Chiefs (miniseries)
1983 television miniseries
Chiefs is a 1983 American television miniseries based upon the novel of the same name by Stuart Woods. It was first broadcast on CBS over three nights in November 1983. It was directed by Jerry London, and stars Charlton Heston, Keith Carradine, Stephen Collins, Danny Glover, Brad Davis, Paul Sorvino, Lane Smith, Paula Kelly, Wayne Rogers, and Billy Dee Williams. It received three Emmy Award nominations and one Eddie Award nomination.
The miniseries is set in the fictional town of Delano, Georgia, loosely modeled after Manchester, Georgia, situated at the base of Pine Mountain, itself based on the Pine Mountain Range overlooking Manchester.
Plot
Three generations of Delano police chiefs—Will Henry Lee, Sonny Butts, and Tyler Watts—investigate a series of murders. In 1924 town patriarch Hugh Holmes, whose character intermittently narrates the story, decides the town has grown large enough to require a jail and a full-time police officer. The town appoints farmer Will Lee its first police chief; despite his lack of law-enforcement experience, Lee becomes known as fair-minded and effective. Lee's farm had employed the Coles, a black family, who regard with trepidation their new and less benevolent employer, Ku Klux Klan member Hoss Spence.
Chief Lee investigates the death of a young boy who fell down a ravine while apparently fleeing a sexual attack.
“Chiefs (miniseries)” enters the record as 1983 television miniseries. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chiefs, miniseries and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1765081. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chiefs (miniseries)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.