[1] It starred Michael Cole as Peter "Pete" Cochran, Clarence Williams III as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer.

[5] Each of these characters represented mainstream culture's principal fears regarding youth in the era:[6] long-haired rebel Pete Cochran (Michael Cole) was evicted from his wealthy parents' Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes (Clarence Williams III), who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the Watts riots, one of the longest and most violent riots in Los Angeles history; flower child Julie Barnes (Peggy Lipton), the "canary with a broken wing,"[7]: 64  was arrested for vagrancy after running away from her prostitute mother's San Francisco home; and Captain Adam Greer (Tige Andrews) was a tough but sympathetic mentor and father figure who convinced them to form the squad.

[1][8][9] The concept was to take three rebellious, disaffected young social outcasts and convince them to work as unarmed undercover detectives as an alternative to being incarcerated.

Examples included their infiltrations of a high school to solve a teacher's murder, of an underground newspaper to find a bomber, and of an acting class to look for a strangler who was preying on blonde actresses.

Groundbreaking in the realm of socially relevant drama,[2] it dealt with issues such as abortion, domestic violence, child abuse, illiteracy, slumlords, the anti-war movement, illegal immigration, police brutality, student protest, sex education, soldiers returning from Vietnam and PTSD, racism, euthanasia, and the illegal drug trade.

"[7]: 63 The show was loosely based on creator Bud "Buddy" Ruskin's experiences in the late 1950s as a squad leader for young undercover narcotics cops, though it took almost 10 years after he wrote a script for the idea to be green-lighted by ABC Television Studios.

"[8][13] The "kids" traveled in Pete's old station wagon, "Woody": a green woodie-style 1950 Mercury which became famous until it burned up in a fire after going over a cliff during a chase at the end of the second-season episode "The Death of Wild Bill Hannachek".

A TV reunion movie, The Return of the Mod Squad, was transmitted on ABC on May 18, 1979, featuring the entire original cast.

On August 20, 2013, it was announced that Visual Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series (under license from Paramount) and would release season 3 on DVD on September 24, 2013.

[18] The term "Mod Squad" had been introduced the previous year in Dragnet 1967's sixteenth installment, "The Big Kids," where it described a club of high schoolers who had to shoplift at least $20 to become members.