The series was created by Joseph Wambaugh, an author and former Los Angeles police officer, and was praised for being one of the more realistic police series ever broadcast on television.

Despite being an anthology series with different characters and actors each episode, every installment featured a police officer protagonist working for a branch of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Scott Brady appeared in 16 episodes across the first three seasons as 'Vinnie', a retired cop who ran a bar for police officers and served as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the stories.

Vic Morrow played surveillance specialist Joe LaFrieda in the pilot episode 'Slow Boy' and returned in the first-season two-part episode 'Countdown'.

The anthology format allowed the show to serve as a testing ground for new characters, generating three spin-off series: Police Woman (from the episode 'The Gamble' starring Angie Dickinson), Joe Forrester (from 'The Return of Joe Forrester' starring Lloyd Bridges), and Man Undercover (from 'A Chance to Live' starring David Cassidy).

In later seasons, likely due to the high cost of maintaining a weekly anthology format, Police Story shifted to become a series of irregularly scheduled television films.

Two episodes, 'Requiem for an Informer' and 'Requiem for C.Z. Smith', each won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Episode in a Television Series.

The show won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1976 and was also nominated in 1974, 1975, and 1977.

In 1988, ABC aired five new Police Story TV films using scripts from the original run to fill programming gaps left by the ABC Mystery Movie during the writers' strike, starring Ken Olin, Robert Conrad, Jack Warden, and Lindsay Wagner.