With the run of movies being made from successful TV series, there are some films that are made from failed series that people forget about. The Naked Gun trilogy of movies was extremely successful, more successful than the TV series that it was based on. After doing the comedy classic "Airplane" the same team of producers put together this show about the daily work life of a big city detective.
Detective Frank Drebin, with the help of his Captain Ed Hocken, work on some of the city's toughest criminal cases in their own quirky and misunderstood way. Leslie Nielsen as Drebin is wonderful in the role, this series just reinforces the idea that he makes a better comedian than a drama actor. The sight gags and puns that are in abundance throughout the show drive the stories to their hilarious conclusions. Setting up each episode just like a police series from the 70s, each show has a guest star, who unfortunately is killed off in the opening credits. The other thing that is from the older shows is the use of the freeze frame ending, but here there is always something wrong and the freeze doesn't affect everything, or everyone, in the shot.
The show itself only lasted six episodes but the comedy that was on displayed for the audience to watch was ahead of its time, who would have known that years later it would be included in an ever expanding genre. I hadn't seen some of these episodes in years, and after watching them you can see that almost all of the jokes from the series was recycled into the movie series. This show is one of the reasons that I love the DVD sets for TV series, most of the time a show like this would have just fallen into obscurity but with a set like this a whole new generation of people, including people who were alive at the time of the show, are able to experience the joy and laughter of a series that created a huge movie trilogy of comedy.
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