The Buddy Cop Show That Apparently Changed My Life

I always figured this whole crazy interest in Polaroid photography stems from playing around my dad’s camera and my grandmother’s, and later my own. Turns out I may have discovered the (extremely unlikely) root of it all.

In the fall of 1976, ABC aired a sitcom called Holmes & Yoyo. It was a type of series that no longer really exists: the funny detective show, in the vein of Barney Miller, if perhaps not as good. It was a buddy setup; Holmes was a plainclothes cop, and Yoyo (played by the excellent John Schuck) was a human-seeming robot whose electromechanical foibles provided much of the show’s humor. You pulled on his tie, for instance, to open his front panel and access his controls.

As a 7-year-old, I dug this show so much that I named my two goldfish Holmes and Yoyo. It lasted thirteen weeks, and I remember a little of it—not much, to be honest. But only today did I discover one detail, after my pal Josh revealed that he also remembered this series and we dialed up the opening credits on YouTube. And I think you can guess what I found. Watch here: