Pioneers of Television: Cops and Robbers

I love crime dramas; my second career was the direct result of one. Yet we wouldn’t have the Law & Orders, Homicide: Life on the Street, Third Watch, The Shield, The Wire, or any of the other great genre shows we have today if not for ones like Dragnet, Columbo, Mission: Impossible, Police Woman or the original Hawaii Five-O. After showing us the history of science fiction, PBS’ series Pioneers of Television paid tribute Tuesday to the history of the crime drama.

The special starts in 1949, with the radio debut of Jack Webb’s Dragnet. It’s “a radically different approach [with] no gunshots, no fistfights, and no romance” based on actual cases from the LAPD. In 1951, Dragnet moved to television, and left an indelible mark on the medium. The legendary (and now late) Stephen J. Cannell recounts experiences from the set with a smile. Did you know that Dragnet was one of the first series to use a TelePrompTer – and that Jack Webb actually preferred that his actors not memorize their lines in favor of using it? It seems laughable now, but Dragnet had a cadence and feel all its own, making the series a “cultural icon.” I can certainly attest to that; fifty years after the show’s TV debut, I’ve got a stack of the radio dramas on CD, volumes of the TV episodes on DVD, and I’ll even admit that I liked Dick Wolf’s 2003 Dragnet with Ed O’Neill in the iconic Joe Friday role. (The first season, at least. The less said about the mess that became L.A. Dragnet, the better.) I owe Jack Webb a debt of gratitude, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one.

From Dragnet, we move on to The Untouchables, which starred Robert Stack (whom we all now know as the late host of Unsolved Mysteries) as Eliot Ness, and prompted a Congressional investigation into the level of violence it showed. It also provided the first break for Quinn Martin, who would go on to make such series as another of my favorites, The Streets of San Francisco, with Karl Malden and a young Michael Douglas. Desilu Studios, which was behind The Untouchables, also launched Mannix, which was saved from early cancellation by the support of none other than Lucille Ball. Lucy also greenlighted the script for Mission: Impossible. Pretty neat to know that we owe a pair of successful crime dramas to the star of I Love Lucy.

That brings us to the 1960’s, when Bill Cosby and Robert Culp starred in I Spy. At the time, Cosby was the first African-American man in a leading role on television, at the same time that Nichelle Nichols was appearing as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek, helping to erode existing racial stereotypes at the same time that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was making his voice heard and the 1966 Texas Western Miners were beating the University of Kentucky in the NCAA men’s basketball finals. Yet did you know that Cosby was nearly fired due to his lack of acting experience? Culp threatened to quit if Cosby was fired, and formed a partnership with the comedian to make “a statement by being a non-statement.” In 1969, the original Hawaii Five-O further helped to diversify television. Jack Lord – he who nearly was Captain Kirk on Star Trek – led a series that showed Pacific Islanders as both heroes and villains, and helped to steer the show after the death of series creator Leonard Freeman. Those two series expanded the racial palette of television, at least for men.

Women got their turn in the spotlight beginning with the advent of series like Honey West, with the late Anne Francis, and the spinoff The Girl from UNCLE. Though those two only lasted a season each, they opened the door for the later arrival of Police Woman in 1974, a series that even Angie Dickinson’s husband Burt Bacharach “didn’t want to be embarrassed” by. One can only imagine his surprise at its success.

Yet even Police Woman followed the same pattern as many shows of its time. The standard “whodunit” mold was broken with the arrival of Peter Falk as the title character in Columbo. That started a trend of lovable leads that continued with James Garner in Cannell’s The Rockford Files, which Cannell calls “the strangest creation I’ve ever been involved with” out of the nearly 40 series he’s launched. It’s particularly poignant to hear from Cannell, who is informative and in great spirits, when we know that he’s soon to leave us; the legendary producer passed away in September of 2010.

Presented with the first nearly 30 years of crime dramas, it’s easy to see how we got from there to where we are today. Would we have procedurals like Law & Order if we didn’t have Dragnet? Would we have been able to show such shocking scenes as we’ve seen on The Shield, The Wire or Southland if not for The Untouchables daring to go there first? Would quirky characters like Richard Castle or Neal Caffrey have a home if not for Columbo and Jim Rockford before them? Thanks to Pioneers of Television, those of us who so love watching the good guys put away the bad guys week after week now have a greater understanding of how our favorite series came to be.