Adam-12 was a television program which ran from 1968 until 1975 on NBC. The program concentrated on the actions of a pair of uniformed Los Angeles police officers, of the Rampart Division, veteran Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and rookie Jim Reed (Kent McCord ), and their sergeant, played by William Boyett. The show was produced by Jack Webb.

In the pilot episode, Malloy is disillusioned at the death of his longtime friend and partner, who was killed trying to foil a robbery. Malloy considers resigning, when he is assigned a new partner: recruit and rookie Officer Reed. Reed has a lot of potential but is often too eager to perform his duties (especially homicide investigations). At the end of an episode, Reed screws up big time and Malloy yells at him, but then Malloy's one-time training officer reminds him he was once an eager young rookie. Malloy takes it on himself to mold Reed into one of Los Angeles' finest (which, as evidenced by later episodes, he does).

A 1970 episode detailed Malloy's earlier relationship with his former partner, the night he was killed and how he met Reed.

A typical episode involved Malloy and Reed as they went about their daily beat, with incidents ranging from humorous to deadly serious. Sometimes, a common incident or theme is explored throughout the episode and/or incidents therein; others focused on mistakes of rookie (and oftentimes, older) officers.

In later years, Reed was granted first-class officer status (and Malloy was also promoted), and episodes centered on their maturing skills and relationship.

The series was nominally considered a spin-off of Webb's Dragnet 1967 and Reed and Malloy appeared on numerous episodes of the parent program. The paramedics from another Webb creation, Emergency! frequently crossed over onto the show as well, although one episode of Emergency! involved a paramedic watching Adam-12 as a show.

A remake was attempted in 1989, starring Ethan Wayne , Peter Parros and Miguel Fernandes , but this version only ran 12 episodes.

The series title is a reference to the police code name for Malloy and Reed's police car unit.

Episodes from both productions have actually been used for training purposes by many police academies , especially when teaching recruits the correct handcuffing procedures, as the camera often zoomed in closely when the officers were in the act of handcuffing suspects.