Crime Story

Set in the early 1960s, the series depicted two men—Lt. Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) and mobster Ray Luca (Anthony Denison)—with an obsessive drive to destroy each other. As Luca started with street crime in Chicago, was "made" in the Chicago Outfit and then sent to Las Vegas to monitor their casinos, Torello pursued Luca as head of a special Organized Crime Strike Force. Torello, his friend Ted Kehoe, and Luca had grown up in Chicago's "The Patch" (Smith Park) neighborhood, also called "Little Italy" or "Little Sicily" and the haunt of the Forty-Two Gang.

The show premiered with a two-hour pilot—a film which had been exhibited theatrically—and was watched by over 30 million viewers. NBC scheduled the show to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. opposite ABC's Moonlighting on its fall schedule but moved it to Fridays at 10 p.m. in December. It moved to Tuesdays at 10 p.m. in fall 1987 before being cancelled after two seasons.

Crime Story attracted both acclaim and controversy for its serialized format, in which a continuing storyline was told over an entire season, rather than being episodic, as was the case with most shows at the time.