History Series / BarneyMiller

* Detective Stanley Thaddeus "Wojo" Wojciehowicz[[note]]"You say it like it's spelled!" or "Spelled just like it sounds!"[[/note]] (Creator/MaxGail), who tended to act entirely on his impulses, causing Barney endless headaches. His original uncouth and dense character gradually became more enlightened as the series went on.
* Sergeant Ron Nathan Harris (Creator/RonGlass), whose police work frequently took second place to his novel-writing. He had a diva-esque attitude, best exemplified by his reluctance to wear anything he considered unstylish, even during undercover work. He also considered himself the squadroom intellectual, at least until the arrival of...
* Detective Arthur Dietrich (Creator/SteveLandesberg), a DeadpanSnarker and card-carrying polymath, who would routinely make wry but detailed and accurate observations about even the most obscure branches of criminal psychology, science, medicine, the arts, history, religion, and just about anything else that happened to come up in conversation. This drove Harris (and occasionally the other detectives) crazy -- Harris especially didn't appreciate having a rival for being "[[TheSmartGuy the Smart One]]". He debuted in Season 2, became a regular in season 3 after Fish's retirement, and stuck around through the end of the run.

* During the first two seasons, Sergeant Chano Amenguale (Creator/GregorySierra); an amiable, talkative guy, who could be intense when under pressure, sometimes bursting into a stream of Spanish invective. He [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappeared]] when Sierra got a lead role on another sitcom, which promptly crashed and burned, beating ''Fish'' to the punch by a season.
* Barney's immediate superior Inspector Franklin D. Luger (Creator/JamesGregory), who does nothing but chew Barney's ear all day, get Barney to do his paperwork for him, and long for the halcyon days of acceptable police brutality. Seen in about a quarter to a third of the episodes.

* Detective Nick Yemana (Jack Soo), who is well-liked an even respected, despite his extraordinarily bad filing skills, and the fact that he seems to spend as much time on the phone with his bookie as he does doing police work. He takes a laissez-faire attitude to most things and often makes inappropriate jokes. His [[BadToTheLastDrop bad coffee]] is legendary. Yemana was among the first regular adult characters on U.S. prime-time television written specifically for an American of Japanese descent.[[note]]In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' Sulu was played by Japanese American George Takei, but the character's nationality was deliberately left unspecified.[[/note]] The character left the show in Season 5 when Jack Soo fell ill and died of cancer.

* StockholmSyndrome: In Part 1 of "The Landmark", Howard Spangler, who had been held captive in South America for 18 months, becomes disgruntled after returning to the U.S.A. and being slighted, in contrast to other hostages who received heroes' welcomes after being released from Iran. Despite the lack of sympathy from his employer and the rough experiences he had in the South American prison camp, Spangler writes out a tirade to his ex-bosses denouncing their capitalistic tendencies, believing that militant revolutionary "people power" and his presence inspired the rebels to overthrow their government.

* Detective Nick Yemana (Creator/JackSoo), who is well-liked an even respected, despite his extraordinarily bad filing skills, and the fact that he seems to spend as much time on the phone with his bookie as he does doing police work. He takes a laissez-faire attitude to most things and often makes inappropriate jokes. His [[BadToTheLastDrop bad coffee]] is legendary. Yemana was among the first regular adult characters on U.S. prime-time television written specifically for an American of Japanese descent.[[note]]In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' Sulu was played by Japanese American George Takei, but the character's nationality was deliberately left unspecified.[[/note]] The character left the show in Season 5 when Jack Soo fell ill and died of cancer.

* Officer Carl Levitt (Creator/RonCarey), a uniformed officer stationed downstairs. Levitt spent years incessantly pestering Captain Miller about promoting him to detective, combining obsequious servility with snarky sarcasm when his requests were rejected. Became a regular along with Dietrich in Season 3 and stuck around for the rest of the run.

