AllMovie

Action star Doug McClure plays for light humor in Nightside. This turned out to be a wise move on McClure's part, because it's next to impossible to take this made-for-TV cop drama seriously. McClure and Michael Cornelison portray two graveyard-shift L.A. patrolmen who must deal with various crises of varying importance on the eve of the USC/UCLA football game. The bane of the cops' existence are the college students who insist upon pulling pregame pranks on their beat. Intended as the pilot for a series, Nightside was first shown on June 8, 1980, where it lost most of its audience to the competing Tony Awards telecast.