5. Thea Houston has a neat first in television; we had the first television show named after an African-American female comedian. It's not a big whoop, but Thea, starring Thea Vidale, deserved much more love than it got. Visdale played a no-nonsense working single mother who ran a grocery store during the day and a beauty salon on her porch at night to make ends meet. It was smart and sharp, but it only made it 19 episodes. If you have 20 minutes to kill I highly recommend the pilot episode embedded above.
4. Chase Produced by Jennifer Johnson and Jerry Bruckheimer, Chase was a pretty gripping little crime drama set in Houston. Kellie Giddish as U.S. Deputy Marshal Annie Frost was a real treat, and she was a natural lead able to command the attention of everyone around her. The plots were kind of pedestrian and rarely broke the norm, but Giddish alone was worth tuning in. It ran on NBC until 2011.
3. Houston Knights Now this was Houston's real crime drama series. Running on CBS in the late '80s for 31 episodes it was an odd couple buddy cop outing that was as cantankerous and over-the-top as you could ever want. Michael Paré and Michael Beck tooled around H-Town in an ice-blue 289 AC Cobra having culture clashes and getting into fights. It was glorious and stupid, just like it should have been.
2. Neighbors From Hell This is the only animated show set in Houston as far as I can tell. Created by Pam Brady for TBS, it's about a family of demons that move to Houston because they are tasked with destroying a drilling operation that threatens to penetrate into Hell. Despite their evil nature, the family overall likes humanity even if we can be as bad as demons ourselves sometimes. Plus Patton Oswalt is a devil dog that can freeze and unfreeze time, so there's that.
1. Judd, for the Defense Probably the single most underrated Houston television show of all time was ABC's lawyer drama starring Carl Betz. It debuted in 1968, and the role of Clinton Judd was a great opportunity for Betz coming off his time on Donna Reed. It was a revolutionary program for its time, tackling many issues that were just beginning to get national attention like homosexuality. It was brave and extremely well-written television, but it was too ahead of the curve to find an audience. Even a crossover with Felony Squad failed to boost ratings. These days you have to find collector-made DVD sets if you want to witness it, which is a shame because it really was fantastic from the precious few episodes I've managed to see. Here at least was the series debut for you to check out yourselves.
