Trivia / Burke's Law

• Cast the Expert: It happened several times in the revival series. In the revival's first episode, "Who Killed the Starlet?", one of the suspects is a heavy metal rock star, Roger Rose, played by the real-life lead singer of Poison, Bret Michaels. Poison's song, "Unskinny Bop", is even featured in the episode...Burke shows up at the filming of a video for the song to talk to Rose and winds up dancing in the video, much to the consternation of the rock star.
  • In the episode "Who Killed the Fashion King?", the murder victim, a famous couturier, is played by Nolan Miller, an old friend of Aaron Spelling's who served as the official costumer for Spelling-produced series going back to the original Burke's Law.
  • In the episode "Who Killed Mr. Game Show?", the murder victim, a game show producer, is played by Peter Marshall, who is not only the Emmy-winning host of ''TheHollywoodSquares, but also a producer of game shows. Marshall co-produced both Fantasy and All-Star Blitz, the two game shows he hosted in the immediate years after Squares.
• Creator Backlash: Gene Barry and Aaron Spelling liked the Genre Shift into Amos Burke, Secret Agent about as much as the viewers did...
• Fake Brit: In "Who Killed Supersleuth?", the very American Carl Reiner played Scotland Yard Inspector House.
• Fake Nationality: In "Who Killed Supersleuth?", American-born Ed Begley played French detective Bascule Doirot, and J. Carrol Naish, an American of Irish descent played Oriental sleuth Mr. Toto. Naish played Charlie Chan in the '50's TV series, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.
• The Other Darrin:
  • The pilot aired as a 1960 episode of The Dick Powell Show called "Who Killed Julie Greer?" with Mr. Powell as Amos Burke and Dean Jones as his partner Phil Winslow (not that one). Except for Leon Lontoc as Henry, the cast of regulars was different when the series was launched three years later. They didn't have a choice in the case of Burke's partner, since he turned out to be the killer.
  • Henry was played by Leon Lontoc in the pilot and original series, and by Danny Kamekona in the revival.
• Playing Their Own Twin: Carolyn Jones in "Who Killed Sweet Betsy?", she plays The Victim Of The Week and her three sisters, which means she also plays the killer.
• Real-Life Relative: Gene Barry's wife Betty and son Fred have bit parts in episodes of the original series. Gene's son Michael Dean Barry wrote a couple of episodes of the revival (including one co-written with his father) and also served as the series' Dialogue Coach.
  • Carolyn Jones, at the time of her appearances on the series (indeed she played Julie Greer in the pilot above), was married to series' producer Aaron Spelling.
    • Real-life husband and wife Howard Duff and Ida Lupino appear together in the episode "Who Killed Billy Jo?".

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