“JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM”?

How boring! By the 1970s, that seemed way too old-school a method for solving crime on TV. Jack Webb’s gruff, allbusiness Joe Friday retired his Dragnet badge in 1970, perhaps anticipating a decade that would be dominated by larger-thanlife detectives and colorful private eyes.they kept the peace and won the day through a combination of quirky personality and bold attitude, reflecting changing times yet somehow remaining timeless in our affections.

The detective mystery was to the ’70s what Westerns were in TV’S earlier decades: the dominant form of hourlong entertainment. They were so plentiful that some networks had to create “mystery wheels” (in which programs rotated in the same time slot) to contain them all.