The Return of Rex Hamilton

Re-watching Police Squad! (in color, of course) in the past few days, I was reminded how it set a standard for parody that’s rarely been matched. It’s also become infamous as an example of Executive Meddling Gone Wrong, as the show was cancelled after only six episodes.

What we also learnt was that if you’re going to do this kind of thing, do it right. At the time (1982), the writer/production team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker were hot from the success of Airplane! from two years previous. Casting Leslie Nielsen, who had been the standout actor from that film, as the ultra-deadpan Frank Drebin was inspired – previously a serious character actor, he carried over those mannerisms into the farcical world of Police Squad! Alan North was also excellent as Captain Hocken, the boss of the department.

Also turning up were Peter Lupus as the Officer Norberg, who gets a bit too involved in his undercover role as a keystore salesman ("can I interest you in our holiday gift pack?") and Ed Williams as Ted Olsen, the lab expert whose slightly dubious experiments are frequently interrupted by Drebin.

You have to wonder if anybody else but Nielsen could have delivered a line such as "Ed and I drove around for hours for no particular reason. We came up empty" without it coming across as a piss-take. Instead, such lines are presented as if they should be high-drama. The lack of a laugh track also helps create an atmosphere of Drebin going diligently about his work, checking his sources (the regular appearances of Johnny the Shoeshine Gun always crack me up, particularly when a passing priest pays for "information" on life after death: "are you talking existential being, or anthropomorphic deity?").

Not that you would be aware of any of this from the somewhat awful DVD cover that the series comes wrapped in, which presents the show as being far more straight-forward than it is. Still, we should be grateful for it at all after years of the show being available through occasional TV repeats. Extras on the DVD include a ten minute interview with the late Leslie Nielsen, who comes across as an avuncular old guy that reminded me of my mischievous granddad.

As for Police Squad! itself, the ratings didn’t hit the mark and the show was cancelled after half a dozen episodes. Legend has it that the complaint was that "you had to watch it" to get the laughs due to the large number of background gags and clever wordplay. For an example of the latter, check out the Jim Fell/Ralph Twice routine.

Later, the Zuckers and Abrahams would say the show’s cancellation was a blessing in disguise, as maintaining the standard of the original run would have been impossible. Perhaps true, but my feeling is that if it had been made in Britain, creating six episodes per series every few years would have been more than doable.

Instead, the characters and best jokes turned up again in The Naked Gun, though the roles of Hocken and Norberg were given to the more high-profile George Kennedy and OJ Simpson, perhaps the latter being a mistake in hindsight. The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to the sequels. If you’re into this kind of thing, however, you’ll not do much better than to pick up a copy of Top Secret, an excellent spoof of Cold War spy films starring Val Kilmer on top form and showing the singing skills that may have got him the nod to play Jim Morrison. Whether he might regret that one or not is up to you to decide.