Rating: ***
Review Date: 7/26/26
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Alan North
After the success of "Airplane!" (1980), Leslie Nielsen was tapped to play Detective Frank Drebin in a police procedural that parodied popular police shows from the 50's and 60's ("M Squad," in particular). Reportedly, Robert Stack was the producers' first choice, but Nielsen is so utterly brilliant that it's impossible to imagine anyone else being a better fit and doing a better job in the role. A typecast Alan North does an excellent job as the unflappable Captain Ed Hocken, who would later be replaced by George Kennedy in the "Naked Gun" films.
Each episode opens with a celebrity guest star who is immediately murdered, including such well-known actors as Lorne Greene, Robert Goulet, Florence Henderson, Georg Stanford Brown, and William Shatner. John Belushi was planned for the sixth episode, but he died shortly after it was filmed and was replaced with William Conrad at the last minute. Another repeated gag is that each episode ends with a simulated freeze frame, which pokes fun at the genre along with well worn television tropes in general.
Like "Airplane!", the show plays everything perfectly straight, which is what makes it work. The sight gags, parodies, physical humor, and wordplay are very clever and funny, but not in a "ha-ha" kind of way. The writing has more of a "wink and nod" flavor than a "laugh out loud" effect, which is probably what led the network to cancel the show after six episodes. You really had to pay attention to what was going on to really appreciate the level that the show was operating on. That said, while the first five episodes are very good, the sixth and final episode is a serious misfire that shows how the series was running out of ideas and didn't have enough momentum to survive an entire season.