User reviews

This was a great show. Unfortunately, it does appear a little dated today--almost 40 years later. Also, too many people have discounted this show because they have been warped by seeing crap like the DRAGNET movie starring Dan Aykroyd. For the time it was made, this was one of the very best cop shows on TV--if not the very best.

Unlike the earlier incarnation of the TV show that Jack Webb produced and starred in from the 1950s, this version is less violent and more subdued--showing a lot of the more mundane aspects of police work. And, the show was meant to be more entertainment AND public service work to build support for our cops. The earlier show was more important just for entertainment. Plus, in this series, Detective Smith has been replaced by Detective Gannon (played by Harry Morgan).

So why did I like it so much? Well, aside from its realism, I think that Jack Webb's interpretation of Joe Friday was probably the coolest square guy I have ever seen. Yes, he was rigid and by-the-book, but he had the absolute best lines in TV history. For every scumbag he had the greatest snappy comebacks--sometimes making the entire episode worth while.

While not every episode clicked (some were too preachy or dull), there were so many great episodes. For example, the several episodes starring Burt Mustin, the Blue Boy episode, the white supremacist (with perhaps the greatest Friday one-liner), the guy who stole superhero memorabilia and thought HE was a superhero, etc. are all wonderful examples of fantastic TV. If you see one episode and it doesn't win you over, try a few more--I can guarantee if you give it a fair try you'll be hooked.

By the way, the best of the four seasons is the first. Part-way through season 2 and continuing into the series the shows often were more desk-bound and often concerned more mundane things like public relations and the like. While not bad, these later episodes were a bit claustrophobic and lacked the zip of the earlier ones.

PS--while the style is VERY different, try to find a copy of the DRAGNET movie Jack Webb made in the 1950s. It's one of the best Film Noir movies and is a very tough and gritty film--and VERY different from DRAGNET 1967.

... 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.

OK, maybe this isn't the best show in television history, but it is a good one to watch. Even though I have seen every episode many times, I never get tired of watching it. After viewing the show all these years, it is fun to try and spot which of the many recurring actors and actresses appear in that episode--like the late Virginia Gregg!! She was a hoot to watch in many of the episodes.

It is also fun to see someone portray a cop or good guy in one episode and then play a villian in another episode. Now, even though this doesn't have anything to deal directly with any episode of Dragnet, I think that it was really nice how Jack Webb hired his ex-wife's husband in a few episodes and later was the producer of "Emergency" with his ex-wife Julie London and her husband Bobby Troup. I doubt very seriously that many people in Hollywood would be so mature and do that today.

Visionary television Renaissance Man, Jack Webb, succeeded in bringing to the small screen a police drama of unprecedented power and stunning realism. Webb broke new ground continually with his use of cameras and his scripts were both timely and cutting edge. During the incredibly turbulent and chaotic years of revolt, immorality, and rampant drug use, Dragnet served as an anchor, a cultural bulwark for a society under siege. A society threatened by lawlessness and vulgarity was centered by what Jack Webb offered in the format of a half-hour of sanity during insane times. With this production, the 1960's can now be viewed with a solid perspective that brings viewers the viewpoint of that Silent Majority who trusted the police to protect their way of life from drug crazed criminals masquerading as cultural revolutionaries. Dragnet and Adam-12 are more than television shows. They were important contributions to the American republic and moral compasses for a populace teetering on the edge of madness.

I love this show! It's dated, the humor is old, but who cares. The crimes committed are interesting, and Jack Webb is idealistic as a no-nonsense cop. I haven't seen the show in years though, because Nick at Nite doesn't run it anymore and I don't get TV Land (that sucks!)

*****Five out of Ten Stars*****

Producer Jack Webb was known as an extremely economical TV producer: His Mark VII productions routinely used minimal sets, even more minimal wardrobes (Friday and Gannon seem to wear the same suits over entire seasons, which minimized continuity issues) and maintained a relatively tight-knit stock company that consisted of scale-paid regulars who routinely appeared as irate crime victims, policewomen, miscreants and clueless parents of misguided youth. Which is pretty evident if you follow the show consistently. In fact I find it comical, in an annoying way, that some actors clearly play good characters in some episodes and criminals in other episodes.

