The filmmaking trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (better known as Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker or ZAZ) made their mark on cinema early in their careers. They began with The Kentucky Fried Movie, an anthology film of sketch comedy that did quite well critically and commercially, and then with their sophomore effort, they all but created a genre of film. Airplane!, released in 1980, took the idea of a parody film and cranked it up to eleven. The film is a lean 87-minute parody of the disaster film Zero Hour! that the filmmakers stuffed to bursting with some of the funniest slapstick, absurdist, sight gags, and wordplay that had been committed to film. It was a huge hit, grossing $83 million, making it the fourth highest-grossing film of the year.
In the years that followed, the team wanted to make another parody film based on police procedurals, using police procedurals of the 1950s and 60s as a basis. This is the film series we now remember as The Naked Gun, which debuted in 1984, but this franchise has its beginnings in television.
Police Squad! debuted on ABC in March of 1982. As the team did not have an overarching plot for their proposal, they had instead been given six-episode television series by then-head of Paramount Pictures, Michael Eisner. Using the same formula they had used with Airplane!, they adapted and started with a classic television series, M Squad starring Lee Marvin, and then dialled everything to eleven again.
Leslie Nielsen starred as Sgt. Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant of Police Squad, the role he continued into the films. Having worked with ZAZ on Airplane!, they knew he could deliver the deadpan jokes the script required and shared a sense of humour with the team to boot: they’d all do just about anything for a laugh.
In each episode, Frank, along with his captain Ed Hocken (played by Alan North, and in the films by George Kennedy), investigates a criminal case, ranging from murder to kidnapping and everything in between. The investigation proceeded much like every other cop show, but with the team’s trademark hilarious, deadpan sensibilities.
There are several hallmarks in every episode, beginning with the opening credits. To start, an actor called Rex Hamilton is credited in each as playing Abraham Lincoln. Along with Nielsen and North, when credited on screen, it is in the middle of a shootout. Every episode also has a special guest star, each of whom dies during the credits sequence and never appears in the episode itself, and each has one title voiced by a narrator which is completely different from the one displayed on the title card.
Other recurring gags include another officer on the squad, Al, being so tall that his head is out of frame, hiding something that the others speak about. Johnny the Shoeshine, who is so well informed that not only does Frank get the word on the street about crime from him, but others ask him for advice too, like a priest, a surgeon, and Hall of Fame L.A. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. Every episode ends on a “freeze frame” where the actors freeze but the camera keeps rolling, a gag that seems to get funnier each time you see it.
Much like Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun films that followed, each half hour episode is stuffed to the brim with jokes, ranging from the absurd (such as when a black and white comes to take away a suspect and it turns out to be a zebra) to some sophisticated wordplay (there’s an excellent conversation about who shot Twice in episode one) to some of the funniest single lines of dialogue ever recorded (such as “We’re sorry to bother you at a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but your husband wasn’t dead then”).
Unfortunately, and despite critical acclaim at the time, of the six episodes produced, only four were aired (the remaining two were dumped into the summer schedule), and the series was ultimately cancelled. While this means that we eventually got the film series we know and love today, it’s still a shame that the series was not allowed to continue. The half-hour format works incredibly well for the fast-paced, joke-a-minute format.
If there was ever a show that might be described as “ahead of its time,” then we’re definitely talking about Star Trek, but if there is a second, Police Squad! might be it, but it’s also possible that the later time wouldn’t exist without it in the first place.
Police Squad is shockingly difficult to find these days. It is not, as of this writing, streaming in the United States or Canada, and both DVD and Blu-Ray releases are now out of print, With the recent success of the Liam Neeson-led legacy sequel, perhaps it will be re-released soon, but until that time, know that it is entirely worth the effort to seek out. If you can find it, you will be rewarded with some of the funniest six episodes of television ever made.
Learn more about the series at the IMDB site for the title.
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