76BARNEY MILLER - TIE

Aired: ABC, 1975-1982

The air of world-weary sadness that hung over the denizens of the 12th Precinct made Barney Miller feel different from other sitcoms, quieter in personality and more offbeat cops in action via inaction, dragging themselves around the squad room like drones in an office otherwise made colorful by the perps coming in off the street. "It was a radio drama," Franken Dungan, one of the show's writers, told The New York Times recently when the DVD collection of the series was released. ''Wojo curling that paper into the typewriter was what police related to the lack of action.'' Co-creator Theodore J. Flicker was nominated for a Writers Guild Award in 1968 for his original screenplay The President's Analyst. The show's other co-creator was its larger-than-life showrunner Danny Arnold, whose writer-producer credits included That Girl, Bewitched and the Emmy-winning My World and Welcome To It.