About Last Night If you’re fifty or older, you won’t need to be told the source of these half-recalled phrases: “The story you are about to see is true.” “This is the city.” “I carry a badge.” “My name’s Friday.” If you’re much younger than that, though, I doubt that you’ll remember Dragnet with any clarity. In the early days of network television, Dragnet was the most successful of all cops-and-robbers TV shows, as well as the most influential. It’s still influential—every episode of Law and Order bears its indelible stamp—but TV has since moved in flashier directions, and I doubt that the narrative conventions brought into being by Jack Webb, the director, producer, and star of Dragnet, will remain conventional for much longer.
Hat tip to Art Scott.
5 comments:
My parents - and I - never missed it.
I watched this every week as a kid. Rewatched a bunch recently. Doesn't hold up well. Defintely had a anti counter cultural vibe in the 60's. Hippies were usually 30some actors with bad wigs who constantly said groovy.
Ignore the '60s-'70s DRAGNET. I like it because I am such an admirer of Webb, but it's frequently painful. The black-and-white shows are often brilliant. I learned to write dialogue largely to listening to my father watching a midnight airing of BADGE 714 (the syndication title) in the next room while I was supposed to be asleep in bed. So few of the original shows are available -- a worse crime than most of those Friday and Smith solved. The radio shows, which are equally good if not better, are widely available and highly recommended.
I've been a Webb Head since I first saw the show when I was a boy. I like the sixties version, too. The anti-dope shows are over-the-top hilarious nowadays.
Following links...it seems that most of the original (1950s) episodes are lost...which is a tragedy.
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