Police Squad! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLXyC1cuN3M
Drebbin: Did the deceased have any enemies?
Deceased’s wife: Well, the Democrats didn’t like him.
Police Squad was my favorite of his comedies. A precursor to the Naked Gun movies, it only lasted 6 episodes and was cancelled for low ratings. Viewers flipped past the channel thinking it was a serious police show.
Leslie brought a lot of happiness.
I had recently watched both “Police Squad” and “The Naked Gun” on DVD and they both came with an audio commentary by the writer/producers. Nielsen was signed to do Airplane! because he’d done so many serious roles (much like Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges) and it turned out he loved being a ham. So when the Airplane! producers were looking for a lead for Police Squad, they went to Leslie who was thrilled to do more of the comedy spoof genre.
What was funny was that when the producers tried to cast The Naked Gun, the studio did not want Peter Lupus in the role of Nordberg (he was Nordberg on Police Squad) because they thought he looked too nice - more like a male model than a cop. So they suggested O.J. Simpson. The studio told the producers that Simpson “looked like someone who could be violent if he had to”. Little did they know then...