In real life Jack Webb was a hard worker that had a great sense of humor, loved to drink, and smoke cigarettes. That being said, "Dragnet" is over-rated. PLEASE let me explain: Webb's decision to have actors read off cue cards and read their lines monotone isn't my idea of a method in making a TV show more realistic; which was Webb's reasoning behind this production decision. Also, the whole idea of these stories being real life depictions of actual events is somewhat misleading. These stories were BASED on real cases. Liberties were clearly taken in the writing department in an effort to make the stories more palatable to Webb's goals and the main TV viewing audience.

So, don't' get me wrong; I like watching Dragnet. Webb's introductory history lessons about Los Angeles are really quite enjoyable at the beginning of each episode. It's also great to see the location shots filmed in the Los Angeles area at that time in the late 60s: It's classic America before LA turned into the sess-pit it is now. Putting it into perspective, "Dragnet" has some endearing qualities, but Jack Webb's cue card production style gets an F from me.

This show was solid, hard-hitting, and real.

I read the autobiography of Thomas Redden (I am pretty sure that was his name), the L.A. Chief Of Police when Draget was on the air. He said that Jack Webb invited him to the set one day. Webb asked Redden to let him know if anything was amiss. Redden said that he was astounded at what he saw. The set he mentioned was the set where Friday and Gannon sat at the tables, discussing cases, going over evidence, etc. Redden said that the set was 100% accurate, down to the location of the ash trays on the tables.

Jack Webb was a stickler for accuracy. That shines through in the shows. From what I've heard, the procedures shown in Dragnet are still pretty accurate, and were very accurate for those days. Dragnet hold up well, even though it's been almost 40 years since Jack Webb last appeared as Joe Friday.

In the wake of the Los Angeles riots the LAPD decided it needed to refurbish its image. So what better way than to revive the show that gave the Los Angeles Police Department its image of the Fifties. This time it was even in color.

With a few more wrinkles on his face Jack Webb returned to the police beat as the no nonsense staccato speaking Sergeant Joe Friday LAPD's roving detective. Every week Friday and his new partner were assigned to a different squad be it robbery, bunco, homicide, juvenile, narcotics. In that way Dragnet 1967 could have several different kinds of stories showing the efficiency of the LAPD in all departments.

Webb's partner from the first Dragnet in the Fifties Ben Alexander was in another TV series at the time, Felony Squad. So Harry Morgan became his new partner Bill Gannon who occasionally said some funny things.

In both shows I always liked the scenes of alone time in the squad car with Friday and Gannon. Morgan was always talking about his wife and family and various domestic concerns he had. Webb was a good listener but in two incarnations of Dragnet we never got a clue about Joe Friday's personal life.

Fans who liked the show in the Fifties still liked the Sixties versions. But as one wise philosopher of the times put it "the times they are a changing". Patented nostrums of the Eisenhower era just did not fly well in a lot of the episodes.

Still it was the Dragnet that the fans knew and loved.

Somehow reading a lot of these comments about other classic shows like "Dragnet 1967 - 1970" can make me appreciate growing up during that time frame when shows made so much sense and taught a lesson such as on so many occasions that this version of Dragnet did. I guess I would have to rate a favorite episode as the only one where Joe himself had to be tried for shooting a would-be criminal in self-defense at I think it was a laundromat. It showed that NO ONE can be above the law, not even the cops themselves. It's a pity that the first season was not a big seller on DVD - I have checked with tvondvd.com and apparently there are no plans to release the remaining two seasons for that very reason...since now the show is only shown on one relatively obscure cable network that not all systems have, let's increase the sales of season 1 - I own a copy and enjoyed watching it....

One of the sadder ironies of Dragnet is that OJ Simpson made one of his first TV appearances on Dragnet playing a rookie cop! Another sad irony is that Jack Webb died from a combination of alcohol and tobacco cigarette use, drugs that are completely legal in our society. While one of the 1950's episodes dealt with the tragedy of driving under the influence, the 1960's series did not. Also, I believe that one of the sponsors of the 1950's Dragnet series was Chesterfield cigarettes. Jack Webb was a true TV production pioneer. May Dragnet live forever. A true TV CLASSIC I found out that Jack Webb graduated from Belmont High School in Los Angeles as class president. He was half Jewish and half Catholic. He once submitted drawings to Walt Disney but some how did not include a return address but later got to know Walt Disney. Every letter that Mark VII Productions received about the program concerning suggestions was taken into account.

