Mike Connors was a big talent. The best work of his life unfortunately, was "Mannix."
He was very good in it. The plots were pretty awful. Virtually every ep' at one point has Mike climbing a ladder or ending up on the roof of a building. It was a very physical part.
Connors was a good actor who probably made a great living but was under appreciated and more talented than he was given a chance to demonstrate.
I tried - I really really tried - to binge watch Mannix when it was on every night on MeTV. I liked the idea of watching a TV show that evolved from early to late 1960s which was a culturally tumultuous time. I just couldn’t get through the terrible plots and cheap sets and gave up somewhere in season 3. Your joke about him ending up on the roof of a building in every episode was funny. There were some terrible cliches. I recall thinking he got knocked unconscious about 20 times a season. His stunt doubles hilariously looked nothing like him which was always entertaining. Connors was a genuinely good guy though and he always played it in a masculine but gentlemanly way. You can certainly see how his character led to portrayals of the pragmatic private investigator by later actors like James Garner and Tom Selleck.
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