Shark Bytes

Overall, I like Dragnet, although the B&W episodes seem to fit around Joe Friday (Jack Webb) better. He's younger and better looking in those (of course) and the cool factor was certainly there. The 60s color episodes are just silly and dorky at times, although they can be interesting if for no other reason than they serve as a sort of history book for the late 60s.

The terrible acting was partly because Jack Webb was a tightwad as the show's producer and used cue cards for the actors to recite their lines. This method may have created mechanical acting, but it DID cut down on multiple takes and speed the production along on schedule and on or under budget.

Jack Webb also produced Adam-12 and Emergency!, which in my opinion were much better shows than Dragnet. The fact is that we wouldn't have those shows if it weren't for the success of Dragnet, so Dragnet served it's purpose if for no other reason than that.

Never jumped.

Horrible acting, but GREAT stories!

I've only seen a handful of the 1950s episodes...as said before, great film-noir type stuff.

As for the 60s episodes...still awesome. But why did they portray Gannon as a bit, er, slow?

Rock on Blue Boy, cream-cheese-garlic-and-peanut butter-on-pumpernickel,and Joe's red windbreaker!!!!

I can't decide which episode I like better- it's either the one where they bust the psychedelic guru guy (a loosely fictionalized version of Timothy Leary perhaps) or the one where Gannon and Friday sit on a community relations Q&A panel.

The community relations panel is awesome because the faux Black Panthers show up and Frday convinces them that the LAPD is really turning over a new leaf in race relations.

I grew up with the 60's version. The show was a great morality play. Jack Webb's speeches were the best. (The funniest caricature of Dragnet was the Bookman character on Seinfeld-- the "library cop.") Also, if people talk about a show four decades after its run, that certainly says a lot.

Jack Webb was an anachronism in his own time. The world around him was changing and he didn't like that. The show he created appealed primarily to 'establishment' conservatives who liked the Leave It To Beaver version of America and didn't want to face the reality of a multi-cultural country. He presented a show with a conservative agenda in the same way (and for many of the same reasons) that Norman Lear presented shows with a liberal agenda in the decades following the end of Dragnet. He had an axe to grind, and he did it with this show.

Personally, I think it's dreck, but for those more aligned with Webb's political views, many overlook the horrific acting and writing in favor of having a voice for their beliefs. And then they turn around and trash the Lear shows for being the exact same kind of political devices.

I have almost every episode of the color version on videotape. Sometimes when there's nothing on TV, I watch one of those episodes. Dragnet wasn't as violent as other crime shows. It was an honest look at the criminal justice system in the sixties.

I agree. It never JTS. And I agree with the poster that talked about children that really DID die in the bathtub. I am a nurse at a children's hospital. We see kids that DO die, in the swimming pool, in the bathtub, severe burns...because mom and dad weren't home, have been drinking, too busy partying, etc. Stupidity is stupidity, whether in 1967 or 2008...drugs and alcohol kill, and not just those consuming them.

You have to give a lot of credit to Jack Webb...he tried to do good with this show, and he certainly was a great friend of the police, who really needed a pat on the back during those years.

Never jumped - which is why it's a crime that Universal never put out more than that one DVD set from the first season. So many great episodes - the pot-head parents who let their daughter drown in the bathtub; the Timothy Leary prototype who spends the entire episode getting lectured by Joe and Bill; the kid who threatens a dance party with a hand grenade - will never see the light of DVD. Oh, well, at least they managed to get the surf Nazi and the career drunk-driver - and Joe's stern lectures to them - on disc.

Man, was that Joe Friday uptight or what?
Guy must have been constipated since birth!
Couldn't pull a pin out of his butt with a tractor!
Joe needed to fire up a doobie and relax!

They should have two separate entries for the '50s and '60s versions of the show, as they were from two different cultural universes. Joe Friday may not have changed in a decade, but the world around him did.

Jack Webb's naturalistic approach made for a tough, gritty, noir-like show in the '50s. It was still the postwar era, when moral standards were gradually loosening up (allowing for the somewhat surprising mention of child sexual abuse in one '50s episode), and Webb's determinism seemed the perfect dark-and-shadowy alternative to a TV landscape defined by Ozzie-and-Harriet sunniness.

By the jaded '60s, the same approach came off as high camp. It was no longer merely an alternative to popular culture; instead, it became anti-popular culture. Some of the '60s shows are so absurdly stylized and preachy, I can't help but wonder if Webb had his tongue firmly in cheek the entire time.

Both versions of the show are entertaining in their own ways. But for me, the "real" DRAGNET will always be the '50s version (or even its earlier radio incarnation).

I was about 17 and a real pot head when this show came out.
My friends and I thought it was hilarious - the cops in my small town were of exactly the same hard-hat, establishment mindset as the pathetically uptight Sgt. Friday!
Ever notice how Friday and Gannon are passed around from bureau to bureau? One week homicide, next week narcotis, etc and so forth. The captains must have found their level of incompetance appalling! Gotta wonder how Joe stayed on the force, much less made Sargeant!
On the other hand I'm insane and presently drunk.

I'd say the 60's version of Dragnet jumped after it's very first episode, the infamous "Blue Boy" LSD show.
With "Blue Boy", the show reached its peak of anti-hippie, pro-establishment surrealism.
Never again would it be able to provide the sustained hilarity this episode provoked.

Love the color series...it can be pretty corny and preachy, but refreshing in an odd way. A show promoting order and justice and simple, old-fashioned values during a time where drugs and riots were the order of the day...Boring, worn-out old Hippies hate it, so I guess I'll love it. Viva Joe Friday!

I must say the show never jumped. Sgt Joe Friday/Jack Webb (one and the same on TV and in reality for all practical purposes) was the classic WYSIWYG.

Dragnet never, ever jumped. Some favorite episodes:

The LSD Story, AKA Blue Boy. "You are pretty high and far out. What kind of kick are you on, son?"

The Fur Job. Bill Gannon learns all the ins and outs of being a furrier. Mostly this involves running his hand up and down the sleeve of a fur coat while murmuring, "stagey!"

The Big Neighbor. A very different episode, as the whole thing takes place at Bill's house where he's having a night of cards with Joe and other friends. Lots of character details in this one, such as Bill's favorite sandwich: pumpernickel bread with peanut butter, cream cheese, and crushed garlic!