MovieChat Forums > Naked City (1958) Discussion > The half hour episodes were the best

The half hour episodes were the best


Having seen all 138 episodes I found the half hour episodes to overall be the best.The stories were not overly talky as some of the hour long episodes were and the John McIntire/James Franciscus combination was excellent in the first 25 episodes.McIntire's very wise,Old Worldly,patient and professorial playing of the top cop and his effect on Franciscus' college trained young detective was a pleasure to watch.The two characters liked and respected each other (the Horace McMahon/Franciscus pairing did not play out as smoothly.The producers' had Franciscus' young detective show resentment at times of the McMahon top cop's short tempered,acerbic style of leadership.The feeling given was that the two simply tolerated each other). Interestingly,the young detective in the half hour episodes was married with a child and a house which was changed in the hour episodes. Too bad McIntire quit the series due to not wanting to work outside in the cold NYC weather.He was excellent.

reply

Did you get to see the half hour ep 'The Bumper' (the one where McIntire gets killed)? Me-too TV here in Chicago skipped that one. (What a one to skip!) Hopefully it will turn up here later as another "lost" episode, like many of the hour eps turned up later.

reply

Oddly,MeTVToo skipped #'s 1,12,13,20,24 & 25. I wonder why. #25 had a spectacular ending for McIntire's character.

reply

They did show #13 'And a Merry Christmas to the Force on Patrol' this past weekend. The first time around they preempted it for an infomercial (!). I thought maybe they might have skipped it because it was a Christmas episode, but they did finally show it.

reply

MeTVToo-I noticed #12 aired Saturday at 5:00 AM. They are on the second showing of the half hour series and it's weird that #1 has not been shown either time.

reply

Truth be told I've already seen a dozen of the 30min episodes and I can't really get into them. I love the hour-long episodes. That's just me though opinions vary by the millions lol.

reply

I didn't see very many half-hour episodes but the very idea of John McIntyre as a New York cop didn't work for me. He belonged out on the trail heading up a wagon train or heading up a family of crop-pickers in Florida where he gets to know a certain doctor who's on the run. Harry Bellaver was much more convincing as was Paul Burke. I agree that the turgid monologues of Stirling Silliphant or Ben Maddow were often too much. The episode with the Irish prankster was so dilatory I had to turn it off.

reply

There are some great half-hour episodes and some great hour-long episodes.

reply

I just became acquainted with these episodes, and I agree with you. They are superb. The combo of Franciscus and McIntire was dynamic. James Franciscus would quit for a similar reason. He wanted to work in CA, and spend more time with his family. It's a pity they both left, but it's nice they were together at all.

Love the jazzy theme at the end, too.

reply

Franciscus & McIntire worked together again in a couple episodes (including the movie-length pilot) of Longstreet, where Franciscus played an insurance investigator who had been blinded by a bomb and McIntire played the wise old doctor who ran the rehabilitation facility where he learned to cope. (In the pilot, McIntire's wife, Jeanette Nolan, played Mike Longstreet's mother.)

That was a good show, possibly the most challenging and well-executed of Franciscus's career.

reply

I like the hour long episodes better because the stories are more filled out. Great Show anyway half hour or hour.

reply

Agree they were more New Yorkie, and I liked the narrations. Example the Sidewalk Fishermen. The hour episodes were way too talkie and overly melodramatic.

reply

I like both the half-hour and hour long Naked City. The half-hours were almost a different series. The "sweep" of the longer show wasn't there but there was greater intimacy; and one often got to know the featured character or characters in the half-hours better than in the more rambling hour long episodes. Also, I think the visuals (sic) of the half-hours were better. One got a real good look at the NYC of 1958-59, while in the 1960-63 hour long eps, the city was more of a background than in the forefront.

Even so, at their best the hour long episodes were exciting, featured more complex characters engaged in wider varieties of activities than in the earlier, grittier series. If New York City was no longer the star of the show, the guest stars and the characters they portrayed made up for it in dramatic intensity, less strong in the shorter episodes. The final season got over the top in its second half, as the episodes began to feel more like studies in psychopathology than dramas. Luckily, the show went out with a winner,--Barefoot On a Bed Of Coals--which was a combination of the two; a strong drama, it also feature a main character who was deeply troubled.

reply