kosmasp And if you liked the movies, then you will love the TV show too. I'm actually pretty confused why this didn't work back then. I really loved the humor, the sight gags, the running gags (Cigarette?) and everything else or in between. Leslie Nielsen and everyone else are playing it not as if they were in a comedy, but as if they actually were serious and meant what they were doing.It's a high art to have a good comedy timing, that's why serious actors can make the best comedians. Leslie Nielsen tries to explain why he thinks the show didn't work on the DVD. There are also some other interesting special features that are worth your while. I haven't listened to the Audio Commentary yet, but you do wish the Zucker Brothers would come back and save us from the flood of unfunny spoof "comedies"!

hfan77 I remember watching Police Squad! when it first came on ABC in 1982 and I thought it was a very funny show, thanks to the many sight gags, non sequitors and scripts filled with word play. In one episode, there was a line where a man named Once was shot twice. But unfortunately, ABC canceled the show after only six episodes. I felt it deserved a much longer run but a network executive thought the show demanded too much attention of the viewer because of all the sight gags in each episode. One that I remember was in the opening where the episode's title was different from the one shown on the screen. Leslie Nielsen's portrayal of Frank Drebin was deadpan, yet very funny and his role was in the narrative style of Jack Webb of Dragnet. Alan North did well and Peter Lupus, in one of his few roles since Mission: Impossible wasn't bad as Norberg, But the one character that stood out was Johnny the Shoeshine Boy, played by William Duell. After giving advice to Drebin, there were cameos from Dick Clark, Dr. Joyce Brothers and then Dodger manager Tommy LaSorda. Even though Police Squad! had a short life on ABC, the Zucker Brothers didn't give up on the concept which turned out even more successful in the Naked Gun movie franchise. I'll close with a regular closing gag. Freeze the ending right here.

robertpforrest After reading over all these reviews I'm very surprised to see that no one has even once noted that this show was based on the 1957 to 1960 NBC cop show "M Squad" starring Lee Marvin, i read reviews comparing it to "Dragnet" and some of the Quinn Martin police shows, but if you watch M Squad you'll see it was based on it. In the late 1958 episodes of M Squad onwards, you'll see Lee Marvin who plays Lieutenant Detective Frank Ballinger get out of his car and then hes shot at,and he shoots back, the beginning of Police Squad is basically the same ( including the Jazz music) and then Lee Marvin narrates what goes on, (Im Lieutenant Detective Frank Ballinger,M Squad,a special department of the Chicago police) and in Police Squad Leslie Neilsen does the same (Im Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin, Police Squad, a special division of the Police Department) and so on, in one of the M Squad episodes there's even the Johnny the shoeshine guy character and in a M Squad episode entitled " More Deadly" there's a Police Squad episode entitled "A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise)" which is the same story!

The_Movie_Cat Watching Police Squad! again it's a staggering reminder that Leslie Neilson was once actually funny. After spending most of the 90s and the new millennium challenging Steve Martin for the title of "smug, unfunny grey-haired guy of the year" and appearing in dire spoofs with no real wit, this is a real eye opener.The Neilson that appears in these episodes isn't a self-conscious and self-amused comic actor repeating his own schtick for the payday, it's a genuinely inspired send up of stiff TV detectives. Note that when the franchise got resurrected for the lacklustre Naked Gun movies Drebin became stupider and Neilson more of a self-parody rather than a parody of cop show leads.As well as Neilson then there's also the superb co-stars, and great sight gags that never get old, like the difference in the episode titles from narration to on screen. However, while it's always been regarded as a major error on the part of the studio to cancel the show after four episodes, I wonder if this is actually the case? Watching the fifth and sixth, initially unscreened, episodes, then it's clear the well is running dry already. The final episode in particular is the weakest of the run, and the over-reliance on surrealism breaks up the narrative. Suddenly it's no longer a silly-yet-funny send up of Dragnet and M Squad and rather just a linked together series of extreme sight gags. Even the nature of the show itself means that the scope for the series is inherently limited. Still, funny while it lasted... particularly those first four.