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TCA press tour: Underwood’s ‘Ironside’ can have sex (it’s how he rolls)

Blair Underwood stars in the reboot of "Ironside."
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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“Ironside” was one of TV’s most distinctive series of the late 1960s and ‘70s. The drama starred Raymond Burr as a San Francisco police chief who is forced to retire from the department when a sniper’s bullet bullet paralyzes him from the waist down, causing him to use a wheelchair.

With the help of a team of assistants, Ironside used his smarts to solve crimes.

NBC’s new reboot of “Ironside” has a few similarities: The main character is wounded by a shooter and has to use a wheelchair, and he solves crimes with the help of a young team. The drama stars Blair Underwood in the title role.

VIDEO: Summer 2013 TV preview

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But this is not your father’s “Ironside.” For one, Burr’s Ironside had a driver and assistant who pushed his wheelchair. In the new version, Ironside’s wheelchair doesn’t even have handles. He gets around on his own power.

“He’s entirely self-sufficient,” said Underwood, who said he had a technical advisor who was paralyzed in a ski accident many years ago and is confined to a wheelchair. “That was very important.”

Even more jarring to those who remember the original, this “Ironside” is a bit of a ladies’ man. The pilot shows him getting very close in the wheelchair with a trainer he has met during an investigation.

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Said Underwood, “Every spinal cord injury is different.” He referenced the documentary “Murderball,” about quadriplegic athletes who play wheelchair rugby. “Everyone in that movie has an able-bodied girlfriend.”

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