The story you are about to hear is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dragnet came from Jack Webb's belief that the actual investigation process was plenty dramatic and that the melodramatic trappings common to detective shows weren't really needed. Realism would be the hallmark of the series, using LAPD case files and proper police terminology. Implausible exposition in the dialogue was nonexistent. Dragnet also used cases that radio previously wouldn't have touched with a ten foot pole, such as child killings and sex crimes. The show ran 1949-1957, with Webb as Joe Friday throughout. His partner Ben Romero was played by Barton Yarborough until his sudden death in December 1951. For the rest of the season, Friday's partner was Ed Jacobs, played by Barney Phillips. At the beginning of the next season and staying to the end was Frank Smith, played by Ben Alexander.

.22 Rifle for Christmas

A couple of boys have turned up missing. Foul play is suspected when traces of blood and a spent .22 cartridge are discovered.

Review: An ending which leaves a bit of a sick feeling in one's gut. However, it's a refreshing change from the syrupy sentimentality common to Christmas episodes.- Webmaster

Attempted City Hall Bombing

See The Big Bomb.

Auto Burglaries

Ben Trounsel--Narcotics

A police informant is killed, and Friday and Romero have to find out why he had high-grade heroin in his pockets.

The Big .38

Friday and Romero investigate a string of robberies done by a man using a taxicab as a getaway car.

The Big Affair

Friday and Romero pursue a highly organized and extremely violent jewel thief.

The Big Almost No Show

Friday and Smith go looking for a missing person- and find his corpse stuffed inside a Murphy bed.

The Big Badge

Friday and Romero are out to stop a rapist posing as a cop. It doesn't help that the perp made it personal by running their car off the road.

The Big Beer

Friday and Smith investigate the death of a night watchman at an appliance factory.

The Big Betty

Friday and Romero are out to stop a ring of "sympathy chisellers" who have been collecting money on cheap goods they claim were ordered by the late relatives of their victims. Notable for a scene in which Friday really loses his cool with one suspect.

The Big Bible

It looks like a clear case of suicide in a locked room for Friday and Smith- until something that shows up in the autopsy points to murder.

The Big Bid

When a clothing store is robbed of $12,000 in suits, Friday and Smith have to figure how the burglars managed to lift the merchandise.

The Big Bill

Friday and Smith investigate the rather sudden disappearance of an elderly woman who runs a tea shop.

The Big Bindle

Friday and Romero work on infiltrating a heroin ring that is operating from one of L.A.'s swankiest hotels.

The Big Bird

Friday and Smith are investigating a string of burglaries with a disturbing M.O.: the burglar has been strangling the pet birds of his victims.

The Big Blast

A woman is murdered with a shotgun in the same room where her seven year old son slept, and Friday and Romero are out to find her killer.

The Big Bobo

Friday and Smith are out to catch a crooked cop who's been accepting bribes to perform certain "favors" to get felons out of prison.

The Big Bomb

Friday and Romero have to take out a man who is threatening to blow up City Hall if his brother isn't released from prison.

The Big Book

A pornography ring is targeting high schools to sell their filth, and no one knows where it's originating from. Friday and Romero soon discover it's the last place anyone would suspect…

The Big Bop

Friday and Smith search for a holdup man who wears fake glasses and mustache and has been hitting several check cashing agencies.

The Big Border

Friday and Jacobs are out to find a couple of armed escaped convicts hiding out in L.A. and pulling off a crime spree to enable them to skip to Mexico.

The Big Bounce

Friday and Smith search for a man who has been passing bad checks using the name of a minor screen actor who has been dead for a few years.

The Big Boys

Four young punks have come to Los Angeles to start a crime spree, and Friday and Romero have to find and stop them.

The Big Break

Friday and Romero get a lead on a pair of brutal robbers when they find a matchbook with names scribbled in it that one of them dropped.

The Big Brink

Friday and Smith pursue an armed gang who have knocked over an armored car.

The Big Broad

Friday and Sergeant Henry go to work on a case involving a husband-and-wife robbery team specializing in liquor store holdups.

The Big Building

Friday and Romero search for a missing society woman whose husband and stepfather are accusing each other of murdering her.

The Big Bull

Friday and Smith have rounded up a gang of violent robbers and now have to track down their leader, who has made it personal by threatening Frank's family.

Note: Features an appearance by the often mentioned but rarely heard Fay Smith.

The Big Bunco

The Big Bungalow

The Big Cab

Friday and Smith investigate the robbery and assault of a grocer. While the victim got a good look at his assailant, showing him the mug books will do little good as his injuries have left him blind.

The Big Cad

Friday and Smith investigate the robbery of a wholesale drug company which include four thousand dollars worth of controlled substances among the loot.

The Big Canaries

A woman is brutally murdered in her home- a pair of dead canaries may give Friday and Romero clues as to her killer.

