From the Introduction:
Mean Streets and Mean Villains is inspired by the glamorous police and detective series of the ‘70s and ‘80s such as Starsky and Hutch, Miami Vice, Police Woman, Kojak, Hawaii 5-0, Cannon, The Rockford Files, Hunter, The Avengers and New Avengers, and The Professionals; or films like Dragnet, Beverley Hills Cop and the Dirty Harry series. The list is endless, there are many more than I’ve listed here; and I’m sure you could add a lot that I haven’t even heard of. More recent television shows, such as Sledgehammer and Funky Squad, capture the themes of the game perfectly, because it is intended as a gentle parody.
Mean Streets and Mean Villains is designed to allow you to run games in a similar vein: not large campaigns, but small, one-off games as a way of injecting a little light humour between your normal gaming sessions, or when half your players don’t turn up. Adventures (or Episodes as they are called in this game) are targeted at one, two or (very occasionally) three or more players.