David Gerber died about ten days ago. David Gerber was a Peabody Award and Emmy Award-winning TV producer, making over 50 TV movies (The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, Elvis and the Beauty Queen) and mini-series (George Washington, The Last of Pompeii) during his four-decade career.

He also produced lots of episodic television, both comedy (The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor, That’s My Mama) and drama (Cade’s County, The Quest, Medical Story).

But my favorite work of David Gerber’s were his mystery shows. He sure did a lot of them, with Eischeid, Walking Tall, Today’s FBI and Lady Blue being the least of them. In the Heat of the Night, starring Carroll O’Connor in a series adaptation of Norman Jewison’s classic film, ran for five seasons on NBC before jumping to CBS for three more.

The very best off David Gerber’s cop shows was Police Story. It was an anthology show, with stories focusing on patrolmen, detectives and all manner of law enforcement specialists within the LAPD. Police Story was unique in that it was created by an ex-LAPD cop-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh (The New Centurions, The Blue Knight). As such, the show was grounded in the harsh realities of police work and life on the street in a way that would pave the way for shows like Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and Homicide.

David Gerber’s Police Story is also significant in that it spawned three different spin-off series, including Joe Forrester and David Cassidy: Man Undercover and Police Woman, which made television history as the first successful cop show with a woman as the lead (Angie Dickinson). I’m sure David Gerber must have been proud of that.

(Note to Sony Pictures Television: Please crack open the old Columbia Pictures Television video storage closet and dust off all those Police Story masters. That’s a TV series that needs to be on DVD. Like now. Please.)

I never met Mr. Gerber. I did do some trailer and promo work on behalf of some of his productions and I once spent a week hanging out on one his sets, which was as relaxed and friendly as the man himself was supposed to be.

Many of his obits talk about David Gerber’s penchant for taking the time to talk to employees of every job description. As The Los Angeles Times reported in 2001, Gerber said that being nice was just good planning, offering that any employee he encountered as he went about his business “could be the next network president.”

That’s good planning from a good producer.