However, Yerkovich, a former Hill Street Blues producer, had already been at work on a lot of the concepts that would eventually become Miami Vice, including telling a story about a pair of Miami cops taking on the drug trade. Tartikoff, according to various accounts, really did write “MTV Cops” on a napkin.
The story is consistent with the 1980s ethos of basing popular TV shows and movies on a “high concept.” But it’s not really quite that simple.
Miami Vice has an iconic, foundational myth: famed NBC entertainment executive Brandon Tartikoff, in a brainstorming meeting with series co-creator Anthony Yerkovich at some point in the early 1980s, wrote a brief phrase on a napkin: “ MTV Cops.” Yerkovich read it, it formed the basis for the show, and the rest was history. To commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the film and celebrate the series that inspired it, here are 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Miami Vice. The film, the result of a troubled production and bad word of mouth ahead of its release, was a modest box office hit, and has been defended by a small but passionate coterie of critics and other fans. Years after Miami Vice went off the air, one of its executive producers, Michael Mann, directed a rebooted movie version, also called Miami Vice, which was released on July 28, 2006. Miami Vice also popularized the “five o’ clock shadow" beard stubble look, and featured Miami detectives in sunglasses years before Horacio Crane pulled it off on CSI: Miami. The characters favored pastel colors, white jackets over t-shirts, and other clothes from noted Italian designers. The series was very much a piece of its time, and it had a great influence on the fashion and culture of the late 1980s. Running five seasons on NBC, from 1984 to 1989, the show featured Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as Crockett and Tubbs, a pair of Miami-Dade detectives, often working undercover on drug cases. No TV series defined the 1980s quite like Miami Vice.