Police Squad!


Police Squad! is an American television comedy series broadcast on the ABC network in 1982. It was created by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, and starred Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin. A spoof of police procedurals, the series featured Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker's usual sight gags, wordplay and non sequiturs. While a parody of many television shows and movies, it bore a particular resemblance to the Lee Marvin cop show M Squad and the late 1960s series Felony Squad. Although the show was canceled after six episodes, it later successfully spawned The Naked Gun film series from 1988 to 1994. In 2013, TV Guide ranked it #7 on its list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".

Overview

Police Squad! was created by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, who had previously worked together on The Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!. Despite critical acclaim, the show was canceled by ABC after just six episodes. The show gained a strong cult following through repeat broadcasts, which led to The Naked Gun film series. Many of show's gags were recycled for all three films.
Alan North played the role of Captain Ed Hocken on the show; in the films, the role was played by George Kennedy. Peter Lupus co-starred as Officer Norberg, but in the films, O.J. Simpson appeared as the similarly named Officer Nordberg. Apart from Nielsen, the only actors to reprise their role in the films were Ed Williams, who played scientist Ted Olson, and Ronald "Tiny Ron" Taylor as Al, a very tall officer who is seen only from the neck down. Robert Goulet, who appeared as one of the "special guest stars" who were invariably killed off at the beginning of episodes, appeared as the villain Quentin Hapsburg in the. Joyce Brothers played herself in the. She also played herself in the fourth episode of the show.
Each episode featured end credits over a 1970s-style freeze frame of the final scene, except that the frame was not frozen – the actors simply stood motionless in position while other activities continued around them.

Episodes

Each episode had two titles. The first title was shown on the screen, while announcer Hank Simms, read the second one instead. The episodes were written to be shown in a specific order, and the episode numbers would often correspond to the number of garbage cans into which Frank's car crashes when it arrives at the crime scene. During each episode's epilogue sequence, either Drebin or Hocken would state that the guilty party brought to justice is being sent to Stateville Prison, and would list all of the characters sent there in previous episodes, in reverse order, where applicable.
No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateProduction
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Cast

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! and felt that their kind of humor matched. The team felt that Nielsen would be perfect as Drebin, as the character lampooned the roles that Nielsen had played in television dramas such as and S.W.A.T.. 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.
Rex Hamilton was credited in every episode as "Abraham Lincoln", and the same clip of him was invariably played in the opening credits. However, he never appeared in the program, only in the credits.
Nielsen, Taylor, and Williams were the only members of the main cast who returned to portray their original characters in the The Naked Gun film series. Captain Ed Hocken was portrayed by George Kennedy in the film series, while O. J. Simpson played Officer Nordberg.

Production

Opening sequence

The show's opening sequence was 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. Hank Simms, who had worked as an announcer for some of Martin's programs, announced the title of each episode, though the spoken title never matched the title caption. The sequence introduces Nielsen and North as their characters during a shootout, as well as Abraham Lincoln impersonator Rex Hamilton, who dramatically returns gunfire to John Wilkes Booth. Hamilton never appeared in the show itself.
Another recurring gag used in the opening sequence was the introduction of a "special guest star", a celebrity who was introduced but immediately murdered during the credits. Lorne Greene, Georg Stanford Brown, Robert Goulet, William Shatner, Florence Henderson and William Conrad appeared as special guest stars during the show's run. A scene with John Belushi, tied to blocks of concrete under water, was filmed but replaced with footage of Henderson following Belushi's death before the episode was broadcast. Belushi's death came as a shock to Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, as they had joked about it after he had almost choked during the filming of the scene. A list of possible celebrity death shots was included on the show's DVD release in 2006.

Writing

The show was intended to mock police dramas in the same way in which Airplane! had mocked disaster movies. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker wrote the pilot episode, in which most straight lines were directly copied from an M Squad episode. In fact, the pilot episode was an almost 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 Airplane! and The Kentucky Fried Movie, wrote the third episode. 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. Both episodes contained cultural references to old movies such as On the Waterfront and The French Connection. In the audio commentary that Wuhl recorded for the DVD release, 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.

Music

The opening and closing music was penned by composer Ira Newborn. The jumping big band theme was retained for the Naked Gun movies, along with the opening police-light visual of the Police Squad! series.

Awards and nominations

;Emmy Awards
YearCategoryNomineeResult
1982Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy SeriesLeslie Nielsen
1982Outstanding Writing In A Comedy SeriesDavid Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker
for the episode: A Substantial Gift

;Other awards
YearCategoryNomineeResult
2006Satellite Award for Best DVD Release of a TV Show"The Complete Series"

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. According to the DVD commentary for "A Substantial Gift", then-ABC entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos said that Police Squad! was canceled because "the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it," meaning that the viewer had to pay very close attention to the show in order to get much of the humor, while most other TV shows did not demand as much effort from the viewer. 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."
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."

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 volume containing three episodes in their production order. On the release of the show, Washington Post critic Tom Shales commented "People can rent them and laugh, and then cry that ABC was so cruel."
Paramount and CBS DVD first released the series on DVD in 2006 in a keepcase on one disc. The episodes were placed in the order in which they had aired on ABC. The DVD contained various extras, including actual production notes from network executives, a "freeze-frame" that was filmed but never used, bloopers, casting tests and an interview with Nielsen. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss and writer Robert Wuhl recorded audio commentary for the first, third and sixth episodes. Critics universally praised how the show was still funny more than 20 years after its cancellation. 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. While the Police Squad! VHS and Betamax videocassette releases contained only mono sound, the 2006 CBS/Paramount DVD release contained remastered audio in Dolby Digital 5.1.
The series was released in Blu-ray format in the US on April 14, 2020.

Continuation

The ''Naked Gun'' films

Six years after the cancellation of Police Squad!, the first Naked Gun film was released, titled '. It performed well at the box office, grossing around $78,756,177. The hit comedy became so popular that two sequels, ' and , were released. The Naked Gun : The Smell of Fear was considered the most successful of the three, grossing around $86,930,411, while Naked Gun : The Final Insult grossed $51,132,598. Roger Ebert rated the first movie out of four stars, and gave three stars to the two following films.

Red Rock Cider commercials

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. In one of these ads, Nielsen shouts, "Hey! You, over there, in the shadows!" The man steps forward and reveals himself to be Hank Marvin, guitarist for the 1960s pop group the Shadows. The catchphrase was "Red Rock Cider—it's not red, and there's no rocks in it."
The opening titles were reused for the commercials, including:
Some of the jokes that were used in the commercials were originally taken from Police Squad!, such as when Ed says "Cover me!" and is covered with a blanket, a gag taken from "The Butler Did It ".
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 33⅓: The Final Insult, but he turned them down.

Other spin-offs

After the show's cancellation, the producers considered turning the show into a movie by linking several episodes together with new scenes. A few of these scenes were actually filmed before the project was abandoned. This footage can be viewed on the DVD release.
The Police Squad! characters were resurrected during the WWE's Summerslam 1994 pay-per-view event, when they were shown looking for The Undertaker, who in storylines had previously vanished.