 
Dragnet 1967: Season 1 Murder One: The Complete First Season There are “eight million stories in the Naked City” and a number of good reasons to check out these three generations of crime dramas now available as box sets. Naked City premiered on television in 1958 as a series of 30-minute episodes that were later expanded to hour-long dramas. This first in a series of collections, contains twelve episodes that aired between 1961-62 and featured early performances by big-name actors such as Mickey Rooney, Maureen Stapelton, Jack Warden, Orson Bean, Martin Balsam and direction from Arthur Hiller. Filmed on the streets of New York, Naked City was full of hard-hitting crime investigations, thoughtful police work and colorful characters, with direction and cinematography that rivaled feature films of the day. It’s pretty clear that for years, many TV crime shows used Naked City as their role model, but few were able to match its style and sophistication. Although there isn’t any extra footage or commentary, you do get the option to watch all the commercials that ran with each episode, many that are silly and/or are for products that are obsolete.
|
Naked City
Dragnet
1967 was the second iteration of producer/creator/director Jack Webb’s
highly successful cop show with scripts based on actual case files of
the LAPD, or as one network likes to say, “ripped from the headlines.”
Sgt. Joe Friday and new partner Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) stalked the
streets of Los Angeles looking for evil-doers and meting out justice
to whomever deserved it. Of course, as in the original series, there’s
lots of voice-over by Webb and stern lectures to anyone and everyone
who even thinks about not following the letter of the law and every
episode is “big”: “The Big Masked Bandits,”
“The Big Accident,” “The Big Bullet,” etc. Wassup
with that? Gambling, murder, theft – you name it, it’s all
here, but one of the funniest episodes (“The Big LSD”) finds
Friday and Gannon contending with a young man dealing acid, which at
the time, was still legal. Sure enough, the number of freakouts begin
swelling to near-epidemic proportions and our detectives eventually
get their man once the laws swing in their favor. In addition to the
17 TV shows, a bonus disc contains an original radio show from 1954.
Steven
Bochco attempted something new in 1995 with Murder One – follow
a single murder case for an entire season from the point of view of
the defense attorney. He found a perfect leading man in Daniel Benzali
(superstar attorney Theodore Hoffman) – an imposing figure who
spoke in low, whispery tones and rose up, larger than life when angered.
Surrounding him were a solid team of actors, notably Stanley Tucci,
Mary McCormick, Dylan Baker and Jason Gedrick, who brought personality
and authenticity to their roles. Like an onion, each episode unraveled
a little more detail that kept the suspense in play until the final
moments of the season. Unusual lighting and framing created tension
and a look that was not common to television and new ways of shooting
courtroom scenes added fluidity to what are generally generic set-ups.
As for the case itself: kinky sex, murder, blackmail and lots of secrets….who
could ask for more? - David Bassin