The TV movie-of-the-week Future Cop airs on ABC, starring Ernest Borgnine (McHale’s Navy), Michael J. Shannon, and John Amos (Good Times), involving a veteran LAPD cop who is assigned a rookie trainee who turns out to be an android. The movie achieves a high enough rating to return as a short-lived series in 1977, though the show will also become the subject of a lawsuit over its premise. 
Veteran Los Angeles beat cops Cleaver and Bundy have been partners for 23 years, so it amuses Bundy – and annoys Cleaver – to discover that the LAPD commissioner is assigning Cleaver to train a rookie named Haven. But Haven’s first day on the mean streets is almost more than he can handle, as he and Cleaver find themselves pursuing car thieves running a chop shop with international customers, including one known cop killer. When Haven falls in the line of duty, Cleaver discovers the truth: Haven is a biosynthetic android, programmed to look and act as human as possible, being beta-tested as a policeman for the future. The commissioner assigned Haven to Cleaver knowing that the rookie would never pass muster with the grizzled, curmudgeonly veteran. Cleaver takes exception to this and takes on the repaired Haven as a partner again. While Cleaver could learn to use some of Haven’s logic in his police work, Haven has just as much to learn about human instinct.
written by Anthony Wilson
directed by Jud Taylor
music by Billy Goldenberg
Cast: Ernest Borgnine (Cleaver), Michael Shannon (Haven), John Amos (Bundy), John Larch (Forman), Herbert Nelson (Klausmeier), Ronnie Clark Edwards (Avery), James Luisi (Paterno), Stephen Pearlman (Dorfman), James Daughton (Young Rookie), Lorry Goldman (First Terrorist), Tony Burton (Second Terrorist), Nancy Belle Fuller (Cocktail Waitress), Ruth Manning (Della), Eddy C. Dyer (Hippie), Shirley O’Hara (Grandmother), Sandy Ward (Fowler), Sandy Sprung (Evans), Michael Francis Blake (Teenager), Bill Dearth (Fugitive), Michael Goodrow (First Kid), Eric Suter (Second Kid)
Notes: The mention that “1984 is only eight years away” places the story in the “present day” of its broadcast airate in 1976. Though aired under the title Future Cop, the DVD release indicates that the pilot episode was titled Cleaver & Haven.
LogBook entry by Earl Green