Not long ago, I acquired one of those “Roku” boxes, which allows me to watch Netflix programs on my actual TV instead of my computer. To my own surprise, I find myself watching rather more old TV than movies. They’ve got the whole run of the immortal Rockford Files, for instance, which is wealth at my fingertips.
But another old series I checked out was one I only remember vaguely from my childhood – the original Dragnet with Jack Webb. I’ve found it surprisingly fascinating viewing.
Like most people of my generation, I remember the show chiefly in its later 1967-1970 revival version, with Harry Morgan as the sidekick. And I’ve been watching some of those, too – not on Netflix, but on the broadcast Antenna TV channel. They’re OK (though it’s always embarrassing to see a record of how we dressed in those days), but there’s a strange flatness about them (and not only in the acting). In a strange way, the later color version is less colorful than the earlier, black and white series. The original 1951-1959 Dragnet was genuine TV Noir.
The whole thing started as a radio series, and it was controversial from the start. It was darker and more realistic than the usual broadcast fare, and the TV version was the same in its generation. Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and his partner Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) dealt with garden variety robberies and homicides, of course (they unaccountably bounced around between squads on a weekly basis), but also with drug addiction, pornography, and child molestation. The spare dialogue, parodied to death in the years since, was actually an attempt to add realism. No dialogue in drama is ever really realistic, of course. Dragnet’s clipped sentences were an attempt to handle the realism problem in a fresh way, by dumping the literary pretensions we writers love so much; it was an attempt to sound more like real people doing a job.
Though the production values were superior in the second series, the original series leaves the viewer with a greater sense of immediacy, as if you’ve watched documentary footage. I think the plain mystery of black and white photography accounts for that. When you see a murder scene in color, and there isn’t much blood, some instinct tells you it’s been cleaned up. In black and white, who knows what colors make up those shadows?
Jack Webb got a reputation for stodgy conservatism during the second series, but the original series is far more ambivalent. Webb was never personally comfortable with guns, for instance, according to reports, and the original Joe Friday doesn’t lose any sleep over threats to the Second Amendment.
Netflix is only offering 28 episodes, but there are lots more out there, most of them available on DVD. Definitely worth watching.
For Christmas my wife gave me one of those collections of a Gazillion Mysteries on DVD from the $5 bin at Wally World. It had a full disk of 1950’s Dragnet. That alone would have made it worth the purchase price.
What struck me was how many of the bit players went on to become big stars. One episode had a teenage Leonard Nimoy as one of the thugs.
We haven’t had any broadcast TV in our house for over six years. I have found that old TV on DVD gives me the most minutes per dollar. It’s also given me the opportunity to corrupt my children with the shows of my youth. What other teenagers are familiar with The Partridge Family, McGuyver, The A-Team, Mission Impossible, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Underdog, Super Chicken, Due South, Pinky and the Brain, Columbo, & etc along with British shows like Good Neighbors and To the Manor Born?
Yes, Nimoy played an 18 year old army deserter. And I saw Fess Parker playing a young cop. The first episode in this collection featured Lee Marvin as the villain.
Do they have Maverick?
No, they don’t, Grim.
Too bad. I wouldn’t mind seeing that series again. The first season was surprisingly harsh at times, such that you could tell they were trying to do something serious. The playful aspects took time to emerge, even in the episodes with James Garner in the lead.
The series I want on DVD is the campy 60’s Batman with Adam West. Unfortunately, according to my research, there is a huge dispute over who owns the rights to it. So for now, they can license it for broadcast syndication, but no DVD release is forthcoming.
BTW – Why do I keep getting captcha’s that make it impossible to tell lower from uppercase. This is my third attempt to post this.
The 1951 series is a classic; far better than any TV I’ve seen currently. (I say this having taking your tip and watched a few of the episodes; I’ve been amazed at how good they are.)