Police Squad! was created by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ), who had previously worked on the films, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and Airplane! (1980). ZAZ wanted to make another spoof film similar to Airplane!, using the television series M Squad as a basis for the spoof. Lacking an overarching plot to the concept, Paramount Pictures president Michael Eisner instead secured them a six-episode television series, despite ZAZ wanting to make it into a film.[3]
The show aired as a mid-season replacement in March 1982, but was taken off the schedule after four episodes.[3] The remaining two episodes were dumped onto the summer schedule in place of the usual summer reruns. Against critical acclaim, the show was canceled by ABC after just six episodes.[4] The show gained a strong cult following through repeat broadcasts on cable channels.[5]
Special guest star:Lorne Greene Sally Decker (Kathryn Leigh Scott), a teller at a credit union, murders her boss so she can steal money from the credit union and pay her orthodontist the money she owed. She kills a customer and frames him for the murder. The Police Squad department is called in to investigate the case. Frank is suspicious about the customer's guilt.
Special guest star:Georg Stanford Brown To expose corrupt boxing manager Mr. Martin (Rudy Solari), Frank goes undercover as manager Bob Kelly. Frank makes a deal with boxer Buddy Briggs, whom he trains for a title fight against the current champion "The Champ" (Grand L. Bush). However, Martin has kidnapped Briggs's wife, and will only release her if Briggs deliberately loses the fight. Frank has to find Buddy's wife before Buddy gets knocked out.
Story by : Pat Proft Teleplay by : Nancy Steen & Neil Thompson
July 1, 1982 (1982-07-01)
1PS03
Special guest star:Florence Henderson After a small group of mobsters blackmail various store-owners, Frank and Norberg go undercover and set up a key-making and locksmith store. The mobsters offer Frank "protection" in exchange for money, but Frank declines. While they attack the store with guns, Frank and Norberg's Locksmith store remains, enraging the mobsters' boss.
Special guest stars:William Shatner, Dr. Joyce Brothers The Police Squad department is sent to investigate a bombing at the courthouse. The main suspect is Eddie Casales (Spencer Milligan), a bomber who was sent to jail by the victims killed in the explosion. Following the attack on the courthouse, the assistant DA who prosecuted Casales is killed with a bomb hidden in his car. All evidence points to Casales, but Frank thinks it is a setup.
Special guest stars:Robert Goulet, Tommy Lasorda Frank, Ed, and Norberg investigate the kidnapping of Terri Burton (Lilibet Stern), the daughter of a wealthy businessman, who has been kidnapped during her 18th birthday party. The kidnappers demand $1,000,000 ransom money. The only witness to the kidnapping is Burton's boyfriend Kingsley Addison (Ken Michelman), who had plans to marry Burton.
Special guest stars:William Conrad, Dick Clark Frank investigates a body of a struggling comedian found at the bottom of a cliff in a car crash. Although the comedian's death appears to be a suicide, Frank soon learns that this comedian was an informant on a drug ring he infiltrated at his nightclub. To catch the perpetrator, Frank takes the place of the deceased at the nightclub he worked.
Cast
Drebin, Norberg, and Hocken are the main characters of Police Squad!.
Leslie Nielsen portrayed Sergeant Frank Drebin, detective lieutenant of Police Squad. Jerry Zucker explained that the name Drebin was picked blindly from the phone book. Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker had met Nielsen when working on Airplane! (1980) and decided that their kind of humor matched.[7] The team said that Nielsen would be perfect as Drebin, as the character lampooned the roles that Nielsen had played in television dramas such as The Bold Ones: The Protectors and S.W.A.T..[8]Ed Williams, who co-starred as lab technician Ted Olson, had been a science teacher for many years and had some previous acting experience. Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker were amazed by his performance.[7]
Rex Hamilton is credited in every episode as "Abraham Lincoln", with the same clip in all opening credits as his only appearance. Nielsen, Taylor, and Williams were the only members of the main cast who reprise their characters into The Naked Gun film series. Captain Ed Hocken was portrayed by George Kennedy in the film series, and O. J. Simpson played Officer Nordberg (slightly renamed from "Norberg").
