3/4/1982 Police Squad!

March 4, 1982.  Sad but true fact about television: you can't assume the people watching it are actually watching it.  Maybe they are knitting, or reading, or doing God knows what, and just using their ears to follow what's going on on the tube.  That may have been what doomed Police Squad!, one of the funniest shows that ever lasted a mere six episodes.

It was full of scenes in which the main cops, Leslie Nielsen and Alan North, would be gravely discussing the crime investigation while utterly bizarre things went on around them.  For example, in one episode they were chatting in an elevator in the police station.  A woman in a bathing suit gets in on one floor and, at the next she dived out, straight into a swimming pool which happened to be just outside the elevator.  Neither of the cops found this particularly noteworthy.  And the half-asleep viewers missed it too.

Each episode began with a Special Guest Star being murdered, never to be mentioned again in the story.

Fortunately the producers, same folks who created Airplane!, recycled the idea as the Naked Gun movie series.  And in theatres, people were watching.