As I was researching the career of James Earl Jones, I found out he had a detective series from 1990-91 called Gabriel’s Fire. The series has not been officially released on DVD but the pilot has been posted on YouTube.

Gabriel Bird (James Earl Jones) is an ex-cop serving a life sentence for murder. A friend is murdered in the prison yard and his friend’s lawyer Victoria Heller (Laila Robins) wants Bird’s help to find the killer, but Bird refuses to cooperate. She decides she wants his cooperation and so sets out to have him freed from prison and gets his two-decade-old murder conviction thrown out on a technicality.

If Heller getting Bird released from prison and getting a murder conviction thrown out without his cooperation is so uncomplicated (compared to actual cases) that it calls to mind comedian Ryan’s George’s catchphrase, “super easy, barely an inconvenience,” Bird’s reaction is much more grounded. While Heller had hoped for gratitude and for Gabriel to agree to help her investigation, what she gets is anger from a man who had long ago given up hope of getting out, and now has to cope with an unfamiliar world he isn’t ready for.

Jones is compelling throughout the episode, capturing the range of emotions of a man who has forgotten what it’s like to be on the outside and is unsure of his place of the world, plagued by his own feelings of guilt, and his fear of being abandoned and forgotten. He’s a man in his 50s who’s trying to figure out who he is. It’s a difficult process, but with some highlights. One of the best scenes is shortly after his release, when he orders a hot dog. It’s a simple scene that shows Jones’s superb talent.

Beyond establishing Bird as a character, and also establishing some plot points that could be addressed in the series proper (his missing ex-wife and daughter, and the police having it in for him), the episode spends most of its time with Bird in the stage of “rejecting the call to adventure,” a stage of the hero’s journey. When he does finally take the case, he manages to solve it within minutes of screen time. The pilot probably would have benefitted from being TV movie length. Still, for as quick as the resolution was, it was still dramatically satisfying and moved Bird’s character forward.

All in all, it was a fascinating hour of television that left me eager to view more. It’s easy to see that Jones won an Emmy for his work on the series. I really hope that rights holders will make this series available on streaming or DVD.

Rating: 4 out of 5