This is a good episode if you're interested in watching how a show develops from its inception, or if you like early TV in general. Typically these early TV shows have poor picture quality, and sometimes poor sound, but if you can get past those issues, these early episodes are a real treat.
The early episodes of Dragnet are quite interesting, though some, like this one, have flaws. The most serious flaw with this episode can be explained quickly, so I'll start there.
I have read elsewhere on the internet that when Actor/Director Jack Webb brought Dragnet to the small screen, he brought along most of the crew from the radio version of the show that had already seen several years of success. Few shows did so when making the leap from microphone to camera for fear that radio people couldn't work in a visual medium. Webb seems to have proved them wrong for the most part, but the failure of this episode stems from the maddening distraction of watching the actors' eyes follow cue cards. Almost all interactive shots are in close-up, and it's clear that the actor on screen is not actually looking at his costar; rather he is reading a cue card, and the producers apparently hoped that, given the perspective of the camera, they could make it appear that the actors were actually interacting. Perhaps given the poor quality of TV reception of the day, viewers wouldn't have been able to see the actors eyes moving back & forth.
Also the acting of the main suspect is, well, suspect.
Now that we've gotten the negatives out of the way, let's talk about what works in the episode. For a show that tried its best to keep "acting" to a minimum, with actors directed to keep voice inflection to a minimum, the first seasons featured some very arty camera work: close-ups of the suspect's hands nervously tapping a pencil on the table before him (the sound of which also appears on the tapes used to incriminate him), intriguing shots taken of the actors through the moving reels of the tapes, and overhead camera angles.
It's not surprising that Webb would show a flair for working behind the camera. On the radio, he was also on the cutting edge, as far as the production of the show went. He demanded the best scripts, and the best sound effects. As much as possible, he wanted the action to happen in the mind of the listener, rather than having a character describe what they see, which created awkward dialog (that's why the Lone Ranger had Tonto... so he wouldn't always be talking out loud to himself, so listeners could follow the action). On the radio Dragnet, I once heard a character walk into his office with the police officers, sit down at his desk, open the desk drawer and remove something, offer a cigarette to the officers, light his own, replace the cigarettes and matches to the drawer, close the drawer, put his feet up on the desk, and take a drag from the cigarette. The only dialog clue was, "Smoke?", "No, thanks" when he offered the cigarette to the officers. I didn't realized until after I had heard it that I had a complete movie going in my mind, and it all came from the sound effects.
The story for this episode is decent enough, and typical of the series of the time. The reason for the crime: a demanding wife who wanted to live beyond the means of the husband's current job... similar motives were occasionally given by confessing wrong-doers on the show during this period.
Compared to TV fare of the era, this episode rates much higher than a 6; but compared to the quality you're used to seeing from Dragnet, it's hard to give it much higher than that.
The early episodes of Dragnet are quite interesting, though some, like this one, have flaws. The most serious flaw with this episode can be explained quickly, so I'll start there.
I have read elsewhere on the internet that when Actor/Director Jack Webb brought Dragnet to the small screen, he brought along most of the crew from the radio version of the show that had already seen several years of success. Few shows did so when making the leap from microphone to camera for fear that radio people couldn't work in a visual medium. Webb seems to have proved them wrong for the most part, but the failure of this episode stems from the maddening distraction of watching the actors' eyes follow cue cards. Almost all interactive shots are in close-up, and it's clear that the actor on screen is not actually looking at his costar; rather he is reading a cue card, and the producers apparently hoped that, given the perspective of the camera, they could make it appear that the actors were actually interacting. Perhaps given the poor quality of TV reception of the day, viewers wouldn't have been able to see the actors eyes moving back & forth.
Also the acting of the main suspect is, well, suspect.
Now that we've gotten the negatives out of the way, let's talk about what works in the episode. For a show that tried its best to keep "acting" to a minimum, with actors directed to keep voice inflection to a minimum, the first seasons featured some very arty camera work: close-ups of the suspect's hands nervously tapping a pencil on the table before him (the sound of which also appears on the tapes used to incriminate him), intriguing shots taken of the actors through the moving reels of the tapes, and overhead camera angles.
It's not surprising that Webb would show a flair for working behind the camera. On the radio, he was also on the cutting edge, as far as the production of the show went. He demanded the best scripts, and the best sound effects. As much as possible, he wanted the action to happen in the mind of the listener, rather than having a character describe what they see, which created awkward dialog (that's why the Lone Ranger had Tonto... so he wouldn't always be talking out loud to himself, so listeners could follow the action). On the radio Dragnet, I once heard a character walk into his office with the police officers, sit down at his desk, open the desk drawer and remove something, offer a cigarette to the officers, light his own, replace the cigarettes and matches to the drawer, close the drawer, put his feet up on the desk, and take a drag from the cigarette. The only dialog clue was, "Smoke?", "No, thanks" when he offered the cigarette to the officers. I didn't realized until after I had heard it that I had a complete movie going in my mind, and it all came from the sound effects.
The story for this episode is decent enough, and typical of the series of the time. The reason for the crime: a demanding wife who wanted to live beyond the means of the husband's current job... similar motives were occasionally given by confessing wrong-doers on the show during this period.
Compared to TV fare of the era, this episode rates much higher than a 6; but compared to the quality you're used to seeing from Dragnet, it's hard to give it much higher than that.
