Police Squad was a 30-minute parody of cop shows (M Squad seems to have been a particular target) put together by the guys who did Airplane! Like that movie, it's full of sight gags and rapid-fire jokes, some of which hit and some of which miss. It lasted only 6 episodes, but it inspired the Naked Gun movies, which were pretty successful. Leslie Nielsen was the star of both the movies and the TV series.A lot of the bits on the TV series make me laugh: the shine boy who has all the tips (and can even explain psychology to Dr. Joyce Brothers), the guest stars who get killed off in the opening sequence each week, the really dumb stuff like a tow truck shaped like a toe, and so on. The parody material works well, too, at least most of the time. I doubt that you'd want to watch all 6 shows in a row, but taken one at a time they're pretty funny stuff. If you've never seen the show, check it out.
5 comments:
The really weird thing is, whenever I see Leslie Nielson is something pre-"Airplane" (all those 1970s shows where he would be a guest star or a movie like "The Poseidon Adventure"), I keep waiting for him to drop the serious facade and say something along the lines of "And don't call me Shirley."
Shirley you jest.
Hey, I remember Leslie Nielsen when I was a kid in the Disney SWAMP FOX as Francis Marion, and in TAMMY AND THE BACHELOR.
Wikipedia says Jean Hersholt was his "half-uncle." That begs the question, what is a half-uncle?
I bought a DVD set of POLICE SQUAD a while ago. I'll have to find it and watch it again. With this Election, I need a laugh!
Wonderful series; as I remember, it was cancelled (by ABC, I think) because the suits thought viewers had to pay too much attention to it, which (they thought) wasn't a viable concept. My favorite episode is the one where Dick Clark gets his Eternal Youth face-cream from the shoeshine guy...
Best exchange ever:
- How did you get in here?
- I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith.
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