Dean Hargrove

Dean Hargrove is a respected TV producer, screenwriter, and director best known for his work on mystery series and procedural dramas. Hargrove began his career as a scriptwriter on the popular 1960s espionage series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.." After a stint as a writer on the popular early 1970s sitcom "The Bob Newhart Show," for which he earned an Emmy nomination, Hargrove scripted episodes of the Peter Falk-starring crime drama "Columbo" and the Dennis Weaver police procedural "McCloud." Hargrove took a producing role on "Columbo" in its later seasons and continued working in that capacity on various projects in the 1980s and '90s, often in collaboration with executive producer Fred Silverman and writer Joel Steiger. Hargrove and his team became best known during the 1980s for developing popular mystery series that skewed to older audiences, including "Matlock," "Jake and the Fatman," and the gentler "Father Dowling Mysteries," based on the character created by novelist Ralph McInerny. Although the mystery genre began to wane in popularity in the '90s, Hargrove continued in the style with a series of movie specials for the Hallmark Channel.