In the Heat of the Night (Seasons 1–8)

In the Heat of the Night (1988) is an American crime series drawn from the 1967 Oscar-winning film — watch online on iFILM. Carroll O'Connor plays Police Chief Bill Gillespie, a white Southern lawman whose instincts are solid and whose comfort zone is narrow. Howard Rollins is Virgil Tibbs, the Black detective from up north who tends to solve cases by methods nobody in Sparta, Mississippi expected or asked for.

The show ran on NBC from 1988 to 1992, then moved to CBS and continued until 1995 — eight seasons built on the friction between two men who couldn't be more different and couldn't afford to stop working together. O'Connor also directed several episodes himself, so the character he played and the tone of the show were shaped by the same hand. Stream all seasons of In the Heat of the Night online on iFILM.