Police Squad

[Barry]

 Police Squad
 
Funny is funny and this is just funny.

In 1992, two  years after Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker created the movie Airplane, they created Police Squad.  This show was a parody of many things in popular culture. TV shows, Sitcoms, Film Noir movies and mostly, for me, detective TV shows from the 1950s. (Peter Gunn, Mr. Lucky and so on.)

There were sight gags, slapstick gangs, puns, guest stars, send-ups and just plain funny, but unconventional material. This is important because in spite of it’s critical success, the show did NOT fit into the world of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. It was cancelled after four showings, but six episodes were shot.  All six are here.  The concept, plot and star, Leslie Nielsen, went on to make three successful “Police Squad” movies which were entitled the Naked Gun.

It is actually good that the series was cancelled after six episodes.  They were just becoming what they were satirizing… Running jokes, repetitive plots, and your waiting for a character to say his “funny” established line which was said in every episode.

In enjoyed this very much and I needed it now. Visual and audio  is 2.5 out of 5 stars, it was filmed to be a TV show.
One serious comment: The show always opened with an announced guest star (William Shatner, William Conrad) who is killed during the first 30 seconds of the show. John Belushi was actually filmed, but actually died in real life before the show hen on so they had to change it.