April 1, 1991: CBS' "Crimetime After Primetime"

The stars of Sweating Bullets: Carolyn Dunn as Sylvie Girard,

and Rob Stewart as Nick Slaughter.

April 1, 1991: Having failed in their challenge to NBC's The Tonight Show, ABC's Nightline, and the syndicated The Arsenio Hall Show, CBS junks The Pat Sajak Show, and premieres its late-night "Crimetime After Primetime" lineup, a copycat of NBC's 1970s Sunday-night anthologies (Columbo, McMillan & Wife, etc.).

The shows include:

* Monday night into Tuesday morning: Sweating Bullets, about a private detective who solves crimes in the Florida Keys with a beautiful tourist agent. It was filmed in Canada, where it was known as Tropical Heat. Series stars Rob Stewart and Carolyn Dunn were Canadian. It was filmed in Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

* Tuesday into Wednesday: Forever Knight. The only one of these series with a supernatural element, it starred Welsh actor Geraint Wyn Davis as Nick Knight, a medieval knight turned vampire, seeking redemption for centuries of preying on mortals by working with the Toronto police to solve murders.

Nick explains his need to work on the night shift by claiming to have a skin disorder which requires him to stay out of sunlight. Refusing to feed from humans, he survives by drinking bottled animal blood, something that most vampires find repulsive. The only human who knows his true nature is Dr. Natalie Lambert (Catherine Disher), a medical examiner, who does not like when he uses his special powers, as she believes it increases his need for blood.

* Wednesday into Thursday: Dangerous Curves, with 2 women, 1 white (Lise Cutter), 1 black (Michael Michele), working private security in Dallas, where it was filmed.

* Thursday into Friday: Silk Stalkings, a proto-Law & Order: SVU with a male-female detective team (Rob Estes and Mitzi Kapture) in Palm Beach, Florida, though it was filmed in San Diego. The tagline: "The rich are different. So are their cops." And:

* Friday into Saturday: Dark Justice, about Nicholas Marshall, a judge who becomes a vigilante by night, so that he can bring high-level offenders who use technicalities to "escape" the legal system to what he calls "dark justice." Marshall was played by Ramy Zada in the 1st season, and Bruce Abbott in the 2nd. Season 1 was filmed in Barcelona, Spain, for the tax breaks. But the staging of the 1992 Olympics there made filming Season 2 there impossible, so it was moved to Los Angeles.

The emphasis was on good-looking actors, not well-written scripts. The slogan for the entire late-night setup? "It's too hot to sleep." The viewing audience’s reaction? They gave it the cold shoulder.

By 1993, CBS got desperate for late-night success, threw a boatload of money at David Letterman, and put "Crimetime After Primetime" in the Daddy Bush-era pop-culture trash bin along with Vanilla Ice, Cop Rock and Crystal Pepsi.

*

April 1, 1991 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. No games were scheduled for the NBA. And the NHL was between the end of its regular season and the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. So there were no scores on this historic day.