Pacific Station (TV series)

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Pacific Station was a situation comedy aired in the United States by NBC as part of its 1991 fall lineup.

Pacific Station centered around Detective Bob Ballard (Robert Guillaume), a wisecracking veteran cop who had been assigned to Pacific Station, apparently usually a dumping ground for eccentric and/or incompetent officers. Even more eccentric were the suspects the officers of Pacific Station brought in, as many were from nearby Venice Beach, a celebratedly off-center locale. The other officers of Pacific Station included Detective Richard Capparelli (Richard Libertini), fresh from treatment for his psychological problems, Detective Sandy Calloway (Megan Gallagher), and the brown-nosing Detective Al Burkhardt (Ron Leibman). In command of this hodgepodge was the recently-promoted, immature, mother-fixated Captain Ken Epstein (Joel Murray), who had received the place which logic dictated should have gone to Bob. Frequently blustering his way through the station was Deputy Commissioner Hank Bishop (John Hancock), who never let anyone forget for a moment that he was a deputy commissioner.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the program's obvious similarities to ABC's long-running hit Barney Miller, Pacific Station was a ratings disaster, due to competition from ABC's Top 30 show America's Funniest People and CBS's Top 10 hit Murder, She Wrote. It was put on hiatus in October 1991. Brought back in a new time slot in December, it fared no better and was permanently cancelled in January 1992.