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dragnet tv retro free downloads of elisodes DRAGNET Radio Shows – Free to Listen or Download. Dragnet, the brainchild of Jack Webb, may very well be the most well-remembered, and the best, radio police drama series. From September, 1949 through February 1957, Dragnet’s 30 minute shows, broadcast on NBC, brought to radio true police stories in a low-key, documentary style. Dragnet was a long running radio and television police procedural drama, about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from an actual police term, a Dragnet, meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects. Dragnet was perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in American media history. The series gave millions of Americans a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of real life police work. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers. The ominous four note introduction to the brass and tympani theme music, titled Danger Ahead, is instantly recognisable as well as the shows opening narration: “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” [amazon_link asins=’B01C45OHKC,B004IB04S0,B000094YTQ’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’zonwebsea-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’f5f8f0aa-b973-11e8-9fc9-f3bb8fb515be’] The original Dragnet starring Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday ran on radio from June 3rd, 1949 to February 26th, 1957; and on television from December 16th, 1951 to August 23rd, 1959, and from January 12th, 1967 to April 16th, 1970. All of these versions ran on NBC. There were two Dragnet feature films, a straight adaptation starring Jack Webb in 1954, and a comedy spoof in 1987. There were also television revivals, without Webb, in 1989 and 2003. episodes of Dragnet. Jack Webb at the NBC mike Unmistakeable theme. Unmistakeable voice. Unmistakeable style. Dragnet was such a bombshell -- "the true story of your police force in action" -- that it is hard to appreciate the original impact so many decades after it first premiered (June 3, 1949 on NBC). Today, realistic police procedurals are the rule. In '49, shows like "Boston Blackie" or "Broadway's My Beat" were the norm, and while they certainly convey the flavor of the period in which they were produced, "realistic" is not a word you would apply. Dragnet was a different combination: from the "actual police files" that the Los Angeles Police Department provided as inspiration for the scripts, to the low key dialogue and underplayed line readings, to the hyper-realistic sound effects and Walter Schumann's phenomenal musical theme. Jack Webb truly created a new mature style for the radio drama. It was so recognizably unique that it only took a few years before it was the stuff of spoofs by comedians like Stan Freburg. Dragnet lasted on radio from 1949 to 1957, although the TV version took most of Webb's attention starting in 1952. How much did Dragnet enter public consciousness? Even today, kids who've never heard nor seen the show, still recognize those opening "Dum- de-dum-dum" musical notes. Dragnet tv / retro free downloads of elisodes. A lot of us grew up watching the 1967-1970 revival of Dragnet , either first-run or in syndication. It’s known informally as “the color Dragnet,” to differentiate it from the black-and-white original, which aired from 1951 to 1959. Both incarnations were NBC shows. (Radio buffs will scowl and remind you that the true original Dragnet was the radio series, and they’re right, but let’s stick to TV.) “The color Dragnet” is a pretty good show overall. Episodes from the first one-and-a-half seasons are often terrific. The third season falls into a rut of showcasing tedious police administrative procedurals, but the show recovers somewhat afterward. And of course, even if a particular episode isn’t anything special, you still get to enjoy Jack Webb’s performance as Sgt. Joe Friday, with that voice of his and the way he delivers his lines. So yes, it’s a pretty good show, but what’s really good is the black-and-white original Dragnet . It’s got a very film-noir feel to it, full of dark nights, heavy shadows, staccato dialogue, fedoras, overcoats, dangerous losers and cynical dames. The Sgt. Friday of these years is lean, terse and somewhat haunted. He can relax a little bit while bantering with sidekick Frank Smith (Ben Alexander), but soon it’s right back to the exhausting grunt work of a police detective: following up on leads, dealing with dullard civilians and surly punks, and piecing together a case, one clue at a time. And the cases are often very grim. There are rapists and violent psychotics on Dragnet , even child molesters. Many episodes in the early years recycled the superb radio scripts of James Moser, which lost none of their impact in the transition. There’s stark, dramatic lighting and unusual overhead camera shots. It’s very compelling television. Dragnet was one of the few hit radio dramas to become even bigger on TV, placing in the Top Ten throughout most of its first six seasons (not surprisingly, it was especially popular in its home base of Los Angeles). A Warner Bros. movie version was also a hit, arriving pretty much right at the peak of Dragnet mania in late 1954. Things began unraveling three years later. Maybe audiences felt the show was getting a bit stale. Certainly, Webb himself was getting a little winded by this time. Besides starring in every episode, he was producing and directing them as well, while developing other film and TV projects on the side. In spite of a very strong lead-in (Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life , the most popular Thursday show of that 1957-58 season), Dragnet ’s ratings began falling steadily. It was beaten in its timeslot by ABC’s The Real McCoys , prompting a move to Tuesdays the following season. But even more viewers were lost, and Webb turned in his badge. Dragnet was over, at least in prime time, but the show was already a staple of the syndication market, and would remain so well into the 1960s, under the title Badge 714 . Oversaturation is as good an explanation for the show’s demise as any, but it should be noted that by the time these later seasons were produced, the well of old James Moser radio scripts had run dry. Given Dragnet ’s popularity and prestige, why hasn’t it been given an official DVD release? Unlike the fabled anthology shows of the era that were aired live, Dragnet was shot on 35mm film. So why doesn’t someone just transfer it to video? That’s a question I’ve been asking for years, and I’ve been given different answers. I’ve heard that it’s a simple matter of no one having gotten around to it yet, but that’s ridiculous. Dozens of Dragnet episodes never had their copyrights renewed, and some people believe that ’s why no one’s produced an official DVD release — after all, why spend a lot of money restoring public domain shows for DVD when anyone could legally copy your work and sell it themselves? But official releases of the early seasons of One Step Beyond and The Beverly Hillbillies have come out— material that’s largely public domain— so why can’t that be done with Dragnet ? Michael J. Hayde, in his book My Name is Friday (2001), says that “the negatives have been placed in storage,” but if so, nobody seems to be able to find them. I’ve heard that one of the more prominent video labels has tried to do a comprehensive release of the show, but that the project blew up on the launch pad when very little quality material could be obtained. The bitter truth is that most of Dragnet is missing. Like Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight , it’s simply lost, possibly forever. Many of you will scoff at that notion, since people like to think that every movie and show ever produced is resting patiently on a shelf somewhere. That’s just not the case. In 1953, Jack Webb and two partners sold the Dragnet franchise to MCA, the company whose Revue subsidiary was a prodigious producer of prime-time TV material. Revue’s stuff was filmed at Universal’s movie studio, and in the course of time MCA gobbled up Universal as well. Today the amalgamation is known as NBCUniversal. For years, there’s been some confusion about what this means for Dragnet . Universal has a very spotty record when it comes to preserving the camera negatives of its vintage TV material. Timeless has released many of these shows on DVD— everything from M Squad to State Trooper to Medic — which had to be mastered from 16mm collector prints rather than the far-superior original elements, because no one at Universal can seem to find them. In case after case, Universal has retained the rights, but not the negatives. (In this case, Universal also forgot to renew the copyrights on dozens of episodes.) There are a number of explanations for why this is so. Simple incompetence is one. The sheer size of the company’s holdings is another. And accidents do happen. Vault fires have destroyed more material than incompetence ever did, and Universal had a devastating one as recently as 2008, though the 35mm elements for Dragnet seem to have gone missing well before then.

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