Barney Miller had it's good points - and Det. Fish was one of them. Abe Vigoda is the perfect downtrodden "Sad Sack". The popularity of the character led some network genius (of which there were many in the 70's) to decide to spin him off into his own series. And "Fish" was it.
Fish and his wife Bernice (Florence Stanley - the female equivalent of Vigoda) were quite plausible as a long-married couple. The kicker was that they had a houseful of adopted children - that looked like the Rainbow Coalition. They could have named it "Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #644". The kids were "intensely annoying". The worst of the bunch was "Victor" - his character made me want to punch my TV set. The plots were the standard "kids get in trouble but family warmth solves it all in 30 minutes" dreck. In short, the long-suffering Fish character turned into a knowing father figure. It was just too far a departure, typical idiot TV Exec thinking - take a popular character, try to mine his popularity but forget completely about why he was popular in the first place.
As far as I can tell, everybody seemed relatively plausible, but it was just such a bad idea it got deservedly cancelled after one season. It sure isn't the worst sitcom ever (Heck, it's *a lot better* than "My Big Fat Greek Life" - but then again, most things are) but it's definitely towards the bottom of the list.
