Series Description

The Fish TV show was a 30 minute comedy series on ABC about a cantankerous old New York City police detective (who soon retired), his wife, and their five mischievous foster kids. Keeping the kids out of trouble was pretty much a full time job for Mr. and Mrs. Fish.

Fish Cast

Abe Vigoda .... Detective Phil Fish
Florence Stanley .... Bernice Fish
Lenny Bari .... Mike
Todd Bridges .... Loomis
John Cassisi .... Victor Kreutzer
Denise Miller .... Jilly Papalardo
Sarah Natoli .... Diane Pulaski
Barry Gordon .... Charlie Harrison
David Yanez .... Manuel

Fish Trivia:

The Fish TV Show only aired 35 episodes for two seasons from 1977 through 1978.

The Fish TV show was a "spin-off series" of the "Barney Miller TV show".

Abe Vigoda continued to appear in his role as Detective Phil Fish on Barney Miller for several months during the first season of his Fish TV series. When Abe finished the appearances on Barney Miller he did so by retiring from the police force.

The adopted kids on Fish were of a group that the local social services people called "P.I.N.S.". That was an acronym for "Persons in Need of Supervision". And boy oh boy did those kids require supervision! They were constantly in trouble and often they were in jams with the police! They were a racially mixed group with different backgrounds which also resulted in conflicts with each other.

Barry Gordon played the part of nearly useless Psychologist who meant well in his attempts to help Phil and Bernice Fish with their adopted "hellraisers" but never really did help. Barry began acting in 1956 at 8 years old on an episode of "Make Room for Daddy". He also appeared on several other popular shows as a child actor including "Leave it to Beaver", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Dennis the Menace", "Dr. Kildare", and even provided numerous voices for the cartoon series, "The Jetsons".

The Fish TV show won an Emmy for "Outstanding Art Direction or Scenic Design for a Comedy Series" for the very first episode, "The Really Longest Day". It beat out four other nominees for that award. They were "All in the Family", "Maude", "Mr. T and Tina", and "Sirota's Court".