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May 18, 2021 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Mike Kovac is a fast-talking, and even faster-thinking, freelance photographer in 1950s New York – his camera always on hand, Kovac always gets the shot, and often finds himself in hot water when he does so. Part newspaperman, part private investigator, Kovac uses the best tool in his arsenal to solve cases and put away criminals: his camera. As they say, the camera doesn’t lie.

Charles Bronson starred in this ABC crime series for two seasons starting in 1958, playing a former WWII combat photographer turned hotshot news cameraman. To this point, it was his biggest break—coming years before the war films and Westerns that made him a box office phenom overseas. For Bronson fans, this series is a fun opportunity to watch the young(ish) actor play one of the more fast-paced, emotionally varied roles in his career.

At a strict 25 minutes per episode, Man With A Camera moves at a quick clip – Mike Kovac is almost always dropped into the middle of his high-stakes mystery just minutes into the show. He’s most frequently assisted by his aged father (From the Earth to the Moon’s Ludwig Stossel), himself a skilled photographer who runs a camera shop on the Lower East Side. Modern viewers will probably be shocked by the many ways the show’s writers found to embroil Kovac in camera-based mysteries without the idea feeling like it’s passed its prime.

One of the first season’s best episodes, “Profile of a Killer,” has Kovac caught in the middle of a bank robbery turned deadly, when a gunman in a motorcycle helmet holds up the small-town bank where he’s been hired to photograph the president. Recognizing Kovac’s skills, the shooter takes him hostage and forces Kovac to accompany him on his crime spree—developing the photos in the mobile darkroom in the back of his station wagon, and then submitting them to his newspaper editor for front page publicity. The murderous robber is clearly unhinged, and a genuinely frightening character for Fifties television – one that Bronson has to frequently talk out of pulling the trigger. While stuck in this life-threatening predicament, Kovac cleverly finds a way to communicate with the police through his published photos. This is a pretty prime example of how Many With A Camera works – producing exciting mini-noirs week in and week out.

As with any network TV series where many directors and writers work on the same show, episode quality is up and down, but Man With A Camera establishes a pretty solid baseline where even the lesser shows are entertaining enough over their short runtimes. MPI Media’s complete series collection includes all 29 episodes of the original run at an audiovisual quality that’s better than the rips on YouTube, and thankfully includes accurate subtitles for those watching in noisy environments. At a less than $20 SRP, it’s an easy recommendation for Bronson fans – who will want to keep their eyes peeled for actors such as Harry Dean Stanton, Angie Dickinson, Yvonne Craig, Bill Erwin, and others in one-off roles.