Crime Story (American TV series)

Crime Story
Anthony Denison (left, as Ray Luca) and Dennis Farina (as Lt. Mike Torello)
GenreCrime drama
Created by
Starring
Theme music composer
Opening theme"Runaway"
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons2
No. of episodes44
Production
Executive producerMichael Mann
Running time44–49 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkNBC
ReleaseSeptember 18, 1986 (1986-09-18) –
May 10, 1988 (1988-05-10)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

Crime Story is an American crime drama television series, created by Chuck Adamson and Gustave Reininger and produced by Michael Mann, that aired on NBC, where it ran for two seasons from September 18, 1986, to May 10, 1988.

The show premiered with a two-hour pilot—a film which had been exhibited theatrically—and was watched by over 30 million viewers. NBC scheduled the show to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. opposite ABC's Moonlighting on its fall schedule but moved it to Fridays at 10 p.m. in December. It moved to Tuesdays at 10 p.m. in fall 1987 before being cancelled after two seasons.

Set in the early 1960s, the series depicted two men—Lt. Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) and mobster Ray Luca (Anthony Denison)—with an obsessive drive to destroy each other. As Luca started with street crime in Chicago, was "made" in the Chicago Outfit and then sent to Las Vegas to monitor their casinos, Torello pursued Luca as head of a special Organized Crime Strike Force. Torello, his friend Ted Kehoe, and Luca had grown up in Chicago's "The Patch" (Smith Park) neighborhood, also called "Little Italy" or "Little Sicily" and the haunt of the Forty-Two Gang.

The show attracted both acclaim and controversy for its serialized format, in which a continuing storyline was told over an entire season, rather than being episodic, as was the case with most shows at the time.