Shirley, You Want This

There was a time when, if I'd told you the number one film comedy star in America would soon be Leslie Nielsen, you'd have had men with nets come and get me. Mr. Nielsen was the serious (too serious) star of TV shows like Bracken's World and The Bold Ones, and movies like Forbidden Planet and Tammy and the Bachelor.

But as it turned out, Mr. Nielsen had a wonderful, largely undisclosed sense of humor. Folks who knew him knew it but the public didn't. As I learned the few times I met him, that sense of humor was vast and rich, though it did have a special flair for fart gags. At the time, he was apparently never without a little plastic cylinder called a Handi-Gas. This is (or was — I don't think they still make them) a noisemaker that could emit the sound one is apt to make after a major feasting on Van Kamp's Pork and Beans followed by a Chili Malted. You kept the Handi-Gas casually concealed in your hand and then you squeezed it at just the right moment, simultaneously making some sort of body movement to suggest that the sound came from your orifice. (It would probably be simpler to just fart but that wouldn't be much of a trick now, would it?) The idea, I guess, was to see how much you could embarrass people around you by making them think you'd embarrassed yourself.

Or something like that. I'm not big on fart humor but I found Leslie to be a very funny gent in spite of his ominpresent Handi-Gas. I especially liked the deadpan way he'd carry a joke to extremes in Airplane or the "Naked Gun" movies. And I really enjoyed the short-lived TV series that came between them…Police Squad. I was working on another ABC show at the time and I witnessed a curious occurrence: Everyone at the network — or at least, everyone I knew — was simultaneously saying, "Boy, that's a funny show" and "God, we've got to get rid of that thing as soon as possible." The initial ratings were pretty bad but somehow, I guess because it was so different, there was an inexplicable urgency to terminate the series.

No one seemed to understand why the rush, even as they scurried to expunge it from the schedule. Every network airs some shows that hover at the bottom of the Nielsens. Sometimes, they don't have a replacement ready. Sometimes, it's simply cost-efficient to leave the low-rated show on while you find that suitable replacement. Sometimes, someone even says, "Well, let's give it a little more of a chance…maybe it'll find an audience." There is, after all, a difference between a show that's pulling low ratings because America has tried it and decided to watch something else instead…and a show that no one's even sampled.

The "give it more time" strategy occasionally pays off big and you'd think they would have tried it with Police Squad, since it was in the largely-untasted category and since so many people who did watch it loved it. But no…it had to go and it did. Fortunately, if you blinked and missed it, you can now order the Complete Collection (all six episodes) on a forthcoming DVD loaded with extras. Here's your link. Use it wisely.