NBC TELEVISION CANCELS "IRONSIDE" REMAKE AFTER JUST 4 EPISODES.............

In 1967, one year after completing a highly successful nine season television run as the Earl Stanley Gardner character, lawyer "Perry Mason", on CBS Television, actor Raymond Burr resurfaced on the NBC Television network starring in the Collier Young created, Universal series, "Ironside", another ratings hit that ran for 195 episodes and 8 seasons.  An impeccable back to back accomplishment that matched the stature and respect Burr earned and deserved.  Thus when NBC TV announced in its spring roll out for the 2013-14, that it would revive, "Ironside", in a new series starring Blair Underwood, as a priest in a wheelchair who can empathize with the return of a detective drama about a policeman in a wheelchair, my openness to embracing the updated version, as much, perhaps more than the original nearly 40 years ago; was keen.  However, almost immediately began to wonder whether Underwood and a retooled series could measure up to Burr and the original series portrayal ?  My lifelong consistently accurate gut feeling told me not.  Underwood as, "Ironside", premiered on October 2, to far less than promising ratings, and two more episodes falling flat even more dismally, so badly that it becomes one of the first new tv series to be cancelled in this new season, and will end next Wednesday with a fourth and final airing.  Just as my gut feeling told me Blair Underwood was no match for the iconic Raymond Burr, who for now if not for all time will remain the most acceptable and memorable disabled Chief of Detectives Robert Ironside, a fictional character who displayed the capability a person in a wheelchair has to credibly carry out his or her work; more than one to three decades prior to the U.S. Bishops Pastoral Statement on Persons With Disabilities; and the Federal Government enacted Americans With Disabilities Act.............Fr.  Troy David