Get Christie Love (TV)
"Get Christie Love" is a television series that aired on ABC in 1974, notable for being one of the first prime-time action shows featuring an African American woman as the lead protagonist. Starring Teresa Graves as Christie Love, a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department, the show aligned with other crime dramas of the era, featuring action-packed sequences and a bold, wisecracking character. Despite its innovative premise, the series struggled with mediocre ratings and was not renewed for a second season.
The show was based on a novel by former police officer Dorothy Uhnak and incorporated technical advice from a real detective to enhance its authenticity. Critics have speculated that its lack of success may have been due to audience reluctance to accept a minority woman in a central role, despite the popularity of other female-led series during that time. Moreover, the writing quality was often criticized as uninspired, contributing to its swift decline in viewership. While "Get Christie Love" was short-lived and largely forgotten, it holds a significant place in television history for its groundbreaking representation of African American women in leading roles within the action genre.
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Subject Terms
Get Christie Love (TV)
Identification Television detective series
Date Aired from September, 1974, to July, 1975
Get Christie Love was a milestone in television’s inclusion of women and minorities in its depiction of American life: It was the first hour-long drama series starring an African American woman in the central role.
Black women first starred in television series as early as 1950, when first Ethel Waters and then Louise Beavers played the title role in Beulah. In 1963, Cicely Tyson appeared as an important, though not primary, character in East Side/West Side with George C. Scott. However, it was not until the appearance of Get Christie Love on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network in 1974 that American viewers saw an African American woman cast as protagonist in a drama or action show. Teresa Graves starred as Christie Love, a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. The series was much in the mode of ABC’s other crime dramas of the 1970’s, such as Baretta and Starsky and Hutch: a great deal of gunplay and chases, with a risk-taking, wisecracking protagonist who often clashed with colleagues and superiors. To bolster the series’ sense of realism, producers based the series on a novel by best-selling former police officer Dorothy Uhnak and hired Detective Olga Ford of the New York Police Department to offer technical advice. Nevertheless, the series drew only mediocre ratings and was not renewed for a second season.
Industry pundits and social critics pondered the possibility that the series failed because American audiences were not ready for action series with women, especially minority women, in key roles. However, Police Woman and Charlie’s Angels were successful in the 1970’s, and both were television action series starring women. Moreover, both Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson became cult figures during the decade by starring in central roles in blaxploitation films that were popular at the time with young people of all races. It is possible that Get Christie Love failed in large part because of a trend in the entertainment industry that originated long before the 1970’s: public resistance to an artist trying to “cross over” from one genre to another. Graves, like Goldie Hawn, had risen to fame as a dancer and comedian on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, one of the most popular shows of the 1960’s. Viewers might have been reluctant to accept her as a hard-hitting action heroine. A more serious and substantive problem with the series, however, was the quality of writing, which was often mediocre and uninspired.
Impact
Although it ran for only one year and was quickly forgotten both by viewers and by industry insiders, Get Christie Love remains unique in the annals of American television history—a prime-time action series starring an African American woman in the title role.
Bibliography
Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows: 1946-Present. 8th ed. New York: Ballantine, 2003.
MacDonald, J. Fred. Black and White TV: African Americans in Television Since 1948. 2d ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1992.