Beauty, Brains..., and a Badge: Get Christie Love!

Teresa Graves as Christie Love

Get Christie Love! only ran for one season, from September 11, 1974, to April 4, 1975, but it is remembered to this day. Much of this is because Get Christie Love! was a pioneering television show. Starring Teresa Graves as the police detective of the title,  Teresa Graves was only the third Black woman to play the lead in a non-stereotypical role on an American television show, after Diahann Carroll on Julia and Esther Rolle on Good Times, and the first Black woman to play the lead in a drama series. Get Christie Love! was also as close to the Blaxpolitation genre as television would get. 

Get Christie Love! starred Teresa Graves as Los Angeles police detective Christie Love. Christie specialized in undercover work, was skilled in karate, and even had a catchphrase, "You're under arrest, Sugar!" Her original boss on the show was Lieutenant Matt Reardon, played by Charles Cioffi. 

The origins of Get Christie Love! go back to a TV movie of the same name that aired on January 22, 1974. The TV movie was in turn based on the novel The Ledger by Dorothy Uhnak. Dorothy Uhnak had served on the New York City Transit Police for 14 years before becoming a writer. She wrote the non-fiction book Policewoman (1964), based on her law enforcement career, before writing her first novel, The Bait (1968). The Bait centered on a female NYPD police detective named Christie Opara and was later made into a 1973 TV movie of the same name starring Donna Mills as LAPD police detective Tracy Fleming. Her second novel, The Ledger, was published in 1970. 

Just as the 1973 TV movie The Bait diverged from the novel upon which it was based, so too did the TV movie Get Christie Love! diverge from the novel The Ledger. Namely, white NYPD police detective Christie Opara became Black LAPD police detective Christie Love. There can be no doubt that this was due to the popularity of such Blaxploitation movies of the time as Coffy (1973) starring Pam Grier and Cleopatra Jones (1973) starring Tamara Dobson. The TV movie Get Christie Love! resembled those movies insofar as it had a self-confident, hip Black female lead, although it lacked the violence, nudity, and sex of the Blaxploitation movies. It also had more of a sense of humour. 

The TV movie Get Christie Love! would receive good enough ratings that it lead to the weekly series, although there would be changes from the telefilm to the show. In fact, except for Teresa Graves, the cast of the TV show was almost entirely different from the movie. Christie's boss in the TV movie was Captain Casey Reardon, played by Harry Guardino, while her original boss on the TV show was Lieutenant Matt Reardon, played by Charles Cioffi. Only one other actor from the TV movie would return for the show, although he would play a completely different character. In the TV movie, Andy Romano played Sergeant Seymour Greenberg. On the TV show, he played Lieutenant Joe Caruso.

The TV movie Get Christie Love! was written by George Kirgo, whose credits at the time ranged from two episodes of My Mother the Car to Cannon. Credit for the TV show went to both George Kirgo and Peter Nelson. Peter Nelson had been a producer on the aforementioned TV movie The Bait and the TV movie Get Christie Love!. He later wrote several TV movies, including Two Kinds of Love in 1983 and Jonathan: The Boy No One Wanted in 1992. Get Christie Love! had an actual female, Black NTPD detective as its technical advisor in the form of Olga Ford. Olga Ford had joined the New York City Police Department in 1958. 

Get Christie Love! debuted on ABC on September 11, 1974. The show received mixed to negative reviews, although critics did praise Teresa Graves for her performance. The show also did not perform particularly well in the ratings, scheduled on Wednesday night at 10:00 Eastern/9:00 Central against Petrocelli on NBC. While Get Christie Love! did not perform well in the overall Nielsen ratings, according to a survey conducted by A.C. Nielsen in October and November 1974, it was the fourth most popular show among non-whites, after Good Times, Sanford and Son, and That's My Mama.

Production on Get Christie Love! would be complicated to a degree by Teresa Graves's religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness. Two days a week, shooting on the show had to promptly end at 5;00 PM so Miss Graves could attend Jehovah's Witness meetings. She also had an agreement with producers that Christie Love would never kill anyone, would never tell a direct lie, and there would never be any profanity in the scripts. Curiously, while Teresa Graves dictated that Christie Love would not lie, she still did undercover work.

There would be one major change made to Get Christie Love! during its run. After twelve episodes, Get Christie Love! went from December 11, 1974, to January 8, 1975. When it returned, Charles Cioffi as Lieutenant Reardon had been replaced by Jack Kelly as Captain Arthur Ryan. Regardless, overall ratings for Get Christie Love! did not improve, the show was ultimately cancelled after twenty-two episodes.

Having run one season, the TV series Get Christie Love! would not be released on home media, although the TV movie was released on VHS in 1991 and on DVD in 2001. Get Christie Love! aired on TV Land in 1997 and  on Centric in 2014. Similarly, while the TV movie is available on Tubi and other streaming services, the TV series does not appear to be.

There was a reboot produced by Courtney Kemp, who produced the series Power, and actor Vin Diesel in 2017. Titled Get Christie Love (no exclamation point), the pilot changed Christie Love from a police detective to a CIA agent (played by Kylie Bunbury). ABC did not pick it up as a series.

While Get Christie Love! did not get the best reviews upon its debut in 1974, the show remains well-remembered. And regardless of whether or not it was a good show, Get Christie Love! was a pioneering show. Before Get Christie Love!, there had only been a few American action shows with females leads, including Decoy starring Beverly Garland, Honey West starring Ann Francis, and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., starring Stefanie Powers. And it was only the third American TV show to star a Black Woman in a non-stereotypical role and the first in a drama. Get Christie Love! may not have gotten Blaxploitation right, but it left a lasting impact.