Dick Wolf has made a cottage industry out of being able to take a series concept and transform it into a franchise. It started with Law & Order, which expanded from its so-called "mothership” to include such spinoffs as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, the oft-forgotten Conviction, and Law & Order: Los Angeles. Then came the Chicago-verse, which features the trifecta of Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med, along with the short-lived Chicago Justice. And even though it's on CBS rather than NBC, don't forget about the FBI-verse, which began with FBI and has grown to include FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International.
These, of course, are far from the only series that Wolf has had a hand in creating over the course of his multidecade career — let me take a moment to shout out a little show called Mann & Machine, wherein he provided gainful employment for S. Epatha Merkerson prior to her long-running Law & Order gig — but when you examine that list of past programs, there's one that stands out as being not an original creation but an adaptation of an existing property: L.A. Dragnet, which has just popped up on Peacock for your streaming enjoyment … and, no kidding, it really is enjoyable.
Yes, it's a continuation of Jack Webb's classic cop show, Dragnet. Yes, it features the character of Joe Friday as its lead. This time, however, the role is played by none other than Ed O'Neill, caught at a moment in his career after Married … with Children but before Modern Family.
The average TV viewer likely didn't remember that O'Neill was actually better known for drama before stepping into the shoes of Al Bundy, but he gamely tried to return to those roots when Married … with Children wrapped its run in 1997, which led him to do the CBS crime drama Big Apple, co-created by David Milch. It only lasted eight episodes, but upon the competition of its run, Milch began to move forward with creating a western for HBO, and for the decidedly showy role of Al Swearengen, Milch reportedly had his eye on none other than O'Neill.
"It was written for me by David Milch," O'Neill told Bullz-Eye in 2009. "Because, y'know, Swearengen historically is from Chicago. And that kind of got pulled out from under me … but that's another story. And by the way, Ian McShane was fabulous and is a friend of mine."
Right about the same time as this disappointment, however, O'Neill unexpectedly found himself with the opportunity to take on the role of Joe Friday. It wasn't necessarily something he was thrilled about doing, for reasons we'll get to in a bit, but, as he told Bullz-Eye with a laugh, "Dick gave me an offer I couldn't refuse."
L.A. Dragnet ran for two seasons on ABC, premiering in February 2003 and concluding its run in December 2004, and while O'Neill played Friday from start to finish, the series underwent a shift in the cast between seasons. Although the initial instinct would be to blame something like this on behind-the-scenes tomfoolery from network executives, that doesn't appear to be the case.
In effect, the first season is basically a two-hander, starring O'Neill as Friday and Ethan Embry — that's right, his former costar in the early '90s John Hughes comedy Dutch — as Friday's partner, Det. Frank Smith. The second season, however, finds Friday working with a team of detectives, with the most notable of the bunch being Det. Gloria Duran, played by Eva Longoria in her first primetime series-regular role.
The biggest reason for the change seems to have been predominantly to take some of the pressure off of O'Neill, who — by virtue of the way the series was originally set up — needed to be in virtually every shot of every scene. (It's also worth mentioning that Embry's character was not among the new team of detectives, although that was a decision made by Embry, not by Wolf or the network.)
Although it technically ran for two seasons, there are only a grand total of 22 episodes of L.A. Dragnet, but if you're a fan of the Dick Wolf school of comfort-food TV, then you're looking at 22 episodes of good viewing. In fact, hand to heart, there are moments in the series — particularly during the first season — when you could close your eyes and swear that you're listening to an early episode of Law & Order. The dialogue, the delivery, the music cues … It's all instantly familiar.
The series also features a number of fun guest stars, including Kenneth Choi of 9-1-1 in what must surely be his first time playing a first responder, a pre-Breaking Bad Anna Gunn and Dean Norris, Zachary Quinto, Stana Katic, Corbin Bersen, Hamish Linklater, Dale Dickey, Gary Graham, Saul Rubinek, Sandra Bernhard, Joe Spano, and — perhaps most notably of all — Jon Polito in a speedo.
It's a shame that L.A. Dragnet didn't last longer, but it's definitely a series worth checking out now that it's back out there for streaming. And if you're curious to find out a bit more about how things were behind the scenes, well, we can oblige you on that front: I had a chat with Ethan Embry to discuss the series' ins and outs.
Will Harris: One of the great things about streaming services digging into the studio archives is that they're unearthing series that haven't been streamed in awhile … or, in some cases, ever. I know that L.A. Dragnet did stream on Hulu for a time, but it's been a long time since I've watched it.
Ethan Embry: It's been a really long time for me. [Laughs.] I have scattered memories of when we made that. Like, certain episodes pop out. There's that horrific one where the father killed his whole family ["The Cutting of the Swath"], and I remember the day we went to this Golf and Stuff that I had been going to since I was a kid, out in the San Fernando Valley. That was a strange day, because there was a mixture of my own personal memories and then doing a scene where I find a kid in a box!