* The eponymous Captain Miller (Creator/HalLinden), whose underlings exasperate him and whose superiors ignore him; an OnlySaneMan who often feels ineffectual and underappreciated. Best known for leaving suspects and victims together for a while in hopes that they will work things out without pressing charges (and therefore without the associated paperwork).
* Detective Nick Yemana (Creator/JackSoo), the HypercompetentSidekick of the squadroom. He takes a laissez-faire attitude to most things and often makes inappropriate jokes. His [[BadToTheLastDrop bad coffee]] is legendary. Yemana was among the first regular adult characters on U.S. prime-time television written specifically for an American of Japanese descent.[[note]]In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' Sulu was played by Japanese American George Takei, but the character's nationality was deliberately left unspecified.[[/note]] The character left the show in Season 5 when Jack Soo fell ill and died of cancer.
* Sergeant Philip K. Fish (Creator/AbeVigoda), an elderly and dyspeptic complainer who alternately wisecracks about today's batch of criminals or his wife. Despite his endless moaning, he can't stand the thought of his impending retirement. The character began appearing in a spin-off series, ''Fish'', midway through the third season but didn't leave until the end of it (getting a proper send-off in the fourth season premiere). The spin-off didn't last two years, and Fish continued to return for occasional appearances on the parent show.

* Detective Arthur Dietrich (Creator/SteveLandesberg), a DeadpanSnarker and card-carrying intellectual, whose long-winded speculations about criminal psychology, science, and just about anything else that happened to come up in conversation drove the other detectives crazy. He particularly annoyed Harris, who didn't appreciate having a rival for being "[[TheSmartGuy the Smart One]]". He debuted in Season 2, became a regular in season 3 after Fish's retirement, and stuck around through the end of the run.

* During the first two seasons, Sergeant Chano Amenguale (Creator/GregorySierra); an amiable, talkative guy, but basically deficient in outstanding personality quirks. He [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome disappeared]] when Sierra got a lead role on another sitcom, which promptly crashed and burned, beating ''Fish'' to the punch by a season.
* Barney's immediate superior Inspector Franklin D. Luger (Creator/JamesGregory), who does nothing but chew Barney's ear all day, get Barney to do his paperwork for him, and long for the halcyon days of acceptable police brutality.

Throughout the run, the show tried adding new characters to the cast; most of them would be given a "test run" of about three episodes to make an impression. More than half a dozen cops were "auditioned" this way. Save for Dietrich, none of them really worked, resulting in ChuckCunninghamSyndrome. (Creator/LindaLavin probably would have stayed on too, if she hadn't been offered the lead role in ''Series/Alice1976''; she appeared promiently in flashbacks despite being in only five episodes). Midway through the fifth season, actor Jack Soo (Yemana) died. The cast did a memorial episode out-of-character for Soo, but Yemana was never [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim killed off]] in so many words. Once in a while, he would be mentioned in the past tense, sometimes with an air of wistfulness. When Levitt worked in the detective squad room, he took over Yemana's desk.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Although most of the elements were in place from the start, it took a while for the show to fully find itself. In the first season, Barney's wife is more apt to show up in the squadroom, but she gradually became an offstage character as the show progressed. Aside from Barney, most of the top-billed characters sit out for an episode or more of the first season, while sone one-shot detetives are tried out. The characters' personalities are somewhat different, too, aside from Barney, Fish and Nick. (The earliest Wojo appearances are pretty different from the character he became -- he's much louder and more crass. And Harris sometimes drifts into JiveTurkey territory early on, and isn't yet the intellectual he'd become.) Additionally, the show features scenes outside the squad room several times, something that would become very rare in subsequent seasons (see BottleEpisode above).

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Although most of the elements were in place from the start, it took a while for the show to fully find itself. In the first season, Barney's wife is more apt to show up in the squadroom, but she gradually became an offstage character as the show progressed. Aside from Barney, most of the top-billed characters sit out for an episode or more of the first season, while sone one-shot detetives are tried out. The characters' personalities are somewhat different, too, aside from Barney, Fish and Nick. (The earliest Wojo appearances are pretty different from the character he became -- he's much louder and more crass. And Harris sometimes drifts into JiveTurkey terriotry early on, and isn't yet the intellectual he'd become.) Additionally, the show features scenes outside the squad room several times, something that would become very rare in subsequent seasons (see BottleEpisode above).

