DVD trip back to '70s cop shows is treat

There's a resurgence of interest in 1970s TV police shows, thanks largely to the "Charlie's Angels" movie three years ago, which was a huge hit.

A second "Angels" movie (with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu) is due in late June, along with the early August big- screen version of "S.W.A.T." (Samuel L. Jackson), and later this year, "Starsky and Hutch" (Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson).

All of this no doubt explains a new DVD compilation, "The Greatest '70s Cop Shows" (Columbia/TriStar, not rated, $19.95), which has collected the first episodes (not necessarily the pilots) of the first seasons of five such series. (First-season box sets of "Charlie's Angels" and "S.W.A.T." will follow in about three weeks).

What do the shows have in common? They're in color, of course (with nice, crisp transfers), and about 50 minutes each (without commercials); they're all set in Los Angeles and filmed largely on studio backlots; when off-duty, the characters tend to dress funny (this was the '70s, after all); and these early episodes indicate the shows had yet to find their footing, with stilted "comic" banter and stories that try to be gritty, but seem rather quaint compared to "NYPD Blue" and "Law & Order."

They also use similar dialogue and humor; note that both "The Rookies" and "Starsky and Hutch" use the "Harlem Globetrotters" theme music when cops start up a basketball game with young thugs.

OK, they're hokey, but I enjoyed going down memory lane, and it was fun to spot Suzanne Somers and Annette O'Toole in minor roles.

Here's what you'll find on "The Greatest '70s Cop Shows" (listed chronologically):

-- "The Rookies": "Concrete Valley, Neon Sky" (1972). Georg Stanford Brown and Michael Ontkean take the lead in this episode, with pre-"Charlie's Angels" Kate Jackson (a regular during the show's four-year run) as a nurse who is also cop's wife. Here, they try to get close to a gang in Brown's old neighborhood, ultimately interrupting a rumble and talking them into dropping their knives and using their fists. (Today they might ask them to drop their guns and use their knives.)

-- "Police Woman": "The End Game" (1974). There is some silly dialogue between characters in this otherwise solid episode, as Pepper (Angie Dickinson) and the vice-squad team track a band of bank robbers; Earl Holliman actually orders a criminal to "Freeze, turkey!" The first season of this show is generally acknowledged as its best, and here Dickinson doesn't go undercover as a hooker or exotic dancer (which she would do often in subsequent seasons). She also gets to show her acting chops when a young officer dies in her arms at the start of the show, and then, at the end, when she's forced to take a life. Would that the entire series had remained this thoughtful.

-- "Starsky and Hutch": "Savage Sunday" (1975). This show is intentionally comic in tone, as cops Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Hutch (David Soul) banter and bicker between shootings, car chases and explosions, and gently poke fun at their informant, Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas). Here, they have only a few hours to track a car stolen by two thugs who don't know there's a dynamite bomb in the trunk. Suzanne Somers has one scene as a disco dancer.

-- "S.W.A.T.": "The Killing Ground" (1975). Patrolman Robert Urich is one of the recruits when Steve Forrest forms a new S.W.A.T. team. This episode has them going after a trio of brothers who are shooting cops at random. Well-made, with good action. Annette O'Toole plays the wife of one of the killers.

-- "Charlie's Angels": "Hellride" (1976). The Angels (Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith) infiltrate female stock- car racers to find a killer, and they use sex (or at least the insinuation of sex) to get information, while Bosley (David Doyle) impersonates a preacher. Pretty silly stuff, though it does allow all three Angels to wear various revealing outfits . . . and wasn't that really the point?

Extras: Full frame, text biographies, trailers, etc.

E-MAIL: hicks@desnews.com

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