Shark Bytes

Naked City was filmed in B&W with a great openning theme that was made for New York City to say nothing of the score. The cast was a perfect match for series,in my openion they looked like the cops on my street in New York City.

The only detective series that even came close to it was on NBC it was called Homicide Life On The Street and it took place in Baltimore.

great series with an incredible cast and stories....never jumped shark ...i have all the episodes in my collection if anyone is itnerested email me at napo396@yahoo.com

Television drama at its best. I have purchased all the available DVD offerings and watch them from time to time. Prefer watching these old shows to what is being presented to-day. I hope Image Entertainment releases more episodes.

This show was years ahead of its time. In fact, it still is.

Classy, literate, beautifully photographed and scored. I am truly thankful for Image having issued 60 episodes, and I can't wait for more.

The best cop show ever - great cast, great characters, great music. Plots were up and down sometimes, but never down very far. The fact that it was B&W was a plus - perfect for the moody, low-key atmosphere it exuded.

Never jumped! Too bad they don't show reruns. Not only were the stories interesting, the street scenes in these episodes reminds me of when I grew up on the Bronx. I learned how to drive on my dad's 62 Pontiac Catalina very similar to the cars the actors used. In fact there was a Pontiac dealer on the upper west side that would loan a few brand new Catalinas out to the set for free (cheap advertising for the dealer).

David Janssen gave a restrained, intelligent performance in "On the Battlefront, Every Moment is Important", co-written by Howard Rodman ("Harry O"). Janssen played the owner of a successful Manhattan advertising agency who is dying of leukemia. Janssen needs someone to take over his company and he sets his sights on dedicated, talented, persistent detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke). This was one of Janssen's few performances that gave a hint of the gravitas he was to show as Dr. Richard Kimble. He let go of his Richard Diamond persona long enough to show some genuine human emotion. Legendary producer Roy Huggins, who created but didn't produce "The Fugitive", may have gotten the idea for "Run For Your Life" from this episode. In that fine series, Ben Gazzara gave a splendid performance as a man who drops everything to lead a life of adventure and enlightened hedonism when he finds that he has only a year or two to live. Critics derided "Run For Your Life" as a "Fugitive" rip- off, but "Life" was even more compelling in many ways, and it wasn't so tied to a rigid formula. Paul Burke gave one his best performances as Adam Flint in "Battlefront", but I think he should have taken Janssen's offer and ditched the force for the challenges of running a business. Not all the eight million stories of the naked city are about criminals, and they don't all end with someone going to the slammer.

An actress named Constance Ford gave a stinging performance in "A Wednesday Night Story". She played the angry, domineering rich bitch wife of a wealthy executive (David Janssen) who she suspects is cheating on her. Constance had played a similar role a couple of years prior in "A Summer Place" where she made husband Richard Egan and daughter Sandra Dee miserable. Making family miserable was her special gift. Janssen finally takes a bullet in the gut with a very surprised look on his face. But it wasn't Constance that shot him but the sexy Swedish maid (Ulla Jacobbson). It turned out Janssen was cheating on the maid as well as his wife. Janssen was a close friend of series star Paul Burke (they appeared in the classic 1955 move "Francis in the Navy" (along with Clint Eastwood and Martin Milner). The Burke's had a great time showing the Janssen's the city during the making of the episode, although eventually Mrs. Burke decided Janssen was less than a good influence on her husband.

This show was originally 30 minutes in length. John McIntire and newcomer James Franciscus starred in the roles played by Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor in the 1948 film noir. McIntire felt he should do the series narration rather than Lawrence Dobkin saying he was producer Bert Leonard. Leonard strongly disagreed and McIntire was out. McIntire's character Dan Muldoon was killed off on screen, which I think was a first for a series hero (and almost never done thereafter). Up to then, I thought these hero guys were immortal in addition to being infallible and moral paragons. Franciscus took over as the lead, and Horace McMahon took over for McIntire. No other actor played a cop as convincingly as McMahon. It was almost like he wasn't acting. When ABC surprisingly decided to bring the show back as an hour show, the very appealing Franciscus was no longer available and Paul Burke was brought on as Detective Adam Flint. Burke was superb as a cop, almost as convincing as McMahon. And Nancy Malone added some welcome sex appeal as Flint's actress girl-friend. Bert Leonard and these actors turned a classic movie into a classic television series.

This show had audacious ambition. Filmed on location in New York City, literate scripts by brilliant writers, and the finest actors in America as guest stars. A short honor roll of the actors: George C. Scott, Lee J. Cobb, Robert Duvall, Claude Rains, Peter Falk, Eli Wallach, Rip Torn, Anthony Franciosa, Bradford Dillman, Walter Mathau, on and on and on. The best we had. Executive producer Herbert B. Leonard had come a long way from "Rin Tin Tin" and "Circus Boy". Audacious ambition.

One of the great series of the 60s. Classic character study, far too intelligent for today's audiences. Deemed too "slow moving" for current viewers. Translation: the morons watching would have to think.

So many years later I still find myself humming the theme song and remembering this great series. So disappointed that it's not in syndication or otherwise available to see.

Never Jumped. I had never seen this program until 1999, when I moved to Germany. One of their cable channels showed an excellent dubbed version of the show early in the morning. The German title is Gnadelose Stadt," which translates as "merciless city." It's a downright shame that reruns of Naked City are so hard to come by and that almost no contemporary television programming even begins to approach the literary and visual quality of this old anthology series. Even my mother, a confirmed television-hater from way back, enjoyed this show during its heyday. To me it was rather like a non-supernatural Twilight Zone.