Cannon - Season One Vol- 2

Product Description The weekly adventures of Frank Cannon, an overweight, balding ex-cop with a deep voice and expensive tastes in culinary pleasures, who becomes a high-priced private investigator. Since Cannon's girth didn't allow for many fist-fights and gun battles (although there were many), the series substituted car chases and high production values in their place. Amazon.com With his impressive girth and balding pate, no one will mistake insurance investigator Frank Cannon (William Conrad) for, say, Jim Rockford, or any other of TV?s more conventionally handsome PIs. But with his imposing size and resonant growl of a voice, Cannon could throw his weight around with the best of them as he so ably demonstrates in these 13 episodes that concluded Cannon's impressive first season. The pipe-smoking gourmand has a style all his own. In one episode, he quotes famed critic Alexander Wolcott?s classic bon mot that everything he likes is either "illegal, immoral, or fattening." But underestimate him at your peril; The tough-talking Cannon can dish it out as well. He threatens an uncooperative biker in "Devil?s Playground" with hospitalization, and in "Death is a Double Cross," he nimbly gets the drop on a hit man. Cannon?s salary is as ample as he is, but he doesn?t let that influence his investigation. To an acquaintance who wants Cannon to learn the truth about her husband?s death (which the insurance company has ruled a suicide), he states, "The truth is like rain. It doesn?t care who gets wet." He is also thorough. "When I look at a picture straight on and don't get it, I try looking at it sideways," he tells another client. Cannon boasts solid writing ("Double Cross" is adapted from the Thomas B. Dewey novel, Every Bet?s a Sure Thing) and some great guests before they were stars. Martin Sheen is featured in "Devil?s Playground" as a vengeful disabled ex-cop who wants Cannon to help him prove that the supposedly dead thief who shot him during an armored car robbery actually faked his demise (this episode also costars future Hill Street Blues costars Daniel Travanti and James Sikking). Just as Cannon performs a fireman?s carry on one injured party, so does Conrad bear the weight of this tailor-made series that provided the character actor (who voiced Matt Dillon on the radio incarnation of Gunsmoke) with a long overdue leading role. --Donald Liebenson