Police Squad!

Now there's a blast from the past. And you know what ? It still works most of the time. Had some really good laughs and you really can't afford to blink as there are so much things going on in every scene. Great word play, too. But there is also a lot of repeating of the same jokes in every episode. At two and a half hours you can watch this on a leisurely afternoon.

Before there was a Naked Gun, there was Police Squad! — a short-lived ABC comedy from Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers. The show follows Sergeant Frank Dreblin, Detective Lieutenant (played by Leslie Nielsen), as he investigates cases with a special unit of the LAPD. The comedy is hysterical; using a combination of sight gags, word play, and slapstick. Ahead of its time, the series also includes bits of meta humor; such as an unreliable narrator reading different episode titles than what appears on screen, fake freeze-frame gages at the end of the episodes, and killing the episode’s special guest star in the title sequence. However, the jokes are rather hit-and-miss and the writing is weak; as the stories are just there to setup the jokes. Yet despite its problems, Police Squad delivers a lot of laughs.