The ‘police procedural’ has a special place in our culture

I’m taking you back, back, back in time. It’s now 1958 and Australians are either watching 17-inch Astors in their loungerooms or taking group geeks at sets in shop windows.

Actors (L-R) George Mallaby, Jack Fegan, Leonard Teale and Les Dayman in the 1964 TV show Homicide. Picture: Supplied

I’m taking you back, back, back in time. It’s now 1958 and Australians are either watching 17-inch Astors in their loungerooms or taking group geeks at sets in shop windows. It’s a decade before Hector and Dorothy Crawford upgraded their wireless “police procedural”, D24, into our first big TV hit – Homicide, starring Leonard Teale.

In the US, network telly was off to a flying start with a semi-documentary cop show of its own. Its title? Naked City. Every episode ended with the statement: “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” And it seemed it would only be a matter of time until they’d told the other 7,999,999.

Each plot focused on a guest star – some famous, others awaiting their turn. And no TV show in history can challenge Naked City’s alumni. I can’t resist naming some names. Burt Reynolds. Robert Redford. James Caan. Jessica Walter. Rocky Graziano. Keenan Wynn. William Shatner. Eli Wallach. Jo Van Fleet. Akim Tamiroff. George C. Scott. Mickey Rooney. Ruth Roman. Aldo Ray. Alan Alda. Claude Rains. Burgess Meredith. Roddy McDowall. Walter Matthau. Viveca Lindfors.

Glynis Johns. Peter Falk. Kim Hunter. Sam Jaffe. Nina Foch. Hume Cronyn. Lee J Cobb. Theodore Bikel. Richard Basehart. Eddie Albert. Tuesday Weld. Jack Warden. Christopher Walken. Jon Voight. Brenda Vaccaro. Cicely Tyson. Rod Steiger. Rip Torn. Martin Sheen. George Segal. Telly Savalas. Carroll O’Connor. Leslie Nielsen. Vic Morrow. Robert Morse. Ed Asner. Martin Balsam. Orson Bean. Diahann Carroll. James Coburn. Sandy Dennis. Bruce Dern. Keir Dullea. Robert Duvall. Peter Fonda. Gene Hackman. Dustin Hoffman. Dennis Hopper. Jack Klugman. Piper Laurie. Diane Ladd. George Maharis. Marisa Pavan.

There were 8 million stars in the Naked City. These have been some of them.

I haven’t seen Naked City for over 60 years and presumed all the episodes had been lost. (Tragically, few old TV series – in the US, UK or here – have been preserved.) But I’m told quite a few are on YouTube.

(Peter Falk, who previously got a mention, would go on to star in Columbo. That show was a training ground for young directors including Steven Spielberg. I suspect the same applied to Naked City, but could only ID Jules Dassin. Perhaps a scholarly reader can help?)

Thus the “police procedural” was born, and went on to have countless children in the US, UK and everywhere else. Even the Crawfords’ local factory kept churning them out. Half a dozen by my reckoning.

In the US, only one genre came close in popularity in the era dominated by the networks before the tsunami of streaming. Sitcoms. In many ways more attuned to social change – indeed, they often hastened it. In the US, think Mary Tyler Moore and All in the Family. Or watch History of the Sitcom via SBS on Demand. Fascinating. Sitcoms are, you will be reminded, very serious things.

Once, we measured our lives with the milestones of movies. Since the 1950s it’s been more via TV series, latterly unreal “reality” shows. One changed history very much for the worst – Donald Trump in The Apprentice. I pray to the gods no one has preserved them.