TV dramas1970s1980s1990s2000s
General TV dramas in the eighties
Title Period
broadcast
No of
times
broadcast
Broadcasting
station
(network)
Outline
Peeling an Onion April – November 1981 31 Tokyo Broadcasting System Network Produced the manga which appeared in the drama.
Special Edo Period drama
Sabu and Ichi’s Detective Stories
July 31, 1981 – December 10, 1982 4 Fuji Television Network Special Edo Period drama based on Sabu and Ichi’s Detective Stories.
The Unsolved Case File; Detective Omiyasan August 2 – November 8, 1985 13 TV Asahi Network Detective story drama based on the famous Shotaro Ishinomori’s Detective Omiyasan.
Roppongi Dandy Detective Omiyasan October 9 – December 25, 1987 12 TV Asahi Network The second series of Detective Omiyasan was produced because the first series was popular.
■Comment■
The seventies and eighties were the golden days of live-action dramas; only a few dramas for adults were produced. The original manga, Sabu and Ichi’s Detective Stories, was used only very loosely as the base in Jutte Man’s Detective Stories produced in the seventies. On the other hand, the characters and stories of the TV drama series, Sabu and Ichi’s Detective Stories, produced in the eighties, were fairly faithfully copied from the original manga. The Unsolved Case File, Detective Omiyasan is a good quality drama where the characters are the same as in the original manga but the stories are rearranged to raise the tempo. Major changes were made in the second series, Roppongi Dandy Detective Omiyasan, where Omiyasan moves to an office in Roppongi in the center of Tokyo. Ken Ogata played the main character, and Nenji Kobayashi, who also appeared in Hotel, played the role of the detective, Otaki. The Omiyasan series was revived in 2002 after a break of fifteen years with Tsunehiko Watase in the role of Omiyasan. This new series was called Kyoto Kamogawa Higashi Police Station, The Unsolved Case File, Detective Omiyasan.