Dragnet: Season 3 [4 Discs] [DVD]

Airing on NBC, Dragnet 1967-1970 was the second run of the highly popular Dragnet TV series. The show focuses on two detectives - the no-nonsense Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and hard-nosed Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) as they track down criminals throughout L.A. Each case was said to have been pulled from actual cases from the L.A.P.D. files. Stories paid careful attention to realism, and had numerous twists before the criminals were finally arrested at the end of each show. Dragnet remains the prototype for TV police dramas and the standard by which they are judged. The series is also notable for being the first time a cancelled network series was successfully revived.

TV historians may recall that the televised version of actor-producer Jack Webb's police drama Dragnet actually materialized twice - once from 1952-59, and again from 1967-70. The second version placed a much stronger emphasis on non-criminal subplots, such as community service and outreach to citizens in danger; its premises were also occasionally characterized by subject matter associated with the late 1960s, such as LSD abuse and other extremes of counterculture life. Season three of the program (titled Dragnet '69) appears in its entirety in this box set, that includes all 26 episodes as originally broadcast on NBC. These installments include: Frauds: DR-36, Vice: DR-30, Juvenile Division: DR-19, and Administrative Vice: DR-29.