The eighth and final season of the original TV version of Dragnet finds former police sergeant Joe Friday (played by the series' producer/director Jack Webb) assuming the responsibilities of his new rank as lieutenant. Despite his promotion (which occurred at the tail end of season seven), Friday continues functioning as partner and best friend of his longtime associate Sgt. Frank Smith (Ben Alexander). During its eighth season, the series was moved from its familiar Thursday-night time slot to a Tuesday-night berth, in hopes of improving its ratings, which had been seriously flagging of late. Also, most of the season's episodes were lensed in color, rather than the traditional black-and-white (though currently existing prints have been struck in monochrome). The season began with an unusually powerful episode, "The Big Beating," in which the normally taciturn Joe Friday almost "loses it" when confronted with an unrepentant child abuser. Also above the norm was the Christmas episode "The Big Maria," which forsakes the usual Yuletide cheer to focus on a particularly brutal murder in a churchyard. And in the final episode to be telecast, "The Big Red," Friday goes undercover to trap a heroin dealer. Even if Dragnet had recovered its high ratings of yore during the 1958-1959 season (which it didn't), Jack Webb was determined to bring the show to a close, hoping to ease out of acting and focus on producing. In fact, two new Mark VII TV productions, Pete Kelly's Blues and The D.A.'s Man, joined Dragnet on the NBC schedule during this season. Things didn't turn out quite as planned, however, and by season's end, all three shows had been canceled. It would be nearly eight years before the phoenix-like Dragnet would rise with a new series of first-run episodes.
by Hal Erickson
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