If law-and-order is what Our Great Silent Majority crave, they'll really have something to shout about on TV this fall. Almost a third of the new series scheduled will be based on law enforcement, legal and crime-busting professions--joining an equal number of such holdovers from last season.
NBC already has courtroom dramas in The Bold Ones. Now ABC and CBS step up to the bar with weekly shows called The Young Lawyers and Storefront Lawyers. (One of those titles simply has to go; to add to the confusion, ABC's also announced a quite different show tagged The Young Rebels!) Still another series is being planned which will exploit the feats of a team of brilliant criminologists whose job is "to solve the virtually unsolvable crime."
As for new peace officers on the air: Burt Reynolds will star as a detective lieutenant in Dan August. Ed Nelson is a Treasury agent in The Silent Force, working on special missions for the President. Dennis Weaver returns as McCloud, the New Mexico policeman who joined the N.Y.P.D. to learn modern methods (and taught Manhattan's boys in blue a Western trick or two) in a World Premier movie last February--and will now be part of the combination package NBC calls Four-In-One.
Missing from the scene this fall will be the grandaddy of them all: Jack Webb, whose Dragnet set standards of accuracy and realism for police action drama from the time it made its radio bow in June '49. Equally successful on TV from '52 to '59, the show returned to NBC three seasons ago. But now the familiar dum-de-dum-dum will be only an echo in the everlasting reruns.
Maybe Webb felt "Sergeant Joe Friday" had given all the lectures possible, gathered in all the awards available on civilian cooperation with the police. Maybe he realized that Adam-12--also a half-hour on NBC, also produced by Jack's own company--was doing a better job along the same lines for today, in a more up-to-date format.
Aside from the fact that it stars a team of Los Angeles policemen whose cases are adapted from actual police files of the L.A.P.D.--though without that much-quoted claim, "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent"--Adam-12 is as different from Dragnet as most modern sons and their dads.
Friday and his sidekick Bill Gannon (the ever-dependable Harry Morgan) wore plainclothes and flashed their badges only when necessary. As Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, Martin Milner and Kent McCord ride in a cruise-car (code-named "Adam-12") and wear full uniform. Marty, for one, looks as though he'd been born in his--and just may be the only TV actor so completely natural that not even Jack Webb could impose on him the notoriously clipped, laconic Dragnet manner of speech ("just the facts, ma'am").
The result is faster dialogue and much livelier doings. In fact, there are several incidents interwoven into each outing, the "highlights" of a typical day's cruising. The whole feeling is more youthful--and not just because Reed is a rookie cop! (Incidently, McCord looks mighty good, too, and should be getting his share of fan mail.)
It's a good show, full of human interest; my whole family's glad Adam-12 is returning for a third season.
The same is true of Hawaii Five-O, over on CBS. Actually, we all yelled "yippee" when Jack Lord came back to TV to star in this hour-long series. This time, instead of the Western rodeo circuit of Stoney Burke, Jack is involved in what's accuratley labeled "police adventure," heading a special branch of the force in our 50th state.
Jack's sincerity always registers appealingly and he's surrounded by an unusually interesting cast: James MacArthur as his young assistant, Kam Fong and Zulu as other policemen, and Richard Denning as the Governor.
With its accent on unusual crimes and frequently violent action, Hawaii Five-O has been loudly criticized as not being exactly what the Chamber of Commerce ordered. Human nature being what it is, I'm willing to bet the filming of this series in authentic locations is a major tourist attraction by now. That scenery is really something to see! So are Lord and his pals.
However, if any top trophy is being awarded in this field, the honors will obviously have to go to Raymond Burr. Who else can claim to have either practiced law or enforced it throughout his TV career? Our Great Majority has been anything but Silent about its admiration for both long-running Perry Mason and still-running Ironside!.
