| Filmed in Chicago, M Squad is my kind of cop show, with an authentic sense of place, a driving, brassy jazz score, shady characters with names like Johnny East Side, a captain feeling the heat from "downtown" ("They want the killer; they want him real bad"), and hard-boiled dialogue (Cop: "Where’d you get that money?" Suspect: "From the guy who had it"). Best of all, it’s got Lee Marvin in his breakout role as plainclothes cop Lt. Frank Ballinger, who works in M-Squad, an elite special division of the Chi-town police department. This 1957 series was as tough and no-nonsense as the City of Big Shoulders itself. As Marvin states at one point, "You can be subtle, or you can be plain." M Squad was plain. In the first episode, Ballinger takes stock of a case: "Armed robbery, murder, and three dead. Looks like my Chicago was fixing up with (more) hot hours for me." Ballinger is a conductor on the Straight Talk Express. In one episode, he counsels an unfaithful wife on what to tell her husband, "Tell him the truth. It's gonna hurt, but if it heals, it'll heal clean." Marvin is in his element as the unflappable Ballinger, whether glowering at the crime scene, or fluster a suspect with an unnerving smile. M Squad ranks with the best of TV noir, but it is perhaps best known today as the inspiration and template for Police Squad and the spinoff Naked Gun spoofs. It's hard to keep a straight face watching Ballinger exchange gunfire in the opening credits without thinking of Leslie Nielsen as Sgt. Frank Drebin. This 15-disc set contains all 117 episodes from the series’ three season run, as well as a bonus music CD of the original 1959 soundtrack featuring Count Basie’s great theme that made its debut in season two. M Squad offers ample opportunity for future star-gazing, with early appearances by Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy, Mike "Mannix" Connors, Don Rickles, and James Coburn. Picture quality varies from episode to episode, but that should not diminish the thrill of watching Marvin in action or dispensing such hard-earned street wisdom as, "The only people who return to the scene of the crime are the police." It’s great to have M Squad on the DVD beat. --Donald Liebenson More...
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