The Boredom That Works

Everything Dragnet is parodied for — the flatness, the dates, the procedural padding — is the actual point. Before Webb, radio detectives were wits with a bottle in the desk. Dragnet gave you two tired men driving across Los Angeles asking the same question of eleven people, and it turned out that was the more gripping version.

The sound design deserves the credit the scripts usually get. Doors, typewriters, a squad room that has a size to it. Very few series of the period bothered to give a room acoustics; Dragnet did, and half a century of procedural drama on every medium since is downstream of the decision.

Webb's own delivery is an acquired taste and he knew it. Listen for what he does with pauses at the end of an interview scene. That is a man who has decided that the audience is clever.