Shaft (1973)

Action · Crime · Drama

Shaft is a series of TV movies that aired along with Hawkins during 1973-74 television season on The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies. The series was based on three films beginning with Shaft, and starring Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft. Because it was aired on over-the-air television, CBS felt that the character needed to be toned down. Now instead of working against the police, he worked with them. The series rotated with Hawkins starring James Stewart as a country lawyer who investigates his cases, similarly to his earlier film Anatomy of a Murder. Contemporary analysts suggested that since the two shows appealed to vastly different audience bases, alternating them only served to confuse fans of both series, giving neither one the time to build up a large viewership.

IMDb rating: 6.5 (543 votes)
Episode average: 6.6 +0.1 vs IMDb
Seasons: 1
Language: EN
Type: TV series

Rating trend: this show's seasons do not settle into one shape. Rising Shows ranks whole shows by the shape of their rating trend rather than one average score, which is how you find a show that got better rather than a show that started well.

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Ratings refreshed Oct 3, 2026 · 1 season indexed

Cast

Seasons

Season 1 (1973)

6.63 avg 7 episodes 7.3 → 6.9 73 min avg

Season 1 episodes - IMDb ratings
#	Title	Rating	Votes
1	The Enforcers	7.3	46
2	The Killing	6.2	47
3	Hit-Run	6.4	34
4	The Kidnapping	7.1	42
5	Cop Killer	6.4	37
6	The Capricorn Murders	6.1	32
7	The Murder Machine	6.9	32