Review of
Dragnet: The Big Grifter,
season 7 episode 38 of the original series
Four out of five stars
The original police drama that was rather lowkey
It was always
fun to mock the statement, “The story that you are about to see is true, the
names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Yet, that was one of the
charming attractions of the original “Dragnet” series, the basic idea that it
was a true story. In most cases the crimes were so routine that the viewer
needed no persuasion as to the basis in truth. Signature characteristics were the
deadpan dialog, delivery and background music. There was also very little in
the way of actual violence and the crimes were generally solved by routine
police work combined with perseverance.
This episode
has a simple premise for the scam being played on the victims. The scammers
read of deaths and then go to the survivors and claim that the deceased had
ordered some gifts for them but had never paid. It is a simple scam, but the
crooks are just too greedy, passing off merchandise that is total junk. For
example, the watches have no internal mechanism.
Officers Friday
and Smith follow some basic leads until they catch one gang member. After some
obvious and simplistic hardball tactics, the man confesses and tells them about
the other gang members. From there, it is a straightforward act of playing one
against the other before Friday and Smith encounter the leader of the con
artists. In an act of going off the norm for the time, the boss of the crime
syndicate is some distance from the stereotype crime boss.
Like all “Dragnet”
episodes of the fifties, this story is not mentally challenging or has anything
in the area of modern police action. Webb keeps it all deadpan and even when he
gets “excited” you have to put it in quotes. This and all other episodes of the
original “Dragnet” are a lesson in the very early years of television when
people were making the principles up as they went along.
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