Jim Byrnes

Jim Byrnes plays Daniel Burroughs on Wiseguy (CBS, 1987–1990), the 1980s Cannell hour that drops an undercover into a new criminal world for multi-episode arcs and lets him rot there. Ken Wahl’s ache; guest villains who get actual novels; serialization on network CBS before prestige was a brand.

Burroughs is the OCB handler — a voice from the glass, a job that makes the infiltration look like work. Byrnes sells the office as a conscience with a file.

Wiseguy is 1980s CBS furniture with a pulse. Jim Byrnes’s Daniel Burroughs handled Wiseguy from the OCB side of the glass — Cannell’s multi-episode arcs dropping Vinnie Terranova into a new criminal world to rot, Ken Wahl’s undercover ache, guest villains who get actual novels. 1980s serialization on CBS before prestige was a brand. Around Daniel Burroughs, the catalog wants stance more than a plot card.

Come in at s01e01 — Pilot (1) unboxes Cannell's secret weapon: Wahl dropped into a criminal world to rot there, Banks barking from the OCB. s02e01 keeps the job from collapsing into a poster: Going Home is season two's homecoming: multi-episode arcs as the form, guest villains getting actual novels. s02e04 is the later stamp (Last of the True Believers is a believer-title hour inside an arc: undercover ache as craft, CBS serialization before prestige branding).

On TV Flash he is the glass. Watch the arcs as the point. We file Byrnes as 1980s crime-drama craft: the Burroughs who made an undercover hour photograph as a workplace, still the reason Wiseguy has a handler and not only a hero in deep.