Nielsen's 'Police Squad!' was truly offbeat
Intrepid police investigator Frank Drebin (Leslie Neilsen, center) and his boss, Capt. Hocken (Alan North ), question the only witness (Kathryn Leigh Scott) to a double murder in their relentless pursuit of justice and a pretty girl - in the ABC Television Network's " Police Squad!" ( ABC) Credit: ABC Photo/
Briefly, back in 1982, there was a show on TV so funny that it was doomed. Too funny. Too clever. Too odd. Too wonderful. I speak, of course, of ABC's "Police Squad!," starring Leslie Nielsen, who died last Sunday at 84.
Produced by the same genius team behind 1980's "Airplane!" - Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker - "Police Squad!" was stuffed with even more sight gags, puns, misplaced modifiers and Nielsen malaprops.
Also helping make the show memorable was character actor Alan North, who played Nielsen's boss, Capt. Ed Hocken. For many years, North lived in Port Jefferson, where he died in 2000 at age 79. He was the perfect foil to Nielsen's Frank Drebin. (George Kennedy, of course, later played Hocken in the brilliant "Naked Gun" movies that sprang out of this.)
"Police Squad!" lasted only a few months, and it's instructional to note that prime-time TV was dominated at the time by "Happy Days," "Diff'rent Strokes," "The Jeffersons" and "M*A*S*H." "Police Squad!" was a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. (Not to be confused with "Square Pegs," another short-lived 1982 series that never got the props it deserved. But that's another story.)
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