Jack Webb made Dragnet into an annuity for himself. It started on radio in the late 1940s and was a very different kind of cop drama for its time. It was on TV/radio in the 1950s and was very successful. He brought it back in the late 1960s to address the scourge of marijuana and LSD with the youth. The irony was that Jack Webb didn't make to 65 as he was a heavy smoker and drinker. Maybe he should have backed off of the booze and took a toke once in a while.

In the early 1980s, he was going to bring it back again, with Adam 12's Kent McCord (Jim Reed) as his partner this time as Harry Morgan was still doing his Colonel Potter thing on M*A*S*H, but he died before that could get going.

He recycled some scripts. I remember one Christmas Eve catching the "child Jesus" episode on TV. Later that night on the radio, there was "old time radio hour" show that ran the "child Jesus" radio episode. It was the exact same script with some different actors, but some of the same -- no Harry Morgan obviously.

There were two feature films both of which show up on cable occasionally. One from 1954 with Stacy Harris as the bad guy. He played several bad guys on the 1960s series version. I think it had much of the regular 1950s cast.

I would like to see the 1950s version, apparently it was harder-edged than the 1960s version. It was very successful, I am surprised none of these retro stations have ever ran it.

There was the pilot movie Dragnet 1966 for the 1960s series shown during the middle of the 1960s series with Vic Perrin (another 1960s series regular bad-guy) as a woman abducting rapist-murderer.

It makes me sad to see that horrible Dan Aykroyd movie listed on the cable box. I know he was trying to make a homage to a favorite show but Christoper Plummer is no Stacy Harris or Vic Perrin. Tom Hanks is worthless in that movie.