In the Heat of the Night is an American police procedural crime drama television series loosely based on novel of the same title and the film of the same name. This series marked O'Connor's return to a series for the first time since the All in the Family spinoff Archie Bunker's Place ended in The show is a sequel to the film, whose events are said to have occurred "a few years ago" despite the show being set in the ss contemporary to its broadcast.
In the premiere episode, Philadelphia homicide detective and criminal profiler Virgil Tibbs Rollins has returned to his hometown of Sparta, Mississippi for his mother's funeral. He is persuaded by Mayor James Findlay to remain in Sparta as Chief of Detectives under Bill Gillespie O'Connor , the police chief with whom he fostered a relationship during a previous murder investigation in which he assisted.
Mayor Findlay himself has an ulterior motive for hiring Tibbs: he wants to have some kind of record on civil rights to run for Congress and hiring Tibbs to integrate the all-white Sparta police department would not only help to overcome the local squad's reputation of being racist and underskilled, but also benefits him. Although the team suffers friction over Tibbs' dissatisfaction with the department's limited resources and racial attitudes and Gillespie is annoyed at the detective's condescending suspicions about his hometown, the two men prove highly effective in enforcing the law.
At the beginning of the seventh season, Tibbs takes a leave of absence, moving to Jackson, Mississippi to complete his law degree on a compressed schedule.
When he returns to Sparta, he and his wife, Althea Anne Marie Johnson , have separated and they later divorce. She moves back to Philadelphia with their twins to be near her parents.