Viewers used to series today such as Law & Order and CSI probably won't enjoy this classic show from the 1960s, but if you need a break from gritty realism and hard-boiled dramas this is a great show to watch. The 60s version of Dragnet was somewhat like the original show in the 1950s, but dealt with the topics of the day like drug use, race relations, student unrest, etc. Jack Webb plays Joe Friday to the hilt again, maybe a little less authoritarian that back in the 1950s version but still quite a memorable character nonetheless. By contrast, Harry Morgan plays Friday's partner, Officer Bill Gannon, as just a regular guy who happens to be a cop. You get the feeling that Gannon could easily move to some other career if he wanted to without much difficulty, while Friday seems to be interested only in police work; it's hard to imagine Joe Friday taking a day off, let alone do anything like go to the movies, visit a museum, etc. The supporting characters come and go regularly, as others have mentioned, but do a good job with their limited roles. Also, the crimes that Friday and Gannon investigate are quite interesting, and most episodes are well written. There will always probably be a debate as to whether the 50s or 60s version of Dragnet was best, but either way this series has held up well and is still a lot of fun to watch today.

As for its precessdor of one of the most influential cop shows of all time,Dragnet has stood the test of time. Jack Webb was a master at what he did to keep the audience on the edge of their seats with harrowing stories that came from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. The stories and events that the show had were from actual files and cases that were brought to life by the cops and detectives who were out there on the beat everyday in the silmy and gritty streets of one of the most roughest and dangerous cities in America,and it shows this in grand detail.

Television viewing at its very finest.

On January 12,1967,Jack Webb introduced audiences to a new format of the show called,"Dragnet:1967"(which was basically the precessdor to the Dragnet show of the 1950's revised after Jack Webb yanked it off the air after a eight year hiatus),but this time around was in color)which originally ran on NBC's Thursday night schedule in Prime Time for three seasons and 98 Technicolor episodes airing from January 12,1967 to the final episode of the series on April 16,1970(when creator-producer- director and actor Jack Webb voluntarily pull the plug on this series after it received good ratings). "Dragnet" was produced under Jack Webb's production company Mark VII Limited and Universal Television.

Here is something audiences never suspected which was totally new at the time...a vision of Los Angeles that has never been seen before and gives an exquistite detail of some of cities most famous places as well as its gorgeous scenery shots photographed. It also gave audiences a realistic view of Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 1960's and early-1970's where in most episodes dealt with the social injustices that occur and the crime epidemic that was out of control as well.

Here,Jack Webb is still Officer Joe Friday always going by the facts and always preaches what he goes by and also on this new venture is his new partner Bill Gannon(played by Harry Morgan,who also was Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H)who was his backup on police patrol when they were in some sticky situations,but always come out of them in some of the episodes.

This older version maybe campy today,but back in 1967 it packed an emotional wallop that left viewers on the edge of their seats and it was very controversial in handling some of the subject matter.

Some of the episodes I managed to find or keep,but these episodes were some of the best from the first two seasons with some of them dealing with the subject of race relations,police corruption,armed robbery and kidnapping,teen runaways,juvenile delinquency,civil rights,and the deadly effects of kids using LSD and drugs.

The most harrowing episode was the one were the parents were high on marijuana and LSD and they left a little girl drowning in the bathtub as of the result. The other was one where Friday and Gannon stumbled upon a young man near a park chewing the bark off a tree high on LSD and pills. The sad part is that his parents didn't know that their son was high and it was up to Friday to find the supplier before it was too late who gave him lethal drugs. The other,from the first season was the one where Gannon and Friday stumbled upon a man bent on destruction of destroying the city where they find not only a ton of ammo and weapons,but papers on bomb building,Nazism,and other racist propaganda. Gripping drama at its very best.

