Jump Street spin-off Booker failed to create a Sam Spade for the ’90s

In the world of TV spin-offs, it is essential to name your new series after the transitory character to remind people exactly why they’re supposed to watch: a chance to see a familiar face in a whole new light. It’s a hit-or-miss proposition. For every Frasier, there’s a Joey. For every Laverne & Shirley, a Joanie Loves Chachi. And for every Angel, there’s a Booker.
In the late ’80s, Fox was trying feverishly to get its fledgling network off the ground, desperate to fill time slots and expand into seven nights of programming. So why not spin off one of its first real successes, 21 Jump Street, which featured an undercover squad of baby-faced detectives who tackled issues of the week at various high schools? In season three, sensing that breakout Johnny Depp’s star was ascending, Jump Street’s producers added Richard Grieco to the cast as Teen Beat backup Booker. Booker was a rebellious, motorcycle-jacket-wearing loner who hovered outside of the clique at the Jump Street chapel, his personality as pointy as his studded leather cuff. The former Elite model soon became Jump Street’s most popular cast member, his fan mail exceeding even Depp’s. So although the character was initially intended to be killed off at the end of the season, Booker wound up saving Depp’s Hanson, who was being framed for killing a fellow cop. Unfortunately in doing so, he broke about a million by-the-book rules (classic Booker). Facing a demotion to the microfiche library, the attractive hothead quit the force in Jump Street’s season-four premiere.
This set viewers up for the debut of Booker, which premiered on Sunday, September 24, 1989 (only to be canceled after 22 episodes, on May 6, 1990). The show credits offered a sort of bridge between ’80s and ’90s sensibilities, with grainy back-and-white footage set against Booker’s usually blue-tinged action sequences and scored to Billy Idol’s “Hot In The City” (sadly, the rights weren’t retained at Booker’s current streaming home, Amazon; and the credits now feature a greatly inferior track called “Hot Summer Night”). Some of Grieco’s Jump Street castmates showed up to help kick the series off: Peter DeLuise’s Penhall appeared in the show’s first few minutes to help Booker at his bar bouncer gig. Fortunately Booker’s old boss, Captain Fuller (Steven Williams), soon had a lead on a security job for him, at the insurance-based Teshima Corporation. It sounds like someone behind the scenes at Booker had seen Die Hard a few too many times; Booker is like if the Nakatomi Corporation had decided to hire a hotter, younger John McClane for 24-7 protection. Any doubt about the Die Hard connection can be cleared up by viewing episode four, “High Rise,” in which Booker saves the corporate higher-ups from an infiltration of renegades with guns by crawling his way through the Teshima Tower skyscraper.
Derivative it may have been, but “High Rise” was one of Booker’s most enjoyable episodes. Jump Street/Booker creator Stephen J. Cannell had a gift for creating fun case-of-the-week series (before Jump Street, he was the brains behind The Rockford Files and The A-Team), but he had as many misses as hits (Tenspeed And Brown Shoe, J.J, Starbuck). Booker is an example of a faltering series failing to figure out how to use the appealing character at its center. If you viewed 10 different episodes of Booker, except for the guy in the lead, you’d have a hard time telling they were all from the same show, or what that show was supposed to be about. The single-note pitch—anti-establishment Booker rages against his new job in corporate America!—barely had enough momentum to get through the pilot. In fact, Booker leaves Teshima almost immediately, moving on to help his new secretary, Elaine (Katie Rich), who has doubts about her recent verdict at jury duty.
In episode two, “The Pump,” Booker was having trouble adjusting from his Jump Street life to his new job, just like his audience. Fuller showed up again, as did Jump Street’s Judy Hoffs (Holly Robinson Peete) to try to help him through the transition. “Raising Arrizola” threw in a yuppie love interest who gets ensnarled by some unsavory characters from Booker’s past. By episode four, the show figured out that the Teshima storyline wasn’t really working—and neither was the supporting cast, not even Mrs. Kotter herself, Marcia Strassman, trying to portray a corporate shark—so Booker fortunately used his leverage after saving the company from the armed thugs to take on outside clients.
Give or take a giant Japanese corporation, what Booker wound up resembling more than anything was an old gumshoe series, just fast-forwarded a few decades. The self-described maverick already had the perfect private-eye M.O.: Instead of a fedora and a trench coat, Booker sported a gravity-defying hairstyle and that omnipresent leather jacket. He had an adorable Girl Friday to help him with cases (first Rich, then a pre-Point Break Lori Petty as Suzanne Dunne, who entered mid-season), as well as institutional authority to buck against (his Teshima higher-ups, played by Strassman and Carmen Argenziano as his boss, Chick Sterling, who spouted lines like “This isn’t Matlock, Mr. Booker!”). Booker’s cases of the week, whether through Teshima or on his own, could send him anywhere from a ski lodge to a beach house to a hockey rink. No matter where he was, most of his scenes took place at night, accented with neon-streaked mood lighting, giving the series a noir ambience.
Like a Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or Richard Diamond, Grieco’s Booker, though an outsider, oozed an effective amount of charm via his soft-spoken, nicotine-clogged line delivery and effortless cool. He was nicknamed “Elvis” on the show, though they could have also called him “Fonzie.” (Not for nothing, Grieco was the idol of the Night At The Roxbury guys.) His decade-appropriate looks and rebellious wardrobe enabled him to easily fall into whatever crowd he needed to in order to crack the case, be it a group of ski bums or an assortment of repo men. It was a lot for the fairly inexperienced Grieco to shoulder: His appeal was easy to spot on Jump Street, surrounded as he was by other uncannily good-looking cops. Without much of a supporting cast, Grieco was on his own each week to steer Booker’s convoluted plot, which worked when the case was intriguing, but failed otherwise.
One early case had Booker worming his way into a rich man’s house over fear that his young new wife was actually a black widow out to kill her husband for the life insurance (policy held by Teshima, naturally). A plot so popular it’s been recycled countless times before and since, “Bête Noire” has Booker and the femme fatale attempting some truly painful flirtation—in a steam room, no less: