The TV legacy of Louis Gossett Jr.
Q: I was sorry to see that Louis Gossett Jr. died. How many TV series did he do? – Steve Eagle, Johnstown, Pa. A: He did quite a bit of guest-star work throughout the 1960s and 1970s, encompassing shows from “The Partridge Family” and “Good Times” to “The Rockford Files” and “The Six Million Dollar Man,” before scoring huge attention — and a Primetime Emmy Award — for ABC’s 1977 television milestone “Roots,” which was a limited series (or, in the terminology of that time, a “miniseries”), but a series nonetheless.
After that, Gossett spent a season as the mentor to the title character in NBC’s “The Powers of Matthew Star” (1982-83), then played a crime-solving anthropology professor in five “Gideon Oliver” films for an “ABC Mystery Movie” anthology in 1989. He went back to the miniseries format in CBS’s “Return to Lonesome Dove” in 1993 and did two “Ray Alexander” mystery movies for NBC in the mid-1990s, then recurred on the CBS sci-fi show “Extant” in 2014-15 and on “Stargate SG-1” in 2005-06, when it was on what now is Syfy.
Following another recurring role in the third and final season of Sundance TV’s “Hap and Leonard” (2018), Gossett had his last continuing television part in HBO’s “Watchmen” (2019), as the ex-superhero grandfather of the lead female character who was played by Regina King (“Shirley,” 2024).
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