The third season wasn't that good since most of the episodes focus on a comedy routine involving Friday(which sucked badly)that was the scene at the home of Bill Gannon,his partner. But that was one episodes,but the following episodes stuck mainly to the script which mostly police procedures and rules that were strictly by the book,and Jack Webb's character was that way. When the series was abruptly canceled after more than three seasons and 98 episodes on April 16,1970, the powers that be over at NBC replaced "Dragnet" with the short-lived situation comedy series "Nancy" on September 17,1970 where it was placed in its original time slot.

Originally written on September 28, 2002 and was revised on November 10,2016.

I used to watch this show when I was a little girl. Although I only remember it vaguely, I must say that it was a pretty good show. Also, I don't think I've seen every episode. However, if you ask me, it was still a good show. I remember the theme song very well, though. Everyone was ideally cast, the costume design was great. The performances were top-grade, too. I just hope some network brings this series back one day so that I'll be able to see every episode. Before I wrap this up, I'd like to say that I'll always remember this show in my memory forever, even though I don't think I've seen every episode. Now, in conclusion, when and if this show is ever brought back on the air, I hope that you catch it one day before it goes off the air for good.

The show starts with panoramic views like a travel film of Los Angeles, California. Showing Museums, parks and points of interest. Narrated by our deep throat-ed creator and producer Jack Webb the Dragnet series this time is in color and with a new Partner second banana Harry Morgan. The show starts with a disclaimer that the stories are real and the names are changed to protect the innocent. The Iconic theme song comes in showing the badges of the L.A.P.D. with city hall embossed. The show was guided by the narration of Jack Webb as detective Sargent Joe Friday as he speaks in exact detail the time, weather report and location he's at during each episode. The dialogue is quick and fast paced but basically wooden by acting standards. Some humor is injected by Harry Morgan from time to time but for the most part producer Webb keeps things straight forward and serious. When watching the series in marathon form i.e. net flix you'll notice that Webb has his cast of usual suspects, his troop of co-stars he uses to create the Dragnet Lumberyard Acting Academy. The regulars the likes of Art Balinger, Virginia Gregg,Olan Soule, Peggy Webber, Herb Vigran, Stacy Harris, Robert Clarke and Vic Perrin. These individuals had no specific role in the show. One week they could be cast on the side of the law and the next episode on the other side. Webb always ran the show with an iron fist keeping the flow of the episodes moving and under budget.With his unmistakable phrase, "How's that?, What's that?" The subjects(Episodes) were vast and diverse from Drug abuse to smuggling. From robbery to pornography. Racial injustice to misunderstood teenager fiddling with a hand grenade. Joe Friday going to night school to complete his masters in Criminology while busting a classmate for weed possession. I remember my first introduction to the show featuring a baby found in a garbage can. That will get anyone's attention to watch this Law Enforcement show. Dragnet was filmed during a transitional time in our U.S. history as a generation gap began to ferment across this country. Vietnam protests were the norm. Black Panthers, Civil Rights, Hippies and L.S.D. were on the rise. Cop were called pigs or the fuzz by the anti establishment. Jack utilized these serious issue into the Dragnet episodes throughout the run. I watched this show with my daughter who's take on the show was obviously dated by her standards. The Joe Friday character was proficient in his work and never seemed to take time off from his job yet a batchelor and on the side of being intreverted. The Gannon Partner was impossible to watch with his silly quirky ways and especially when he invited Joe to his home for dinner acting very territorial as to which chair he should sit on. My cop friend had a problem with the efficiency and expedience of our detectives in catching the crooks. In the real world of Law Enforcement there will always be loads of unsolved cases and more piles growing in the file cabinets of police stations across America.That bothered him but he understood that was television. Every episode closed with an outcome of the sentencing as trial was held in some Department in and for the County of Los Angeles. A short break and then the guest crook would stand alone as sentence was pronounced and usually the suspect was found guilty. Even Our Star Jack Webb stood before the camera in a final shot but he was reinstated to the force. Whether the show was of high quality drama.I can't say but I can tell you it was most entertaining and informative.