The Big Car

The Big Carney

A drunken carnival worker holds the key for Friday and Smith to solve a series of jewelry store snatches.

The Big Casing

The husband says it was suicide, Friday and Romero think it's murder when his wife is found with a fatal bullet wound. It's up to the crime lab to find out the truth.

The Big Cast

Friday and Romero interrogate a man who's a suspect in the disappearance of twelve men over four months.

The Big Cat

Friday and Smith receive a report from a man stating that his circus truck was broken into and the animals it contained, which included a black panther, are gone.

The Big Chance

Friday and Romero spend a long night looking for a missing highway patrolman.

The Big Check

Friday and Romero have to start all over again when their prime suspect in a series of check forgeries turns out to have been in jail when the crimes were committed.

The Big Chef

A former thief helps Friday and Smith put a make on a pair of vicious robbers.

The Big Chet

Friday and Smith are having no luck catching a pair of holdup men until a reformed robber tells them that he's spotted their quarry.

The Big Chick

Friday and Smith investigate the death of a man whose body was found floating in a lake and had died from taking a dose of low-grade heroin.

The Big Child

Friday and Smith are treating the death of a two year old girl as a homicide.

The Big Church

Friday and Romero look into a series of threatening letters being received by a recently joined member of a church that are presumably coming from another in the congregation.

The Big Cliff

Friday and Romero are called in when a man wakes to find his wife dead from no obvious cause.

The Big Coins

Friday and Smith work with the fire marshal to prove that a series of house fires may have been started by a burglar.

The Big Complex

Friday and Smith are brought in to solve a series of break-ins and vandalism at a local high school.

The Big Compulsion

Friday and Smith attempt to track down a man who had been sending fake calls to the police and fire department on a regular basis, with one of these calls resulting in the serious injury of two cops.

The Big Confession

A man who might or might not be a crackpot walks in and confesses to killing a missing girl.

The Big Convertible

Friday and Smith pursue a pair of forgers specializing in payroll checks.

The Big Couple

Friday and Romero are looking out for a husband-and-wife con team specializing in grifting church congregations.

The Big Cowboy

Friday and Smith must capture a nutter who believes he's a defender of an Old West fort and that the police are Indians.

The Big Crazy

A woman comes to Friday and Romero for help in finding her twin sister, who had disappeared three months previous- and suspects her suddenly erratic brother-in-law of foul play.

The Big Customer

Friday and Smith search for a pair of robbers who killed the shopkeeper and shot a police officer who tried to apprehend them.

The Big Cup

Friday and Smith are called in when a man goes to check on a neighbor and finds that she has been beaten to death.

Review: It's rather disappointing that the killer isn't found until practically the last minute and no explanation is given as to why he did it. I suppose it could be to show that real investigations don't always have everything nicely summed up. But it really should have been presented better.-Webmaster

The Big Cut

Friday and Smith investigate the burglary of a jewelry store where the perp got in by smashing through the wall from the adjoining barbershop.

The Big Dance

Friday and Romero pursue a pair of punks who work over their victims then rob them.

The Big Dare

The knife murder of a woman puts Friday and Romero on the trail of a psycho killer.

The Big Daughter

While trying to find a man pushing heroin in a neighborhood, Friday and Smith have to deal with a down-at-their-heels family with no affection for cops.

The Big Deal

A highly organized auto theft gang has the police baffled, so Friday and Smith get help from a former booster.

The Big Death

Note: There are two episodes with this title from different years.

1950: Friday goes undercover as a hit man to get the goods on a prominent citizen plotting to murder his wife.

1955: Friday and Smith investigate a murder where a man with virtually no acquaintances is found with six bullets in his head at the cheap hotel he resides at.

The Big Dig

When a woman disappears, Friday and Smith figure they have the goods on her husband killing her. Or do they?

The Big Dive

Friday and Smith investigate the murder of a woman completely stripped of identification and was found at the apartment of a man who has made himself scarce.

The Big Dog

Friday and Smith are called in to pacify a crazy old man with a shotgun who says he's going to use it on the man he believes poisoned his dog.

Review: An average episode is made tedious by spending about ten minutes of the show with the old man reading a passage from a book.-Webmaster

The Big Donation

Friday and Lockwood are after a gang running a charity scam.

The Big Dream

Friday and Smith investigate the robbery of a liquor store by an elderly fellow.

The Big Drive

Friday and Smith have to investigate the murder of a man in an alley in which much of the evidence was messed up.

The Big Eavesdrop

While waiting for a narcotics buy at a nightclub, Friday and Smith overhear two men discussing a murder one of them committed up in San Francisco.

The Big Elevator

When an unidentified female corpse is found in a hospital elevator, Friday and Lockwood (Joe's new partner) are brought in to find answers.

The Big Escape

Friday and Romero arrest a friend of Friday's for committing an armed robbery. A couple of months before being eligible for parole, he escapes from prison so Friday and Romero must track him down.

The Big Evans