* LastNameBasis: Barney usually addresses Fish as "Fish", and only very rarely as Phil. It's also very rare for any of the detectives to call him anything other than "Fish". Compare with Nick and Chano, who are ''never'' addressed as Yemena and Amenguale -- always as Nick and Chano. While Barney and the other detectives are on familiar terms with each other, Barney and Dietrich address each other as "Captain" and "Dietrich". In the two-parter "Eviction" they try out "Barney" and "Arthur" but Dietrich decides he doesn't want to get too familiar.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: In the first season, Barney's wife is a regular billed in the opening credits, although she does not appear in all the episodes. In fact, aside from Barney, most of the top-billed characters sit out for an episode or more of the first season. The characters' personalities are less distinctive, too, aside from Barney, Wojo, and Fish. Additionally, the show features scenes outside the squad room several times, something that would become very rare in subsequent seasons (see BottleEpisode above).

A police-themed sitcom airing on Creator/{{ABC}} from 1975 to 1982, ''Barney Miller'' was considered quite realistic by actual cops, especially in comparison to police dramas at the time. The episodes tended to take place entirely within the bleak, ancient squad room of the (fictional) 12th Precinct in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops New York City]]'s Greenwich Village, as the detectives booked and processed various suspects. Action sequences usually took place off-camera and were described by the detectives as they returned from the scene. What made the show worth watching was [[http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2011/10/barney-miller-inside-look.html the razor-sharp writing]] and the eccentric personalities of the detectives, including:

Now has a [[Characters/BarneyMiller character page]] for the main cast and recurring characters.

* LastNameBasis: While Barney and the other detectives are on familiar terms with each other, Barney and Dietrich address each other as "Captain" and "Dietrich". In the two-parter "Eviction" they try out "Barney" and "Arthur" but Dietrich decides he doesn't want to get too familiar.

Characters and references to the show still turn up. In a novel spinoff of ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'', ''Confessions of Rustin Parr'', the investigations were headed by Detective Nicholas Yemana. In William P. Young's supernatural murder mystery ''The Shack'', a Polish police detective says his name is "spelled just like it sounds". In ''Series/{{Frasier}}'', one of Martin's police friends was Stan Wojciedubakowski, and when he died, Martin briefly dated his widow. The PoliceProcedural [[RomanticComedy Romantic Dramedy]] ''Series/{{Castle}}'' is, like this show, set in the Twelfth Precinct of the NYPD. In Jo Nesbø's [[Literature/HarryHole novels]] of the police murder squad in Norway, Oslo's detective force has its own officer Bjarne Mjølle.

A police-themed sitcom airing on Creator/{{ABC}} from 1975–82, ''Barney Miller'' was considered quite realistic by actual cops, especially in comparison to police dramas at the time. The episodes tended to take place entirely within the bleak, ancient squad room of the (fictional) 12th Precinct in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops New York City]]'s Greenwich Village, as the detectives booked and processed various suspects. Action sequences usually took place off-camera and were described by the detectives as they returned from the scene. What made the show worth watching was [[http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2011/10/barney-miller-inside-look.html the razor-sharp writing]] and the eccentric personalities of the detectives, including:

* {{Joisey}}: An AcceptableTarget, along with Detroit, Cleveland, and Wyoming.

* MixAndMatch: PoliceProcedural + WorkCom (all other police procedurals were dramas before this.)

* DoingItForTheArt: In-universe when Harris is tasked with making a porno to be used in investigations. (Two-part episode "Movie".) He goes far over budget, gives it an actual plot (with PurpleProse dialogue), and gives himself a cameo in the spirit of Creator/AlfredHitchcock. The actual pornographic content, when it happens, is implied to be... up to industry standards.