In the Heat of the Night is an American police procedural crime drama television series loosely based on 1965 novel of the same title and the 1967 film of the same name. The TV series starred Carroll O'Connor as police chief Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as police detective Virgil Tibbs. The series was broadcast on NBC from March 6, 1988 to May 19, 1992 before moving to CBS, where it aired from October 28, 1992 to May 16, 1995. Its executive producers were O'Connor, Fred Silverman and Juanita Bartlett. This series marked O'Connor's return to a series for the first time since the All in the Family spinoff Archie Bunker's Place ended in 1983.

Plot

The show is a sequel to the 1967 film, whose events are said to have occurred "a few years ago" despite the show being set in the 1980s-1990s contemporary to its broadcast. In the premiere episode, Philadelphia homicide detective and criminal profiler Virgil Tibbs (Rollins) has returned to his hometown of Sparta, Mississippi for his mother's funeral. He is persuaded by Mayor James Findlay to remain in Sparta as Chief of Detectives under Bill Gillespie (O'Connor), the police chief with whom he fostered a relationship during a previous murder investigation in which he assisted. Mayor Findlay himself has an ulterior motive for hiring Tibbs: he wants to have some kind of record on civil rights to run for Congress and hiring Tibbs to integrate the all-white Sparta police department would not only help to overcome the local squad's reputation of being racist and underskilled, but also benefits him. Although the team suffers friction over Tibbs' dissatisfaction with the department's limited resources and racial attitudes and Gillespie is annoyed at the detective's condescending suspicions about his hometown, the two men prove highly effective in enforcing the law. At the beginning of the seventh season, Tibbs takes a leave of absence, moving to Jackson, Mississippi to complete his law degree on a compressed schedule. Upon his return to Sparta, he and his wife, Althea (Anne Marie Johnson), have separated and they later divorce. She moves back to Philadelphia with their twins to be near her parents. Through the hard work of Sparta Councilwoman Harriet DeLong (Denise Nicholas), Tibbs is able to retire, although two months shy of the qualifying period and keep his city pension. He begins practicing law upon accepting a position in Ben Taylor's law office. Rollins' final appearance on the series was February 2, 1994. Meanwhile, the Sparta city council dismisses Gillespie as chief of police, selecting Hampton Forbes (Carl Weathers) as his replacement and making him the town's first African American to serve in that position. Gillespie finds a new post of equivalent authority as county sheriff. The two senior police officials find that they get along excellently, in both professional and personal spheres.