29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The best-ever San Francisco TV show is all but forgotten. Here's how to watch today
We live in a TV nostalgia wonderland, where almost every program we grew up loving is streaming.
So how is it possible that the best show ever filmed in San Francisco is nowhere to be found?
No, not 'The Streets of San Francisco,' the 1970s cop show that's still fun to watch for the pulsing score and daylight San Francisco exteriors. And certainly not 'Full House,' the 1980s/1990s confection which is disqualified because — other than a few opening credits shots — it was filmed in Los Angeles.
Sandwiched in between was 'Midnight Caller,' the moody NBC procedural about San Francisco cop Jack Killian (Gary Cole), who accidentally shoots his partner, finds his way to a midnight to 3 a.m. talk radio shift and engages in therapy with a struggling city — while helping solve the occasional crime.
The show aired for three seasons from 1988 to 1991, survived one big controversy, then disappeared. It's no longer syndicated. It hasn't been released on physical media in the U.S. And it doesn't stream on Peacock, Netflix or nostalgia-friendly services like Pluto TV and Tubi. How did Hollywood lose an entire television show?
'Midnight Caller' caught San Francisco by surprise. After 'The Streets of San Francisco' filmed the last of its 121 episodes in 1977, television shows stopped embedding in the city. In 1988 'Hooperman,' 'My Sister Sam' and 'Sledge Hammer!' were all San Francisco shows in name only, set in the city but filming on L.A. sound stages.
The producers of 'Midnight Caller' in early 1988 quietly set up in San Francisco Studios on Seventh Street, the SOMA sound stage where 'Star Trek IV' and 'A View to the Kill' interiors were filmed.
The show had a serious creator in Richard DiLello, who wrote screenplays for the well-reviewed juvenile prison drama 'Bad Boys' and L.A. gang movie 'Colors.' In the lead role, Cole was a rising talent, with a deep radio voice and a brooding, imperfect-yet-likeable personality that would have fit well in the prestige TV era that arrived 20 years later. Even the jazzy theme song, 'Is it a Crime?', came from Sade, whose stock was rising too.
The show's 61 episodes included a ridiculous number of serial killers, mob bosses and stalkers looking to kill the host. But there was nuance in between. Episode six in the first season featured 'Hill Street Blues' star Joe Spano as an about-to-be-executed San Quentin prisoner, trying to make a human connection in his last days. (Spano won an Emmy for the role.)
DiLello's team wrote an episode about the Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake that aired less than three months after the disaster. The show's worst moment, an exploitative first-season arc about a man infected with HIV who knowingly has unprotected sex with former lovers, resulted in hundreds of protesters storming the KRON studio the night it aired. But the series rebounded the next season with a more thoughtful AIDS episode, where Killian reconnects with a former lover dying of the disease.
'Midnight Caller' received strong reviews, including from San Francisco Chronicle TV critic John Carman, who credited its authenticity, writing: 'The city and the predawn hours give 'Midnight Caller' its visual flourish. This is the San Francisco in which mysteries creep in behind the twilight.'
Today, the show feels like time travel to an era when KGO talk radio dominated the conversation, and we watched and listened to the same things. When Herb Caen or Ronn Owens or Dennis Richmond could carry a focused conversation with the city. A time before digital paywalls and Substacks and deep legacy media cutbacks.
And it ages extremely well, capturing San Francisco in that golden hour moment when it was a hub of finance titans, strong unions and old money — before tech leaders took over the top of the food chain. Killian spends a lot of time at night in Chinatown and North Beach, with the neon of Li Po Cocktail Lounge and the striped awnings of the Washington Square Bar & Grill (RIP) making cameos.
The late '80s were also a melancholy time in San Francisco, still with recent memories of Jonestown, the Milk/Moscone murders and the Zodiac killings. We were tired. And Cole as Killian channels the mood perfectly. I'd watch an entire hour of him just clicking the buttons that put callers on the air.
('And our next call comes from across the Bay in San Leandro. Tell me a story Rachel …')
The episodes themselves are hit and miss, like so many mainstream dramas in the 1990s. But Cole would finish each episode with an absorbing radio monologue, ending with his still-gives-me-chills signoff, 'Goodnight America … wherever you are.'
NBC and production company Lorimar announced 'Midnight Caller's' cancellation in 1991. But unlike almost every other filmed-in-San Francisco series, it didn't come back. The 1996-2001 S.F. cop show 'Nash Bridges' has DVD box sets, and every episode streams on Peacock and Amazon Prime. 'The Streets of San Francisco' recently released the complete series on DVD.
'Midnight Caller's' absence likely comes down to copyright issues; along with Sade's theme and the moody jazz score, Killian spins songs, including Wilson Pickett's 'In the Midnight Hour' in the pilot episode. There's also a lack of legacy star power. While 'The Streets of San Francisco' cop Michael Douglas became an A-lister, Cole settled into a career defined by beloved cult film performances ('Office Space') and smaller roles on great television shows ('The West Wing,' 'Veep').
The only way to watch 'Midnight Caller' today is on YouTube, where it quietly appears from time to time — digitized from old VHS copies with the commercials clumsily excised out — then disappears. But a new user uploaded the entire show last fall. I've been watching whenever I can, knowing the rights holders (Lorimar sold to Warner Bros.) could take it down any day.
In the meantime I plan to binge like there's no tomorrow. 'Midnight Caller' is aging well. And I'm far from ready to say goodnight.
