Highway Patrol

This is an unforgetable series. Broderick Crawford set the standard for toughness with a badge. Sgt. Joe Friday couldn't carry Dan Matthews socks...Broderick was tough, scary and that rapid fire dialogue is burned into the memory of anyone who even thought for a nano-second of being a cop and interrogating a suspect. This is an American legand. Long Live ZIV!

This series did for the California Highway Patrol what "Dragnet" did for the LAPD; i.e. established a mythology and a standard of professional conduct. I knew two retired CHP officers (both retired in the late 1960s) who loved this series. It is no small joke that in the Dan Aykroyd movie comedy Dragnet, Harry Morgan is watching "Highway Patrol" on TV when Aykroyd's character calls him on the phone. I, too, wish the old tapes had been saved for posterity.

The music. Do you remember the starting theme? It defined action, and a warning. Too bad the series isn't run more often. Very hard to find anywhere. It used to be on a local private station KOFY-TV 20 out of San Francisco, but our local service provider didn't want to use channel 20 anymore, so we lost out. I remember watching the series as a child in Seattle, and never missed a show. I now live next door to a CHP Officer and it's strange. A very nice family man, couldn't ask for better neighbors. My 2 nephews are now enrolled in the CHP Cadet Explorer program and I help them study the 10 codes. I'll never forget that opening music to "Highway Patrol". Those of you who have heard it, know what I mean.

I remember watching this series with great fascination as a youngster in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1962. We didn't have a TV set yet, but we looked at shop windows displaying TV sets. In Spanish it was called "Patrulla de Caminos". Although I can't give a current evaluation of its quality, I do remember liking this show much more than others. It's a great shame that America, who gave us so much quality TV doesn't appreciate it enough to show it to new generations. How else can vintage TV and films be "preserved" except by showing the stuff? There's too much fascination with new, with color and high resolution than with QUALITY. But even regardless of quality, exposure to "old stuff" has its own charm. Show the darned show, will you! And show "Mama" and "The Goldbergs" and "Our Miss Brooks" and all the golden oldies that I missed. I started watching TV on a regular basis at age 23!!! I need to catch up with the old shows I missed, and which are so much better than the recent ones.

"Highway Patrol" episodes are especially compelling because they are almost all action. There is very little talk. Compare it to "Dragnet," which is almost all talk and very little action. "Highway Patrol" episodes generally start with a crime, and when Dan Mathews and his team are called in, they snap to and get busy. There is no banter around the police station.

Part of this is because of the 30-minute format. There just wasn't time to set everything up. They had to use every minute to develop and resolve the story.

The compelling drama makes it hard to get up, even for a minute. I wish TV shows were still like this. "24" was like this, but just about every other crime drama wastes a lot of screen time with banter and nonsense.

Just about every episode of "Highway Patrol" is a good ride.