Production
Opening sequence
Lorne Greene was a special guest star in the first episode.
The show's opening sequence is a satire on traditional crime-drama opening sequences, particularly those of M Squad and various Quinn Martin shows such as The Fugitive and particularly The New Breed (which also stars Nielsen).[9]Hank Simms, who had worked as an announcer for some of Martin's programs, announced the title of each episode,[9] though the spoken title never matches the title caption.[10][11] The sequence introduces Nielsen and North during a shootout,[12] and Abraham Lincoln impersonator Rex Hamilton, who dramatically returns gunfire to John Wilkes Booth, as his only appearance.[13]
Another recurring gag in the opening credits sequence is the "special guest star", a celebrity who is introduced but immediately murdered.[14] These special guest stars are Lorne Greene, Georg Stanford Brown, Robert Goulet, William Shatner, Florence Henderson, and William Conrad.[14][15][16][17]John Belushi was slated as "special guest star" for the fifth episode and a scene with Belushi tied to blocks of concrete under water was filmed.[18] Following Belushi's unexpected death in March 1982, the scene was replaced with footage of Florence Henderson before the episode was broadcast the following July.[9] Belushi's accidental death shocked Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, as they had joked about it after he had nearly choked during the filming of the scene.[9] A list of possible celebrity death shots was included in the DVD release.[19]
Writing
The show was intended to mock police dramas in the same way in which Airplane! mocks disaster movies.[17] Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker wrote the pilot episode,[7] in which most straight lines were directly copied from an M Squad episode.[20] The pilot episode is a near scene-for-scene remake of "More Deadly", the opening episode of the second season of M Squad. Pat Proft, who had worked with Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker on The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and Airplane! (1980),[21] wrote the third episode.[22]Robert Wuhl was invited to join the writing staff after he had auditioned for the lead role in Airplane!. He co-wrote the show's second and sixth episodes with Tino Insana.[10][22][23] Both episodes contain cultural references to old movies such as On the Waterfront and The French Connection. In Wuhl's audio commentary for the DVD, he mentioned that it was a nice opportunity, but that he did not really feel a connection with the show, especially because of its short run.[10]
Direction
The first episode of Police Squad! was directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. Two of the show's six episodes were directed by filmmaker Joe Dante, who recalled in 2008,
I knew the Zuckers from second unit on Rock 'n' Roll High School and Kentucky Fried Movie and had turned down Airplane! – don’t ask! When they got Police Squad! going, they asked me to do the second one. It only lasted six episodes, two of which I directed.
ABC had no idea what to do with the show, which had no laugh track and resembled a rerun of a ’60s program. The network kept changing the time slot so no one could find it, and people casually switching it on thought it really was an old TV show! Like they did in their features, the boys used real TV episodes as their template, mostly a ’50s Lee Marvin series called M Squad. It was lots of fun to do and was the first thing I ever directed on a studio lot. I prefer the TV show to the later Naked Gun movies.[24]
Cancellation
ABC announced the cancellation of Police Squad! after four of its six episodes had aired in March 1982. The final two episodes were aired that summer. In an interview for the DVD release of the series, Nielsen said ABC entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos asserted Police Squad! was canceled because viewers had to pay close attention to the show in order to get much of the humor: "the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it".[25] Nielsen also thought the premise was more effective in the successful Naked Gun films because the much larger screen size in a cinema increases the efficacy of the visual gags. In its annual "Cheers and Jeers" issue, TV Guide magazine called the explanation for the cancellation "the most stupid reason a network ever gave for ending a series".[26]
Home media
