... and Dragnet shows how much they are changing. This show takes the same format as the original 1950s TV show. Two deadpan LA police detectives - Jack Webb's Joe Friday and Harry Morgan's Bill Gannon - investigate one crime per show. Friday is single and Gannon is married. With four kids. On a police detective's salary. Those were the days, just before The Great Inflation drove women into the workforce and the birthrate downward. But I digress.
When this show begins - 1967- women who work for the police department wear frilly clothes and are all secretaries and various office personnel. They are asked to get coffee for the detectives and it does not wind up in the lap of said detective. And for some reason any time a pretty woman appears, even if she is a suspect that va va va voom music plays on a nearby saxophone. By 1969 that music disappears and women become police officers and are addressed as peers. Oh, and suddenly there are black people in LA and on the force! Wherever did they come from? In the 1967 world of Dragnet's LA, the City of Angels is portrayed as white as rice.
So Dragnet becoming so socially conscious is part of what is killing the show by the end of the 60s. It spends way too much time talking about police/community relations and the issues of the day. Issues that are over 50 years old and have really dated the show. But there are good episodes even in the last season. Another thing - To listen to Joe Friday marijuana is as dangerous as heroin. That was a prevailing attitude at the time. Elizabeth Taylor was almost run out of town on a rail in 1969 for comparing weed (that's not what she called it) to alcohol.
I also want to commend the acting skills of Harry Morgan. Whatever role he was asked to play he became that person. In the 40s and early 50s he played vindictive hoods and whiney weaklings. He was the tolerant suburban husband Pete Porter in the 50s and 60s. He was that old horse soldier on MASH, and he is the loyal partner of Joe Friday here. I think he is very much underrated because his presence is so subtle.
This series is worth your time. Also go back and watch the original 50s Dragnet if you have the chance.
