Police Squad!

One night I was listening to talk radio and they had Leslie Nielsen on the program. He went on to explain why there were only 6 shows. '

With TV shows like MASH you could go to the fridge to get a beer and as long as you heard what was going on you didn't miss anything. But with Police Squad, you HAD to watch the show, with the sight gags you missed a whole lot if you didn't see them. Who could forget "... the part of town known as "Little Italy"..." with the coliseum in the background.

Even the movies relied heavily on the sight gags, but then again being in the theater you were a captive audience.

Leslie also said the one reason the show, movies and other movies like Airplane were funny is because they didn't attempt to tell what was funny. It was up to the viewer to get the jokes.

Well that's just my 2 cents.

Endlessly Hilarious! I taped the first 5 shows years and years ago, and every so often I go back and watch them, and still they are as funny as they were the first time. In fact, there are so many sight gags and whatnot, that you will miss a lot of them the first few times you watch the shows! I see something new every time!! Absolutely hilarious, even more so than the films. Several of the gags are used repeatedly ("Cigarette? Yes it is", or the midget cop who is the intercom), but still manage to be funny each time. Too bad they didn't have Johnny the shoeshine guy in the movies. I wish I had the 6th show!!!

Highly recommended if you liked the Naked Gun or Airplane movies.

This was a funny show. It had an "Airplane!" flavor to it and it parodied the Quinn Martin Productions shows that were popular in the 60s and 70s ("The Streets of San Francisco", "Barnaby Jones", "Cannon", etc). If you're familiar with these shows, they all had the same type of beginnings; Same announcer who would go through the starring cast, that night's guest stars, special guest stars (if any) and the name of "tonight's episode". As well as the on screen act numbers and the epilogue after commercial breaks.

It was everything like "Airplane!", in the sense that you had to watch the show to see the gags and other hidden gags that were in the background along with the verbal jokes and gags.

It was a shame that only 6 episodes were produced, since this was one of my favorite shows. Unlike "The Naked Gun" movies, although funny, the problem with those movies were, the show lampooned QM Productions shows, it was probably hard to transfer that to the big screen. It just didn't have the same feeling to it as the tv show.

This was a truly unique show. Many of the comments in this section regret that there were only 6 episodes made. But to be honest, the show used so many jokes per episode, I don't see how they could have gone too much further without running out. The great thing about this show is that every one who watches it has a favorite one-liner that they remember, and like to repeat. One could say the same thing about the movie "Airplane". There are so few things that are really original, especially in television, the medium that thrives so much on imitation of previous success. So the time has come for this limited series to get its chance on DVD. But not just another release. Visualize this. The show did such a good job of satirizing police dramas from M Squad to the QM series, that the DVD should do the same this for DVD special features. In short, the DVD release should have all the usual special features, but they would all be send-ups of special features. Now that would make for a great DVD release of this great show.

...a burlesque dancer to Det. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) as he approaches her in a dressing room...

"Yes, that's very impressive, but that's not why were here"...(Det. Drebin's deadpan response)

The best sight-gag comedy ever. But of course, it got crushed in the ratings and was yanked right away. Our loss.

I recently purchased a VHS tape with three episodes for my dad and watched 'em again with him. I'm happy to report that if you like the Zucker's style of humor (first unleashed in "Airplane"), you'll have a blast.