In 1985, Paramount Home Video first released all six episodes of the show on VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc formats as two separate volumes: Police Squad!: Help Wanted! and More! Police Squad!, each with three episodes in their production order.[27][28] Paramount and CBS DVD first released the series on DVD in 2006 in a keep case on one disc.[29] The episodes are in airing order from ABC. The DVD extras include production notes from network executives, a "freeze-frame" that was filmed but never used, bloopers, casting tests, and an interview with Nielsen.[30] Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writer Robert Wuhl recorded audio commentary for the first, third, and sixth episodes.[31] Critics universally praised how the show was still funny after more than 20 years.[32][8][33] The series was released in Blu-ray format in the US on April 14, 2020.[34]
After the cancellation of Police Squad!, ZAZ returned to films, creating the comedies Top Secret! and Ruthless People. At this point, they were able to identify a narrative to apply to the Police Squad! formula for a theatrical film by adding a romantic plotline, and the film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! was readily greenlit by Paramount.[3] It performed well at the box office, grossing around $78,756,177.[35] The film lead to the Naked Gun trilogy with two sequels, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult (1994), were released. The Naked Gun 2+1⁄2: The Smell of Fear was considered the most successful of the three, grossing around $86,930,411,[36] and Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult grossed $51,132,598.[37]Roger Ebert rated the first movie 3+1⁄2 out of four stars and gave three stars to each of the two following films.[38]
Spin-offs
A series of British advertisements for Red Rock Cider were made in the same style, with the opening titles changed to other names such as "Fraud Squad" or "Fried Squid", and featuring Leslie Nielsen. The advertisements were shown in British cinemas as well as on television. They were directed by John Lloyd, with such apparent success that Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker approached him to direct Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult, but he turned them down.[39] During the WWE's SummerSlam 1994 pay-per-view event, the Police Squad! characters look for The Undertaker, who had previously vanished.[40]
Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, Police Squad! has an aggregate score of 90% based on 28 positive and three negative critic reviews. The website’s consensus reads: "Wacky, inventive, and endlessly quotable, Police Squad! is a hysterically funny leap forward for TV comedy that was tragically ahead of its time."[41]
Upon the home video release in 1985, Washington Post critic Tom Shales commented "People can rent them and laugh, and then cry that ABC was so cruel."[42] In 2009, the DVD set was nominated for a Satellite Award for Best DVD Release of a TV Show, though it lost to the DVD set of the eighth season of Fox's The Simpsons.[43] In 2013, TV Guide ranked it #7 on its list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".[44]
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, has said, "If Police Squad! had been made twenty years later, it would have been a smash. It was before its time. In 1982 your average viewer was unable to cope with its pace, its quick-fire jokes. But these days they'd have no problems keeping up, I think we've proved that."[45]
^ abWerts, Diane (November 10, 2006). "Badge of Humor – Short-Lived 1982 Series that Spoofed Cop Shows Comes with some Great Extras". Lexington Herald-Leader. p. 11.
^ abcRobert Wuhl. Police Squad: The Complete Series: Audio Commentary for "Testimony of Evil (Dead Man Don't Laugh)" (DVD). CBS Paramount.
^McKerrew, Steve (July 24, 1991). "Quirky ' Police Squad !' returns". The Baltimore Sun. p. C10.
^Abrotsky, Justin L. (November 29, 2010). "In Memory of Leslie Nielsen: The hilarious intro and ending to Police Squad!". Sun Sentinel.
^Berhman, John (March 9, 1985). "Escondido teacher Rex Hamilton is dead at 60". The San Diego Union. p. II-1.
^ abBark, Ed (July 13, 1997). "Tired of TV? Try...UBN No hits, No hype. Just one critic's idea of the perfect prime-time week". The Dallas Morning News. p. 1C.
^"Police Squad introduced clueless Frank Drebin −90210 makes debut on DVD". The Washington Times. November 9, 2006. p. C1.
^Russo, Tom (December 31, 2006). "Extras – from commentaries to featurettes to complete alternative versions – make these discs extraordinary". The Boston Globe. p. 20N.
^Westbrook, Bruce (November 7, 2006). "New on DVD: Police Squad has arresting humor – Cult TV series only had six episodes". Houston Chronicle. p. 2.
