Mod Squad actor Michael Coles dies aged 84 - also appeared in The Love Boat, Wonder Woman and Gunsmoke

Michael Cole was a mainstay of US TV for several years, appearing not just in The Mod Squad but in General Hospital, Gunsmoke, Wonder Woman, The Love Boat, ChiPs, Murder, She Wrote and the 1990 adaptation of Steven King’s horror novel IT, as we as The Bubble and Chuka.

His role as Pete Cochran, an undercover officer on The Mod Squad was his breakthrough, starring alongside Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III from 1968 to 1973.

Michael is survived by his third wife, Shelley Funes, who he married in 1996 and his children from his first 2 marriages.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1940, Cole was married three times and divorced twice. He had two children from his first marriage, and a daughter from the second marriage. Cole married Shelley Funes in 1996. Funes, by whom he is survived, helped stage an intervention for Cole's alcoholism, and he remained sober afterward.

He died at the Providence Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California.