Dragnet 1967: Season 1 DVD Review:

It is very easy to see why Dragnet was remade as a film in 1987 starring Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. Very little needed to be changed, despite the fact that the film was a comedy and the show is serious as a heart attack. Writing credits were even given to the original creator, director, and star Jack Webb. This gives a pretty good idea of what the show is like. In 1967 things seem to be much more serious, or at least audiences were willing to accept the seriousness of situations more easily. The result watching the show now is somewhat similar to watching Reefer Madness. It is often humorously entertaining despite its attempt to make a serious point.

This half-hour cop show takes all of its stories from real-life crimes. These crimes are solved by Sergeant Joe Friday(Webb) and his partner Officer Bill Gannon(Harry Morgan), through the most straight-laced methods seen on any cop show. The show always starts with voiceover by Friday as he introduces us to his city, Los Angeles, and explains a specific problem he must deal with in each specific episode. All of these episodes are so incredibly serious in nature, regardless of the crime, there is a level of entertainment that is different now than it was probably intended to be when the show was originally aired.

Each of the episodes have a title that begins with “The Big”, the first being “The Big LSD” and the last of the seventeen episodes being “The Big Bullet”. There is also a bonus disc with one of the original radio shows, “The Big Cut”. The package is set up strange, with all but three episodes on one disc, despite the fact that it is a three-disc set. Fourteen episodes are crammed onto the first disc, using both sides, but the second disc is then left with only three episodes, and then the third disc is merely the one radio episode. It seems as though these seventeen twenty-minute shows could have been distributed more conservatively. If not, there could have been some extras on the disc with only three episodes.

This seems to be another one of the older shows that is rushed onto DVD with minimal work being done to it, simply because minimal interest is expected. The transfer is good however, and this is one area that it seems they spent some time polishing. The packaging also looks good, but the menus are bare and the discs are boring. More time could have been spent on the details for the few people who were waiting for the release of this show.



Ryan Izay