Man With A Camera

Ed here: I watched an episode of this last night because I had fond memories of it. Always a dicey undertaking. But it held up pretty well. Bronson broke the mold as far as TV detectives went. He wasn't all shiny and neat.

From Wikipedia: Man with a Camera is a 1950s television crime drama starring Charles Bronson.

Throughout the 1950s, Charles Bronson spent most of his early acting career in TV-shows as well as small parts in films, until he landed the lead in the ABC series The Man with a Camera.

In the series Bronson portrayed Mike Kovac, a former World War II combat photographer freelancing in New York City, who specialized in getting the photographs that other lensmen could not. He usually assisted newspapers, insurance companies, the police and private individuals, all of whom wanted a filmed record of an event.
By often acting as a private eye, Kovac gets himself into plenty of troubles involving criminals of every kind, helping with cases the police could not handle.

Besides an array of cameras for normal use, for surreptitious work Kovac employed cameras hidden in a radio, cigarette lighter and even his necktie. He also had a phone in his car, and a portable darkroom in the trunk where he could develop his negatives on the spot.

Kovac's police liaison was Lieutenant Donovan (James Flavin), though he frequently came for advice from Anton Kovac (Ludwig Stössel), his immigrant father.