Lileks has been running through the later, color version of the program for a while now, which probably inspired me to buy a couple of the older television program’s DVDs in August. And I popped the first of them in recently–I say “the first” because it’s the first I watched–they do not appear to be numbered at all.
This DVD has four episodes. In one, a shoplifter is hitting shops on Wilshire Boulevard: A middle-class kleptomaniac! In two, a hit and run driver kills a grandmother and hurts a boy. Is it the delivery driver with a taste for liquor or a counterman at an evening diner? In three, a baby is abandoned at a bus station, but the woman who found the baby, the wife of a man who has been stationed overseas for over nine months might not be telling the truth. In four, a couple of little girls are kidnapped by a, you know, and were not killed because he’d lost his pocketknife.
So, about the technical bits about the storytelling. Many were adapted from radio dramas, and it would show if you knew what that meant or might mean. That is: the shows have a bunch of narration over stockish shots or filmation with no talking and a couple of scenes with characters talking shot in tight rooms with lots of closeups. Kind of like what you’d see or expect from a movie based on a stage play.
Second, these programs were on television in the beginning of the 1950s, and the themes echoed on to the 1980s when I was growing up and beyond. So if you’re reading literatureem> and thinking about how things were not terribly different from 1770 to 1850 or whatnot, you can do the same with the themes from this program and the 70 years since, I reckon.
Two ackshullys, one wrong, and one right:
- Right: The back cover mentions It spawned a movie version in 1987 with Dan Ackroyd. Ackshually, that was spawned from the 1967-ish revival, as Harry Morgan plays the same character in each.
- Wrong: On Tuesday, Lileks mentioned a “What’s My Line” with William Schuman, the President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and composer, and Lileks said he’d never heard of him. Ah! But I prepared a “Of course you have” post about the theme of Dragnet. Ah! But that was Walter Schumann, I realized after I hit Publish, but fortunately RSS is not a thing and I was not caught up. Forgive me, Internet. Also, note that I confuse bathos with pathos, too, especially when keeping up with Lileks lately and thinking therefore but the grace of God and maybe a little while go I.
I guess I have three more DVDs in the line (50s Dragnet) to watch along with the remainder of the complete first season of The Twilight Zone (and a couple of other random episode discs) to make my way through. But someday, maybe soon, maybe not. Why rush things and eliminate all the suspense from my life which is not the real suspense of my life, which is every day if I want it?