Watching dragnet brings you back to a simpler and better time. Jack Webb is a gift and Harry Morgan delivers in every episode. Some of it is nostalgia for me, but this is just a great show. Give it a shot and you will watch every episode over and over again.

This show has been a part of my life since the very beginning. I've probably watched each episode four or five times over the past 55 years. And I continue to enjoy it, the seriousness of it, in the comical aspect of Frank Gannon. I'm thankful for MeTV, they brought back a lot of great shows that haven't gotten a lot of air time. Good to see them again.

These episodes were produced back in 1959 to 1970. And yet, as much as they were often a treatise on societal issues of the era, they remain relevant today because of the passage of a half century of time. What so many of these episodes delved into, the drug culture, the me-first mentality, the anti-authority culture, can be evaluated with the wisdom to see what's happened in the generations that followed.

Some seek to ridicule the series for being stereotypical in its portrayal of an antiseptic ideal, but instead the series is an unflinching look at the difference between those who believe in the rule of law versus those who believe in the rule of the mob.

And in seeing California go from likely the most respected and desirable state in the nation, when this series was produced, to currently being portrayed as a society in turmoil, if not chaos, one can look at these episodes and evaluate for himself which vision offered the most promise, and which one offered up the most tribulation.

In creating and producing this series, Jack Webb chose to pull no punches. Based upon a detailed examination of police reports and medical records resulting from those arrests, Webb crafted an in-your-face rebuke to the ills then facing Californian society. At the time, these counter-culture expressions were within a minority, almost cult-like, enclave.

Webb intended this series to be a siren's call, alerting the public to what he perceived as threats to a good society, where people could grow up safe and free. With the wholesale degeneration of so much of society today, with the war on drugs and today's opioid crises, it's hard to view these episodes as ridiculous, but instead visionary.

When you ask real life police officers who in Hollywood came the closest to getting it right, meaning accurate, nearly all of them to this day say Jack Webb. He was buried with police honors, and the LAPD Sergeant's badge in the opening credits, number 714, was retired from active use in memory to Webb.

It takes something special for police to honor a civilian in that way. With Dragnet and Adam-12, Jack Webb indeed worked something special. It would seem those most wiling to ridicule this series ought instead to look at them more objectively, and evaluate what's happened in society over the last fifty plus years.

While equal rights is a wonderful thing, it's a shame that we've also lost so much of the innocence and respect for good order that most people lived their lives by when these shows were produced.

Maybe, we ought to consider re-embracing the best of that era, while retaining the things we actually did improve upon! And, if people are wiling to do that, there are few examples from television that can offer up the stark morality of what people most often considered worthy so long ago, and what might well be a fine path for us to walk to self-improvement today.

Well, there is some good, to this show, since it's based on true stories.

But, the actors, who are the guest stars, no one can believe that they would be hired!

They are all ham actors, typical left over Hollywood types, who were no longer successful actors, fairly ruin Dragnet, plus they lack credibility, in the roles, here.

Always loud and brash, really annoying.

Then, the dialogue, is almost IDENTICAL, on each episode!

The way, the crooks or witnesses talk, is the same, on each show.

Good to see officer Reed, but this show, is so stilted in dialogue, with so many canned expressions, that most episodes are very similar.

Skip this one.

