Dragnet

Dan Aykroyd must have practiced for months to perfect his Jack Webb inflections for Dragnet. Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz's directorial debut (also written by Mankiewicz, along with Aykroyd, and Alan Zweibel) is a gentle spoof of the legendary '50s television police drama -- pitting '50s conservatism ...more

Tom Mankiewicz' amiable big-screen version of the long-running and immensely successful Dragnet series took a far more satirical and tongue-in-cheek tone than the original. Dan Aykroyd stars as the nephew of the inimitable Joe Friday as he goes after a shady religious cult with the help of irreverent new partner Pep Streebek Tom Hanks. Jack Webb, who produced the original Dragnet, played lead detective Friday, specializing in a kind of wooden non-acting that set the tone for a series whose ...more