We Should Still Love Kojak
The following is a condensed version of "We Should Still Love Kojak" by Casey Chalk, published at Law & Liberty.
NYPD detective Lieutenant Theodopolis "Theo" Kojak’s eponymous CBS series represented something new in police dramas when it debuted fifty years ago. It had to—in 1973 there were more than a score of crime-oriented shows on prime time. What Kojak offered to separate itself was a more gritty, straight-from-the-headlines realism in its sympathetic portrayal of police work. Over five seasons, it became a global phenomenon, and deserves revisiting today.
It was a bit of a gambit to cast Greek-American Aristotelis “Telly” Savalas as Kojak, as a 1973 New York Times feature explained. Savalas was a “perennial heavy” whose previous screen roles included a religious fanatic and sex deviant in “The Dirty Dozen,” as well as “a variety of convicts and gangsters, sadistic army sergeants, supercriminals and assorted unlovables ranging from Al Capone to Pontius Pilate.” The imposing six-foot-plus Greek emanated menace, with his bald cranium, hooked nose, thick neck, and heavy-lipped mouth.
The incorruptible cop with a heart of gold and well-stocked wardrobe of fashionable suits was a departure for Savalas, but the Long Island-bred actor proved well-suited as an NYPD detective, mastering the quick, snarky quip. Nor was that persona simply a reflection of his acting abilities. Drafted into the US Army during World War II, he served in a medical training regiment until a car accident put him in a hospital for a year with a broken pelvis and concussion.
Detective Kojak represented a composite of Savalas’ character: a kid from the streets with savoir-faire, an athletic wit with a penchant for public service. Savalas told the New York Times: “this is an interesting cop, a feel cop from a New York neighborhood. A basically honest character, tough but with feelings—the kind of guy who might kick a hooker in the tail if he had to, but they'd understand each other because maybe they grew up on the same kind of block.”
In the series, the detective bounces between playful, witty jabs and truculent barking, regardless of the interlocutor. Criminals, supervisors, uncooperative FBI agents, and even members of his squad (including his real-life brother George Savalas) are all objects of Kojak’s sharp tongue. But Kojak is unswervingly faithful to his men and the broader NYPD, because the force represents the very people (and family) he has sworn to protect.
In that same New York Times interview, Savalas opines on law enforcement:
I also think it's incredible that guys—the police—expose themselves to that kind of risk for the peanuts they get paid. And I think we should accentuate the positive as well as the negative. Look around you. I don't know when in history we've been any lower. In our stupidity, we have put the focus on the outhouses of the world.
Episodes depict the threats police officers encounter in the line of duty, sometimes simply because of the uniform they don. And despite the detective’s insuperable style, Kojak’s office is a disheveled, dilapidated disaster. The entire precinct bespeaks that same blue-collar, overworked, underpaid ethos.
Nevertheless, “Kojak” does not avoid the controversial elements to police work. In one episode he is the recipient of a tongue-lashing from an indignant spouse of a black cop mortally wounded by a drug dealer. “You used him!” the woman screams, demanding Kojak justify her husband’s fate — his skin color made him an ideal candidate for sting operations. Kojak responds that it’s what her husband wanted, to clean up the streets that they all grew up on.
Kojak may be colorblind, but neither is he indifferent to racial minorities and immigrants. He ashamedly acknowledges to an elderly Chinese shopkeeper his ignorance of Chinese culture. Criminals, alternatively, come in all kinds. Sometimes they are cruel, wicked villains, their souls deeply malformed by years of iniquity. Others are more complicated, torn by a panging conscience or legitimate affections and allegiances to family or loved ones.
Kojak was resoundingly popular. TV Guide in 1999 ranked Theo Kojak number 18 on its “50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time” list. Richard Gere, Harvey Keitel, Sylvester Stallone, John Ritter, and James Woods all made early appearances on the show. Yet the show’s legacy runs deeper. In an America so confused about right and wrong, heroes and villains, Kojak represents what we truly want from our public servants: unimpeachable integrity, unswerving dedication, and a willingness to sacrifice.
City Journal in its Spring 2023 issue observed that for New York’s Finest, “police spending alone [among other city funding categories] has shrunk.” In 2022, “the city’s uniformed headcount of 34,825 represented a 13.6 percent drop” from its 2000 peak. The result has been a marked rise in crime: the felony level, as of March 2023 was 49 percent higher than in 2019. As Detective Kojak might say with the perfect intonation, “Who loves ya, baby?”
Casey Chalk is a regular contributor for The American Conservative, The Federalist, The Spectator, and Crisis Magazine, and the author of The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity.
