"Dragnet" and "NYPD Blue"

Paper Summary:

The 1950s era television series "Dragnet" and the current 1990s television series "NYPD Blue" would seem to have little in common aside from both being about police and police cases. In fact, the two shows are more closely related than that. The paper shows that "Dragnet" was the first television series to try to present the police in a realistic light, not as superheroes but as men and women doing a job. It discusses how "NYPD Blue" is a direct descendant of this effort, though the emphasis has changed greatly and the shows diverge widely in many different ways. The paper shows that the differences between the two shows reflect not just a different emphasis but also different social settings, different eras in television, different technical capabilities, different audience expectations and different levels of freedom.

From the Paper:

"NYPD Blue came on the air in 1993 and from the first challenged the boundaries of television and socially accepted behavior. The show followed a long line of police dramas of various types, from the more documentary-like dramas of Dragnet and Adam-12, to hero-oriented shows like Kojak or Hawaii Five-0, to various combinations. The guiding hand behind NYPD Blue was Steven Bochco (teamed here with David Milch). Bochco had earlier revamped the police drama form with his series Hill Street Blues, a show with an ensemble cast, completely fictional, but at the same time offering a sense of realism and grittiness that was different for televising. Hill Street Blues was set in a never-identified fictional Northeastern city, while NYPD Blue is set in the real city of New York and draws on the vitality of that city to infuse life into the form."

More papers on "Dragnet" and "NYPD Blue":

• Comparison Essay # 10150 : "Dragnet & NYPD Blues"
• Research Paper # 93738 : "Revivals of Dixieland and The Blues"

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