I'm a huge Dragnet fan... for all the reasons Jack Webb never intended. First of all, Webb was (to be polite) an economical producer. Every expense spared is right up there on the TV screen. Even a casual viewer will eventually notice both Friday and Gannon appear to wear the same suit over the course of each season. Thanks to the miracle of one-hour Martinizing, this made editing and continuity a cinch. 1967 went color which had a softening effect and Webb's 3-pack-a-day smoke habit, chili-dog with 3 double scotch diet began to take it's toll (he'd die of a arterially clogged coronary at only 62). Acting: Webb still has the range of 3/8" plywood but I have to admit few come close to his way with a lengthy law & order monologue. I personally love the scenes when he runs (he just moves his hands faster in a scissors movement: hilarious!). His stock Mark VII Ltd. troupe is in full force here as witnesses, indignant victims, clueless parents, lab techs, assorted miscreants (Virginia Gregg is everywhere, along with Dave Willock, Casey Harris, Merry Anders, Peggy Webber, Howard Culver, the ubiquitous Olan Soule, and well-groomed-yet-rebellious teens Michael Burns (who later became a noted historian and proto-creepy nerd Mickey Sholdar)--- I suspect Webb paid scale driving perennial flyweight lab tech/occasional MD or judge Olan Soule to appear on far more lucrative shows on the side. 1967 also saw hints of the ADAM-12 soon to come--- the equally stiff Kent McCord (presumably a graduate of the Jack Webb Lumber Yard School of Acting), begins to appear in guest shots. I have to admit Webb was loyal to "talent" he cottoned to--- although by 1967-68 you won't see any future greats like Lee Marvin, who appeared on the show in the 1950's (one episode, "The Grenade" did manage to cast John Rubenstein and Jan-Michael Vincent... still no Lee Marvins). IMHO Best episode: "The Big High." It helps to remember that Webb was just coming off a huge 2+ year professional drought after being canned for ruining 77 Sunset Strip. He was commissioned to produce a TV Dragnet movie (oddly not aired until January, 1969) by Universal Television and returned for the security of what would ultimately be another 98 now-kitchy Dragnets through 1970. Hippies, LSD and pot would increasingly replace the grittier plots of the Ike years... mirroring Webb's social conservatism. By present day standards, this is where Dragnet became almost a badly acted sitcom (be dumbstruck by the occasional helmet-haired lady cop who takes a shine to Joe but prepared for a preach when the boys are assigned to Juvenile Division and beware of any episodes where Bill invites Joe home for a meal or to watch a football game). But then that's the appeal... now if only Jack had played Dean Wormer...

Jack Webb created this reboot as a response to rising drug use among youth in the 1960's. He was so anxious to slay the dragon that his overbearing attempts became ludicrous. There was even a "fad" for awhile where young adults would watch the program like tuning in for the Gong Show. Webb liked to sermonize on just about any topic, and viewers were forced to listen to his lengthy diatribes. The 60's had left Webb far behind, as the ridiculous costuming and laughable music he used to supposedly emulate the 60's culture. The scripts didn't have characters, just caricatures. The so-called humorous byplay between Friday and his partner Bill Gannon was embarrassing to have to listen to. When Webb died, the joke was "How could they tell?"

Jack Webb was being interviewed once about his show Dragnet and he said that he hoped that by creating this show and its portrayal of police work that it would make the public more sympathetic to our brave boys in blue and their job easier. The amount of abuse that police have to take is horrible and ridiculous Mister Webb said. Its is small wonder that the police were so fond of him. They once gave him an award from "the best real cops to the best reel cop". Jack Webb in fact is the only person to ever be given a policeman's funeral by the LAPD who was not a police officer. He served in the Air Force in WWII and began to work as a disc jockey and a small part movie actor after the war. It was while making a film called He Walked By Night that Webb befriended a Los Angeles policeman who introduced him to police files and a light went on in Jack's head and the rest is history. Webb used actual cases from the LAPD and the script went through several hands before it even went on the air from patrolman to captain. Webb even instructed his actors to "deadpan" their lines to add to the air of realism. He read his won lines off a teleprompter. I admit that if Webb had been any more wooden you could have made an end table out of him. Even his walk was like a man whose shorts were too tight. Joe Friday was really a very boring person who wore the same suit all the time. He didn't love his job but did it and served uncomplainingly. Dragnet tackled a lot of topics that were controversial at the time like teenage drug abuse. There was one episode once about a father who went to Friday and Bill Gannon and told them his daughter was smoking pot. There was one excellent scene where Friday angrily lectures the girl and her husband about thier addiction. This episode had a horrifying ending where they crash a party at their house and find that they have drowned their little girl in the bathtub. Gannon gets sick at the sight and it is the most powerful Dragnet that I have ever seen. Another episode has Friday engaging in hand to hand combat with a teenager holding a live grenade. Jack Webb was one of the true pioneers with this series and with Adam 12. He brought us all a lot of enjoyment and made the police out to be the heroes that they are. I often wonder what he would think of tv series like The Shield and NYPD Blue. He would probably be turning over in his grave.