MartinHafer "Police Squad" was one of the shortest lived television series in history...lasting a paltry six episodes. Looking at them now on the DVD collection, you wonder why. The jokes were hilarious and just what you'd find in the "Airplane!" and "Naked Gun" movies...which were made by the same folks who made the show. All that is obvious is that the network didn't have any faith in the program and just killed it. It's a shame...but other great shows have also failed...only to be discovered later (such as the movie spin-offs). So my advice is to go to Amazon.com or another site which offers the DVD and buy it. If you don't like it...you're probably dead.

Laszlo Szikla I have to admit, I really liked the Naked Gun movies (especially the third, which is a guilty pleasure of mine), so I was naturally curious about it's roots.If you've seen the Naked Gun movies, you know what is the basic premise of the show, which is basically a spoof of such TV series like Dragnet or The Streets of San Francisco. Also, most of the gags will be familiar too, as they were reused in the Naked Gun movies.As a spoof, this series works better than the movies. The acting is more serious, the situations are better, the gags are more subtle. A major problem of the Naked Gun movies is, that they loosed focus too quickly, and started to include situations that were out of place. Here a good balance is maintained. Leslie Nielsen's deadpan acting makes the jokes even funnier, and sometimes saves otherwise lame gags (like for example when Drebin talks to a widow about his marriage to another man). Of course it helps that Nielsen was not a comic actor originally, and he have not yet forgotten his roots at this point.Another actor that I feel I should mention is Peter Lupus as Norberg. I was never really satisfied with Norberg in the movies, probably because the stupidity of the character was really played up, although that stupidity was played convincingly by O. J. Simpson. Here Norberg is less stupid are more of a comic relief (if such thing is possible in a comedy), and Peter Lupus' comic delivery is perfect.Of course many people say that it was a crime to cancel the show after only six episodes, and to some degree I agree too. However, I think even these six episodes show, that the writers were running out of steam rapidly. Some of the running gags were becoming tiresome, most notably Johnny, the shoeshiner, a one gag character stretched out into six episodes. The last episode shows probably the best, that they were running out of ideas. Most of the episode is padded out by Leslie Nielsen doing a stand up routine, that is not particularly funny, and singing. Then the episode abruptly ends.So, in summary, Police Squad was a good show, it was a good parody, had some good acting, an unique kind of humor, and it was canceled probably at the right moment, before becoming dull and repetitive.Final verdict: 7/10

mmcsweeney 1. Describing a criminal suspect: "Married, one child....that didn't work out so he married a grown woman..." 2. Thug to the locksmith: "I'd hate to see something happen to your little keystore(pronounced 'keester'" 3. Ex con, wearing a jacket that says Penn State on the front: "Every time I turn around people are telling me who I am and where I've been!" He turns around and on the back the jacket says "State Pen" 4. Looking at a file on a criminal: "From what I gather, he was a model prisoner." Then he pulls out a glam photo of the guy posing like a model. 5. "I drove back to the station." Then they show Drebin driving his car backwards through town. 6. The whole exchange in the back with "Howie did it.", etc--like the Airplane witness stand exchange with "Over Macho Grande?" 7. To tall guy Al whose head is never shown, eating a banana: "You have something on the side of your mouth..." "Oh, thanks..." He moves his arm to get it off, and about half of the banana falls off to the floor. 8. Drebin trying to buff a newly made key on the machine, and it flies off the machine upward. You then see the ceiling and about 200 keys are stuck in the ceiling.

The_Movie_Cat Watching Police Squad! again it's a staggering reminder that Leslie Neilson was once actually funny. After spending most of the 90s and the new millennium challenging Steve Martin for the title of "smug, unfunny grey-haired guy of the year" and appearing in dire spoofs with no real wit, this is a real eye opener.The Neilson that appears in these episodes isn't a self-conscious and self-amused comic actor repeating his own schtick for the payday, it's a genuinely inspired send up of stiff TV detectives. Note that when the franchise got resurrected for the lacklustre Naked Gun movies Drebin became stupider and Neilson more of a self-parody rather than a parody of cop show leads.As well as Neilson then there's also the superb co-stars, and great sight gags that never get old, like the difference in the episode titles from narration to on screen. However, while it's always been regarded as a major error on the part of the studio to cancel the show after four episodes, I wonder if this is actually the case? Watching the fifth and sixth, initially unscreened, episodes, then it's clear the well is running dry already. The final episode in particular is the weakest of the run, and the over-reliance on surrealism breaks up the narrative. Suddenly it's no longer a silly-yet-funny send up of Dragnet and M Squad and rather just a linked together series of extreme sight gags. Even the nature of the show itself means that the scope for the series is inherently limited. Still, funny while it lasted... particularly those first four.