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You are here: Home > Interviews & Print Media > The 'Heat' Is Off : Off the Air, That Is
Rick Du Brow | Los Angeles Times - May 16, 1995
CBS' "In the Heat of the Night," which winds up a seven-year run with a two-hour finale tonight, seemed like a jinxed series from Day 1, despite the presence of a premier television star, Carroll O'Connor.
And, as it turned out, the show's viewing public only knew the half of it.
Filmed far from Hollywood, primarily in Covington, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, bits and pieces of the show's struggles both behind the scenes and on camera kept emerging, making one wonder about the future of this police series based on the 1967 movie and set in Mississippi.
Playing opposite O'Connor, the brilliant actor Howard Rollins suddenly was involved in news stories about alleged drug and alcohol use, and eventually served a brief jail sentence stemming from traffic violations. O'Connor, meantime, underwent heart-bypass surgery.
While all that was getting attention, few--except those with a closer knowledge of the show--knew that it was faced with another wrenching problem: the drug addiction of O'Connor's son Hugh, who played a law enforcement officer in the series and appears in tonight's episode.