Police Squad! The Complete Series

In a way, though, Police Squad! may have been well-served by its abbreviated run. Even with a collaborative team that included director Joe Dante and gag writers Pat Proft and Robert Wuhl, how many more weeks could creators Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker have concocted the dozens of visual puns (like the Japanese garden stocked with actual Japanese people, standing in flowerpots) and random absurdity (like the roast-beef carving station next to the coffeepot in the squad room) that Police Squad! required? Sure, every episode followed a rigid format, including Nielsen's deadpan voiceover, a "Who's On First"-like exchange between Nielsen and his partner Alan North, a few recurring characters (like the ridiculously in-the-know shoeshine boy and the so-tall-he's-out-of-frame detective), and a concluding fake freeze-frame. But even with that, ZAZ and company had to come up with real crimes and real solutions, since part of what made Police Squad! work is that it was so foursquare.

This was something the Police Squad! team gradually forgot, and by the end of The Naked Gun movie series, Nielsen often reacted too broadly to the weirdness going on around him, effectively killing the joke. Here, though, at his comic peak, Nielsen delivers every word with utmost sincerity, including the recurring line that applied to the way ABC treated Police Squad!: "They ran him out of town like a common pygmy."

Key features: An insightful Nielsen interview, plus chuckly commentary tracks by the ZAZ-ers.