The other thing I remember the most, too, now that I'm thinking about it — Because I haven't thought about it in awhile! But thinking back and going down memory lane, when we started the show, it happened pretty quick. It wasn't like other shows, where you do a pilot and then you wait around for a couple of months to find out if you're picked up and becoming a series. It went straight to series. Dick had a full 13-episode contract.
And when I got the job, we had two or three weeks before we went into production, and the technical advisor that they had was Bill Stoner, a legendary Los Angeles homicide detective and an absolutely lovely dude. He introduced us to the homicide division, and because of his introduction and approval … Okay, well, first of all, originally there was a different actor playing Joe Friday for the first episode.
WH: Yes, and I know who it was: Danny Huston.
EE: Yes, exactly. A lovely dude. An absolutely lovely dude. Incredibly talented, too. But the homicide department gave Danny and I pagers. And I told them, "I don't want to go to any scenes that involve women or children, but I'd like to see how they handle crime scenes and watch what they're like." Less seeing the crime scenes themselves, more to see what cops do at murder scenes. So we did.
We rolled onto the scene with the homicide detectives and watched them do their work, which … I've never seen anything like that since! Because homicide detectives, the things that they witness are so extraordinary. Especially in a city like Los Angeles, just after the '90s, when we were still dealing with gang wars. I think the first year we did Dragnet was one of the highest murder rates in a long time in Los Angeles.
So the things that they see — they become commonplace to them, but they're things that you and I just aren't prepared for. So to watch how they handle it, how they deaden themselves to a certain extent and make it just about their mission and doing the professional gathering that they need to do — it's crazy how they handle it. They're a special breed, homicide detectives.
Bill Stoner, by the way, wrote a book with James Ellroy. They were friends, and Stoner worked with him on My Dark Places, which was about the murder of Ellroy's mother. That's what drove him to be a crime writer. And Stoner helped him investigate the murder of Ellroy's mother.
WH: So Danny Huston was originally on the show and ... did he just choose to do something else? Do you know the story behind that at all?
EE: I don't know the specifics.
WH: I feel like I've read it, and it wasn't anything overly controversial. I just can't remember why it was.
EE: No, there was nothing controversial that occurred. Every reason that I would give would be pure speculation on the reason why it happened. I just remember that we had one more day of the first episode, and the lunch on the last day was taking longer than all the other lunches. And I went into set to see what was going on, and the word was, "We're shutting down, we're not completing the episode." And then later in the day, or maybe the next day, I learned that they weren't staying with Danny.
[Per an October 1, 2002 article in Variety, Huston issued a statement on the matter, saying, "Unfortunately things did not work out with me and the show, and I wish only the best to all of those involved with Dragnet." The article also cites unnamed "insiders" who suggested that Huston — then best known for his work in the film Ivans xtc. — was "less comfortable with the daily rigors of primetime TV."]
So we shut down for either a week or two, and at that point, I thought, "Okay, if they’re not staying with Danny, then that means they're not staying with me!" I was really young. That was, what, 2003? So I was in my early twenties. And I was, like, "Okay, well, now they're gonna realize that I'm way too young to be doing this." [Laughs.] But then I heard through the grapevine — I don't know how I heard it, but I heard that they were talking with Ed O'Neill about the possibility of doing it. So I wrote Dick [Wolf] a letter, and I told him, "I heard you're considering going with Ed O'Neill for Joe Friday, and he's an incredible dude, first of all, but I just wanted to put it on your radar that we do have good chemistry together!"
So I was actually surprised when I got to continue doing the show, but working with Ed again was really special for me. That guy … I mean, Dutch was my first large responsibility in a film. It wasn't my first role, but it was the first time that I was given a level of responsibility like that. I took so much from Ed, like learning set etiquette. So to be able to work with him again was awesome. Everybody knows him for his comedic stuff, but his dramatic work is so solid.
WH: Oh, for sure. When I mentioned on social media that I was going to be talking to you about the show, someone observed something like, "You have to respect Ed O'Neill for the fact that, even though he's best known for his comedy, not only did he play Joe Friday, but he also played Popeye Doyle!"
EE: Yeah, man, he's so thick! He was a theater guy when he booked Married … with Children, as I understand it. He was doing Mamet theater in New York as an understudy and booked Married … with Children. So working with him again was amazing. But it was a very hard show, Dragnet. That first season, there weren't any B-stories. It was the two of us, every single shot, every single scene.
WH: I talked to Ed for Bullz-Eye back in 2011, and he said that Dragnet "damned near killed me! I mean, that was 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, show after show, for a season and a half. I mean, life is too short to work like that. We worked like a fucking … I mean, it was like building pyramids!"
EE: Yeah, it was really hard. And some show environments, you can manage that. But because each scene was also at a different location … You know, the formula for the show was, we show up on a crime scene, we get our first clue, and we go to where that first clue is, we get another clue, and we're following these leads. Eventually we get back to the bullpen, and we have a couple of scenes at the bullpen, the interrogation or something like that.
But each and every scene was a different location, so we were not only going 14 shooting hours a day, which means we're there for 16 hours, but we were also moving an entire company across Los Angeles three times a day. It was a lot. And I was young, and … I could've handled the stress of it a lot better. During the show, I learned a lot about needing to monitor my own limits. I … didn't handle it well. [Laughs.]
