Police Story (TV Series) No Margin for Error (1978) User Reviews

Three different police shootings...three different investigations.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 23 January 2024]

During season five of "Police Story", the format was changed a bit. Instead of showing a normal one-hour show, the stories were fleshed out more...stretching them to two hours and showing half of the show on subsequent weeks. Most of them are exceptionally good and work quite well, with the exception of "A Chance to Live"...meaning "No Margin for Error" was one of these good two-parters.

In this story, the LA police are having a bad time with public relations, as there are three separate incidents where a policeman shot and killed four different people. The show follows the investigations as well as the effects these shootings had in a few cases.

This is a very powerful episode and had all of them shown that the shootings were 100% justified, I think the show wouldn't have seemed all that realistic. Instead, one is VERY questionable and the other two (particularly the second one) were tough to avoid.

Overall, well written and well worth seeing...just as you'd expect with this series.

One of the best scripts in the series so far....

[searchanddestroy-1 · 23 August 2016]

I have already seen nearly all the episodes of this tremendous show from the seventies...Nearly. And this scheme of police officers accused of firing on suspects in an abusing way, this topic has already been talked about. Even in the WARNING SHOT scheme manner; do you remember, the story where the authorities could not find the weapon which the victim was supposed to fire at the cop with... But the novelty here is that you have different cases and policemen involved...and also even a security guard in a supermarket. I appreciated to have here a longer, twice longer, episode which permitted to spread the story and so take time to develop characters; one thing not always very easy on shorter lengths. I find here some new series kind of screen plays, with so many stories in parallel, which eventually collide. Yes, definitely one of the best and interesting episode of the series. You have here a top performance from Jim Farantino, especially in the scene just after he shot the Black suspect. Watch him, shaking on his legs with his face in sweat. And this topic about policemen firing on suspects, especially Black ones, is still forty years later a so hot matter. Look at the news pages...