Orange is the New Black.

The IT crowd. Good, harmless, british nonsense.

You watching BB on Netflix Fartz?
Last night: Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan and the White Queen. Football most of the day earlier.

I really groove on the Dragnet. Jack Webb's stick in the ass walk, how criminal types are so hostile to each other and how the even the dirtiest of hobos wears a coat and tie. And the revolving cast of maybe 15 guest civilians and criminals.

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.

Alright, with Breaking Bad ending here so soon, I needed something else to chew on.

So I've started watching The Wire. Yeah I know, I'm 10 years late, but whatever.

I'm pretty sure there was a Christmas "child Jesus" on Adam 12, too. Trini Lopez as the priest. He also pulled duty as the priest trying to keep a cholo war from breaking out. For some reason I remember him being a parole officer on Dragnet.

I was 4 in 1969, but I can't imagine how scared how your average working their ass off middle class person had to be watching their society fall to shit. You can almost taste the desperation and panic in a lot of the counterculture scripts.

Adam 12 was more free flowing. Mostly little vignettes with a wrap up at the end. Or not. Most weren't working one case, like the Dragnet formula. But they were street guys having to deal with bikers like the Monkee's Mickey Dolenz and people that open fire during traffic stops. The amount of gunplay was outrageous. Popping some hippie in the back that's running away from a pot deal was perfectly acceptable.

Let's not forget the other Webb vehicle Emergency. In depth look at the real lives of paramedics. It's on after the Dragnet/ Adam 12 block. I loved it as a kid, but I have no interest now. Too much hanging in the kitchen at the station.

Honestly I love the back and forth of Dragnet. It's such a full package of overacting and poorly written but incredibly sincere dialog.

Let's not forget the other Webb vehicle Emergency. In depth look at the real lives of paramedics. It's on after the Dragnet/ Adam 12 block. I loved it as a kid, but I have no interest now. Too much hanging in the kitchen at the station.

The girl that came to Hollywood to be an actress but could only do a porn. She killed herself of course. It shows the seedy porn underworld of middle aged renegade photo lab guys wearing sweaters.

Randolph Mantooth (Gauge) spent several years on the original "Battlestar Galactica." Not a bad springboard.