Year:  1954
Rating: 7.0

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It was 11:30 p.m. on a warm Wednesday night. I sat down on a beige couch to watch Dragnet. At 11:32 in an empty field a man is shot in the head by a double barrel shotgun. Two times. Four shells. That is murder in my book. A messy one. A mob hit. Sgt. Joe Friday on a Thursday takes the case. Assisting him is Richard Boone and for a short time Dennis Weaver (both to have their own TV show later) and his longtime partner Ben Alexander. The list of suspects is as long as a rich man's front lawn but they all had one thing in common. They were criminals. Bad guys. And we were going to find the why and who. Because we are the LA Police Dept and we always get our man. We need to use a police woman to go undercover. I don't like using women. And I think she likes me. I don't like that either.


At 11:50 p.m. I needed a bathroom break. I put the film on pause. I kept it short. To the point. Sgt Friday waits for no man.

Dragnet is an iconic show in American TV annals with the tough talking rapid fire dialogue and documentary procedural feel with Jack Webb as Sgt Friday first starting in radio in 1949 and then simultaneously doing it on radio and TV from 1951 to 1959. His police partner for most of those years was Ben Alexander. Alexander had been a child actor way back into the silent period working on a couple D.W. Griffith films and then on All Quiet on the Western Front. He had pretty much retired when Webb asked him to come back. Dragnet reappeared on TV from 1967 - 1970 with Friday still a Sergeant. Webb had wanted Alexander back as well but he was busy on another TV show so he turned to his friend Harry Morgan to be Officer Bill Gannon.


Another Dragnet TV show was made after Webb had died starring Ed O'Neill as Joe Friday in 2003 and films were made in 1954 and 1969 (TV movie) and of course the parody from Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks in 1987.


This is a terrific film with dialogue that is beautifully written and spit out by Webb in his flat matter of fact tones. There is no mystery; just the process of proving their guilt and it moves along like a freight train to the yard. A few moments of violence that could not have been on TV at the time. Watching this made me want to track down all the old shows (I already have a bunch from the 1967 series) and see them.