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the odds, it works
Ed O'Neill pulls off a solid Joe Friday. Al who?
By Ethan Alter
ABC's revival of "Dragnet," airing Sunday at 10 p.m., has so much going against it that it's remarkable that the notoriously skittish network found the courage to air the series at all.
To begin with, the original "Dragnet" is frequently cited as one of the defining shows of the Golden Age of Television. Millions of viewers tuned in each week of its seven-year run to hear that classic theme song and watch Jack Webb intone the immortal line "Just the facts, ma'am."
In addition, executive producer Dick Wolf made the odd decision to cast Ed O'Neill, a.k.a. Al Bundy, in Webb's old role as the hard-boiled Joe Friday.
Last and most importantly, with so many cop shows currently polluting the airwaves, how could a new "Dragnet" even hope to be anything more than a series of warmed-over clichés and seen-it-before storylines?
Against all these odds though, Wolf managed to come up with a winner. This "Dragnet" isn't classic television by any means, but it's a surprisingly smart and compelling procedural drama that adequately fills the void left by the late, lamented CBS series "Robbery: Homicide Division."
That show always struck me as the true heir to the original "Dragnet's" mantle -- Tom Sizemore's steely-eyed gaze alone would have made Webb proud -- but Wolf has also done a very good job updating a program that, to be honest, hasn't aged particularly well.
The biggest difference between the two "Dragnets" is the level of violence in the new version.
No doubt to compete with the grisly scenes on display in "CSI" and his own "Law & Order" franchises, Wolf ups the intensity of the detectives' cases considerably.
In the premiere episode, for example, Friday and his young partner Frank Smith (Ethan Embry) are on the trail of a serial killer who rapes and butchers his victims, then sprays them with silver paint as a calling card.
Not only are we treated to several glimpses of the ravaged bodies, but at one point a forensic investigator casually slices off a victim's finger for evidence -- in close-up, no less.
These scenes would smack of sensationalism if Wolf weren't so good at drawing you into the investigation. With three "Law & Orders" in his portfolio, Wolf knows the genre, and his experience shows.
There's nothing particularly unique about the plot of this episode. It's just a solid detective story, well told, even if the ending wraps everything up a little too neatly.
Based on the first episode, one must believe that casting O'Neill was a stroke of genius on Wolf's part. The actor gives a terrific performance, burying any remaining vestiges of Al Bundy within the first five minutes.
O'Neill even manages to make his voice-over narration compelling, no small feat when you're reciting purple prose like "Serial killers are like viruses ... unless they're stopped, the host dies. In this case the host is the city and the toxin is fear."
As the inexperienced Smith, Embry isn't quite up to O'Neill's level, but he holds his own. The two actors share a nice rapport; you actually buy them as partners instead of strangers who just happen to work together. It's also great to see Lindsay Crouse back on television again playing the duo's boss. She and Friday are perfect complements, two world-weary souls who nevertheless are committed to fighting the good fight.
In a mid-season filled with many disappointments ("Miracles") and flat-out awful shows ("Queens Supreme"), "Dragnet" is a nice surprise: a modest, well-made series that more or less accomplishes what it sets out to do. And sometimes that's precisely the kind of television you're in the mood for.
January 30, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Ethan Alter is a New York writer and a frequent contributor to Media Life.
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