James Garner in the ‘Rockford Files’ was an irresistible force on our TV screens

YOU can keep Game of Thrones. The Wire? A diversion, no more. The same for Breaking Bad. For this observer, those TV series come a distant second to The Rockford Files, whose star, James Garner, passed away over the weekend at the age of 86.
Garner, easy-going, handsome, irresistible, was The Rockford Files’ USP, long before that term entered common usage. He had had success earlier in his career as an easy-going, handsome, irresistible gambler in TV’s Maverick, and late in his career he was involved in a maudlin atrocity, The Notebook, which deserves a spell in the dock at a human rights courtroom in The Hague.