching Police Story was pretty much like seeing a new, cop-themed, 48-minute mini-movie each week. There are many, many great episodes (most boasting casts packed with terrific character actors) in the Police Story canon, and if you’re in quick need of a 1970s cop-flick fix, this is a great show to drop into, with pretty much any installment worthy of your time. A noted influence on future TV classics like Hill Street Blues and Homicide: Life On The Street, Police Story even served as a platform for a few TV spin-offs, with Angie Dickinson’s popular Police Woman getting its start there, along with the beat cop series Joe Forrester, starring Lloyd Bridges.
Another of these spin-off series began life in the 1978 season of Police Story, which opted for a collection of irregularly scheduled feature-length telemovies over the previous weekly one-hour format. One of the best of these long-form episodes is unquestionably A Chance To Live, which stars teen idol David Cassidy (four years after the end of The Partridge Family, the musical sitcom that made him famous) as a young uniform cop tapped to join a special squad tasked with undercover work in high schools beset by drug and social problems. And if you think that sounds familiar, yes, this Police Story episode (along with its short-lived, ten-episode spin-off series David Cassidy: Man Undercover, which was broadcast in 1979) basically served as a blueprint for the popular 1980s TV series 21 Jump Street, which made a superstar out of the young Johnny Depp.
Whether by design or pure coincidence, Police Story: A Chance To Live boasts incredible cinematic teen flick cache right off the bat in the form of director Corey Allen. Though he spent much of his screen career directing episodic television (Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Ironside, Hawaii Five-0, The Streets Of San Francisco, Magnum PI and many more), telemovies (1977’s Yesterday’s Child) and minor feature films (1977’s Thunder And Lighting, 1978’s Avalanche, and, um, 1971’s The Erotic Adventures Of Pinocchio…it’s not his nose that grows!), Corey Allen was also a busy actor with a raft of films and TV series to his credit. He is undeniably best known, however, for his unforgettable role as high school bad boy Buzz Gunderson, who bullied and provoked James Dean into an iconic game of chicken in the 1955 teen movie classic Rebel Without A Cause. The prolific Corey Allen does a fine job on Police Story: A Chance To Live, keeping things moving at a fast clip, and allowing his young cast to really inhabit their roles.
The telemovie begins with a real kick, with the camera prowling its way through the parking lot of a suburban high school until it settles on a group of teens talking drugs and deals. After one of them has an eye-opening freak-out, we eventually learn that seeming drug casualty T.J (Ty Henderson) is actually an undercover cop working a drug case who fears he’s been made by the students, necessitating his phony, dialled-up drug trip, which prompts his safe exit from the high school. With T.J out, his hard-bitten boss Walt Abrams (an effectively authoritative Vince Edwards) leans on the young cop to hook in some recruits for the newly formed Youth Narcotics Squad, which is run out of a dark, dingy basement…far less salubrious than 21 Jump Street‘s repurposed chapel.
When he spots youthful-looking uniformed patrolman Dan Shay (David Cassidy, who offers a strong, committed, Emmy-nominated performance), T.J is convinced he has his man. With a pregnant wife (future E.T and Cujo star Dee Wallace) at home, Dan is initially sceptical of the job offer, but after a few lectures from T.J and Abrams about the scourge of drugs and its cruel infiltration into the American education system, Dan Shay is in. “Let your hair grow out,” T.J says, and in the next scene, David Cassidy is out of uniform and looking far more like the teen idol we know and love.
Equipped with a cool car and even cooler threads, Dan Shay rolls into school, and cannily sets about ingratiating himself with the students so he can trace the source of the drugs that they’re imbibing with ravenous enthusiasm. Dan instantly befriends the nerdy, anxious Eddie (an excellently sweet and twitchy performance from Stefan Arngrim, who starred in TV’s Land Of The Giants as a younger child, and eventually featured in the notorious 1982 urban panic teen exploitation opus Class Of 1984), and then makes his way to cooler kids Ron (Don Stark, who would eventually play the hilarious Bob Pinciotti on That ’70s Show), Rich (Mark Wheeler, who stole all his scenes as teen rocker Torbin Bequette in Ron Howard’s 1978 telemovie Cotton Candy), Al (Perry Lang), Jill (Elvira Roussel), Barbie (Wendy Hoffman) and Judy (June Lockhart). While constantly in danger of being made, Dan deals with trouble at home as his wife questions his immersion in the teenage world. Also leaned on by his superiors to get results, the constantly on-edge Dan Shay slowly becomes further and further consumed by his undercover mission.
Though obviously dated, considerably alarmist, and even a little histrionic in its attitude towards drugs and drug taking (there are multiple drug freak-out scenes that edge precariously close to being comical), Police Story: A Chance To Live is terrifically entertaining in its depiction of 1970s teen life. The performances are loose and natural, and though some of the actors look a little too old to be in high school, there’s a freewheeling authenticity about the telemovie; this feels like a real high school. The cop scenes, meanwhile, have the grit and urgency that Police Story became famous for, with much edgy back-and-forth between the cops and their superiors. Well written by Larry Brody and Richard Fielder, the machinations of the small-time drug trade are nicely elucidated, and Dan Shay’s covert investigations unfold believably.
Though an unlikely meld – the grittiness of Police Story with the glittery pop stardom of David Cassidy – A Chance To Live is ultimately highly effective. Cassidy is excellent as Dan Shay, equally at home in the scenes of domestic ruction with Dee Wallace as he is when getting loose with his new high school “friends.” While certainly preachy in its messages, Police Story: A Chance To Live is an excellent, top-level installment of a consistently compelling, truly groundbreaking TV series.
Availability: Police Story: A Chance To Live is easy to find online in watchable but not-exactly-glistening form.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town, and Tribes.