And the reason why I'm not in that second season, when they came back and it became L.A. Dragnet and they added a lot of other characters to help take the weight off Ed … It was, like, "Let's add a lot more regulars, so then you can have side stories, and he doesn't have to be in every single shot of every single scene."
But in the second-to-last episode of the first season, when they introduced a woman detective … I had been skateboarding everywhere instead of driving my car, and I managed to do it successfully for over a year and a half, and then on that first day of that episode, we were rehearsing, and I was going to ride my skateboard from the location back to my trailer, and there was a little pile of sand and … I slipped and shattered my back leg. And Dick was maaaaaaad. [Laughs.] And rightfully so!
But they had to shut down, and I had surgery, and they did one episode without me. And then I cut my cast off so that I could slip my wardrobe boot over a splint, and I did scenes sitting in the office. And that was the end of it for me.
Dick did ask me to come back for the second season, in a more limited capacity. But I couldn't. It was just ... I loved it. But some shows … When a studio makes a show, you can kind of tell what their expectations are. How much they publicize it, how much they push you to be involved in certain activities. And ABC wanted it to be a No. 1 show. They put a lot of money behind the show, they put a lot of money behind the publicity. It was the first show for me where there were billboards all around, there were magazine covers. I had never been involved in something like that.
And then we premiered, it wasn't the super smashing success that they wanted it to be. Like, we held our own, but they wanted a No. 1 for the timeslot, and we were coming in second or third. So then they moved us, and … I remember the original timeslot was on a weekday, but then they moved us to after The Wonderful World of Disney, and an hour earlier. Because we had been in a 10 pm timeslot, because we were kind of risqué. But when they moved us to that earlier timeslot, I was, like, "This isn't gonna live." So I didn't come back for season two, and I take full responsibility for that. I was young, and I wasn't used to that amount of pressure.
One of the things I remember doing, because I felt like I owed Ed so much, and I knew that it was always us in every shot and every scene, the last scenes of the day we'd plan them out to do Ed's side first so that he could go scoot if it was possible and send him home 45 minutes early. So, yeah, Dragnet was an all-around good experience, just one that wrung me out. [Laughs.]
WH: You and Ed both, clearly.
EE: Yeah! I was very happy to see that he got the schedule of a half-hour comedy. It's so great, oh, my God. [Laughs.] Because even if it's not with a live studio audience, they still follow the sitcom shooting schedule a lot of the time, where they'll do three episodes, shut down for a week so the writers room can write the next three episodes. So you work for three weeks, you have one week off, you work for three weeks, you have another week off. And to see Ed go get an ensemble half-hour comedy that became a smashing success. He deserved it. He's a good dude, he really is.
WH: And to be fair, you found your way into an ensemble half-hour comedy, too.
EE: Yeah! Yes, I still miss the Grace and Frankie years, man.
WH: I can only imagine. What a cast!
EE: Yeah. The dudes on that, Martin [Sheen] and Sam [Waterston], just lovely. My favorite moments from that were sitting at the table reads. I think I got to do, like, maybe 85 or 86 episodes. I wasn't in all shows produced. I did 10 out of 13, so whatever that math is. So to be able to sit at 80+ of those table reads was amazing. Watching the four of them discover the comedy? Brilliant. Watching Lily [Tomlin] find where the laugh is, the timing. Like, "Oh, this is funnier if we put the comma here." Just a brilliant lady. And then sitting around, waiting to go in, sitting in Martin's trailer while he talks to Sam about their careers in the '70s and '80s … Just amazing. Really good people.
WH: As we start wrapping up, I just realized that I didn't ask you about Ed's reaction when he found out that he was going to be working with you again on Dragnet.
EE: You know, I wish I could tell you! [Laughs.] Because I think the first time we actually saw each other for it was going to work! And he's such a no-nonsense guy that he was just, like, "Hey! Hey, how are ya? Great to see ya!" Like, it really wasn't a big deal for him. It was a big deal for me! But for him, it was just, like, "Oh, hey! Let's do this!"
But that reminds me … On Grace and Frankie, our key makeup artist, Missy, she was the key makeup artist on Modern Family. And I had a day off and she had a day off for Ed's last day on Modern Family. And … do you know Mondo, the art company?
WH: I do. In fact, they did the vinyl release of the soundtrack for That Thing You Do!
EE: Exactly! [Laughs.] Well, I found a hand-drawn Dutch poster at Mondo that is just brilliant, and I grabbed two copies and brought it over to Ed on his last day at Modern Family. So I got to talk to him, and … I hadn't seen him since I broke my leg!
WH: Lastly, I made an observation about this online, but I found it so fascinating to watch Dragnet, because if you find any given segment of the show that doesn't feature a Joe Friday voiceover, if you're just listening and not looking at the screen, it is absolutely indistinguishable from an episode of Law & Order. The music, the line deliveries … Everything about it has that Dick Wolf stamp.
EE: Oh, for sure. I mean, the formula works, man!
