You’ve seen the badass women of modern police procedurals, but long before Olivia Benson or Clarice Starling, there was a woman in a bell-bottomed suit leading the charge. Her name was Christie Love. Honestly, if you haven’t heard of the Get Christie Love tv show, you are missing out on one of the most fascinating "what if" stories in network history.
It was 1974. TV was largely a sea of white faces and stiff suits. Then came Teresa Graves.
Graves didn't just play a cop; she became an icon. She was a smooth-talking, high-kicking undercover detective for the LAPD who took down drug lords while looking like she stepped off a Vogue cover. She had this catchphrase that everyone at the time tried to mimic: "You’re under arrest, sugah!" It sounds cheesy now, sure. But back then? It was revolutionary.
Why Get Christie Love TV Show Was a Big Deal
Most people think Police Woman with Angie Dickinson was the first female-led cop show. Technically, Get Christie Love! beat her to the punch as a standalone movie-of-the-week by months. It also holds a much heavier crown. It was the first one-hour drama series in American history to star an African American woman in the title role. Think about that for a second. It took until 1974 for a Black woman to lead a network drama.
The show was basically "Blaxploitation-lite" for the small screen. It tried to capture the energy of movies like Cleopatra Jones or Coffy but for a family audience on ABC. The pilot movie was a massive hit. It pulled in huge numbers, proving that audiences were actually hungry for something different.
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But when the weekly series actually started? Things got weird.
The Jehovah’s Witness Conflict
Here is the part of the story most people get wrong. The show didn't just fail because of bad writing—though the writing was definitely hit-or-miss. The real shift happened inside the star herself. Between the filming of the pilot and the start of the series, Teresa Graves converted and became a devout Jehovah’s Witness.
This changed everything on set.
Graves began to have serious moral objections to the scripts. She refused to use guns. She didn't want to tell lies, even in character while undercover. She wouldn't do anything overtly sexual or even "too violent." If you are writing a gritty 70s cop show and your lead won't carry a weapon or lie to a suspect, you’ve got a problem. The producers had to constantly "sanitize" the show to keep their star comfortable.
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The Cast and the Struggles
The show had a solid rotation of talent, but it never quite felt stable. You had Charles Cioffi as Lieutenant Matt Reardon, but he didn't even last the whole season. He was eventually replaced by Jack Kelly (who most people knew from Maverick) as Captain Arthur Ryan.
The budget was also notoriously thin.
While other shows were doing massive car chases through the hills of San Francisco, the Get Christie Love tv show often looked like it was filmed on the same three backlot streets. You can see the struggle in the episodes. One week she’s posing as a prostitute to bust a ring, and the next, she’s in a surprisingly tame investigation that feels more like Murder, She Wrote than a 70s action flick.
What Really Happened with the Cancellation
ABC pulled the plug after just 22 episodes. Critics at the time claimed "America wasn't ready" for a Black female lead. While there was definitely some truth to the racial bias of 1970s viewership, the reality was more complex.
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- The Script Quality: Without the "edge" of the pilot, the episodes felt repetitive.
- The Sanitization: The lack of conflict made Christie Love feel less like a tough cop and more like a social worker with a badge.
- The Competition: It was up against heavy hitters that the network didn't think it could beat long-term.
It’s a shame, really. Teresa Graves was a powerhouse. Before this, she was a singer with the Doodletown Pipers and a regular on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. She had the charisma to be a superstar for decades, but her religious commitment eventually led her to leave Hollywood altogether. She basically vanished from the limelight by the early 80s.
How to Watch Get Christie Love Today
Finding the full series is surprisingly hard. It isn't sitting on Netflix or Max.
If you want to see what the hype was about, the 1974 pilot movie is your best bet. It pops up on budget DVD sets and occasionally streams on niche platforms like the Roku Channel or Tubi. There are some "grey market" DVD-R sets floating around eBay that contain the broadcast episodes, but the quality is usually pretty rough.
It’s a piece of "lost" television history that deserves a proper restoration. In 2018, there was talk about a reboot from Power producer Kemp Powers and starring Lana Wood, but it never made it past the development stage.
Actionable Next Steps for TV History Buffs
If you’re interested in the era of 70s "Girl Power" TV or Black cinema history, don't just stop at Christie Love. To get the full picture of how she changed the game, you should do the following:
- Watch the original pilot movie: Seek out the 74-minute television film. It’s significantly grittier and more representative of what the show could have been than the sanitized weekly episodes.
- Compare it to Police Woman: Watch an episode of Police Woman (1974) starring Angie Dickinson immediately after. You’ll see the stark difference in how the networks treated white leads versus Black leads in the exact same year.
- Research Dorothy Uhnak: The show was actually based on a novel called The Ledger by Dorothy Uhnak, a real-life NYPD detective. In the book, the character (Christie Opara) was white. The decision to change the character's race for the show was a massive, intentional move by the producers to capitalize on the Blaxploitation trend.
- Check out Teresa Graves' music: Before she was a cop, she was a phenomenal singer. Her work with the Doodletown Pipers shows off a completely different side of her talent.
The Get Christie Love tv show might have been a short-lived experiment, but it cracked a door open that stayed open. Every time you see a woman of color leading a major network drama today, there’s a little bit of Teresa Graves’ DNA in that performance. She did it first, she did it in heels, and she did it while telling the bad guys they were under arrest, sugah.