Featured TV on DVD Review: Police Squad: The Complete Series
April 13, 2020
Police Squad: The Complete Series - Buy from Amazon: Blu-ray
I got a screener this week. I didn’t think that would happen until the Covid-19 outbreak at least calmed down and since last week the Canadian government said restrictions could last until the end of June, I thought that would be a long wait. However, not only did I get a screener just before the weekend, it is for the Blu-ray release for Police Squad: The Complete Series. I already own the show on DVD, but is it worth getting on Blu-ray?
Police Squad is a parody of police procedurals of an earlier time. It stars Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin, who is a member of Police Squad. Each episode follows a similar pattern. We see the crime being committed, we hear Frank Drebin talk about the case in voiceover while he drives to the scene, and then he and his boss, Captain Ed Hocken, try and solve the crime. Crimes include a lady in debt to her orthodontist, fixed boxing matches, neighborhood protection rings, and more. Humor comes from sight gags, lots of rapid-fire dialogue, and of course a deep understanding of the source material.
Whenever I hear something described as, “ahead of its time”, I usually think that’s an insult. The Sega Dreamcast is a prime example of this. It was ahead of its time for a number of reasons, but I’m specifically referring to its internet connectivity. It had a built-in modem during a time when most people didn’t have internet access. The time and resources spent on those features would have been better spent creating better developer tools to increase the number of games released to the console. That said...
Police Squad was ahead of its time. It relied on humor that doesn’t work well on network TV and would do better on a streaming service, or indeed on Blu-ray, where you can pause and rewind the show to get the background jokes and the little touches that might go by too quickly the first time around. For that matter, you actually have to really pay attention to get a lot of the jokes, which means it does work better as a movie franchise than as a network TV show, because people pay more attention to movies in theaters than to TV shows in their living room. Also, TVs have gotten a lot bigger now and you can actually read some of the jokes. A big-screen TV back in 1982 was 24 inches, while today TVs are at least twice that size. There are more than a few jokes I wouldn’t have gotten back in the day, because I couldn’t see them on my tiny TV back then.
On the other hand, there are parts of Police Squad that have aged poorly. The TV series is a parody of cop shows from the 1950s through 1970s. This includes M Squad, The Streets of San Francisco, and other shows that nearly no one reading this will remember. Fortunately, the show has such strong writing and the cast has such comedic talent that it still works. To give another example of this, you don’t need to have seen Zero Hour! to enjoy Airplane, but if you’ve seen the movie, or just a comparison video, you will get more enjoyment out of the parody, or at the very least, marvel at how well they mimicked their target.
Overall, the format Police Squad uses works a lot better in the world of TV on DVD / streaming services than it did back in 1982 when it first came out. However, I’m a little worried that the subject matter being parodied is too old for everyone to get all of the jokes. That said, enough of them don’t require any foreknowledge that the overall show is easy to recommend.
There are audio commentary tracks on three of the six episodes. There is a nine-minute interview with Leslie Nielsen. He actually makes many of the points I made above about why this didn’t work as a TV show. When the show initially failed, there was talk of repackaging it as a movie, but they needed a wrap-around story. Included on the Blu-ray is the freeze-frame joke that would have been part of that wrap-around story. Up next are two short casting clips. Extras wrap-up with a minute long gallery, as list of potential celebrity deaths, and some production notes they got for the first three episodes. All of this was ported over from the previous DVD release, but frankly I’m just surprised this show got a Blu-ray release, even if it is shovelware.
Police Squad comes from a time when parody meant more than just cheap pop-culture references. In fact, the creators of this show are second only two Mel Brooks when it comes to parody. The The Complete Series Blu-ray has much better extras than I would expect for a short-lived show like this, even if there is nothing new for the Blu-ray. It is an easy recommendation and a clear contender for Pick of the Week.
The Show
Review
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Naked Gun, Mel Brooks, Leslie Nielsen, Alan North