I recently saw Max Weinberg's Big Band and it was a real treat to hear them play the theme from M Squad - especially since I had just watched all the episodes of the series over the past year or so. Lee Marvin was one cool cucumber of an actor who wore a cool hat during the series run. It's great to see him walk the streets of Chicago in his relentless pursuit of criminal apprehension. Like Joe Friday, we never really see Marvin's Frank Ballinger off the clock, but unlike Friday it seems like when he does get the occasional day off, Ballinger might actually have a good time at a local windy city watering hole. I watched many of the episodes in the wee hours of the night, which was the perfect time to enter Frank's black and white universe of no nonsense crime fighting.

Straight out of the James M. Cain hard boiled school of crime fiction (minus the sex, of course) this was TV by men for men. Each episode began and ended with a pithy remark or two by the hero/narrator Detective-Leut. Frank Ballinger about "my town"--Chicago, that is.Oddly, this fifty-plus year old series can still provide insights and observations that seem fresh, about police work, about human nature in general. The tough, minimalist dialog contains lines that make you want to write them down for future use.Lee Marvin is perfect. He was only mid-thirties when this series was shot but looks somewhat older, or anyway more mature, with his lived-in face and prematurely white hair. Marvin personifies toughness but he's no Steve McQueen. That is, he can handle a line of dialog articulately, use his voice like a woodwind, yet lose none of his manliness.The only aspect of the character of Lieut. Ballinger that is a bit unrealistic is his almost monkish attitude toward women--imposed on the character due to the prevailing broadcast standards of the time. In this series women are mostly trouble, or else the grieving widow of a police officer or the wife of a criminal, astonishingly naive about what her man really does.Without all the technical advances of today's television production, this show accomplished more with just tight writing, solid acting and straightforward directing.

If you take a good look at this series, you realize that "Police Squad" is its weird son. If there is a difference between Leslie Neilson's character and Lee Marvin's hard bitten cop, only your funnybone could tell. As such, this series should be seen in a new light..just after an episode of "Police Squad" or a "Naked Gun" movie. But...the best jazz theme song ever.

Lee Marvin became and remains one of my favorite actors because of this series. As a kid I eagerly awaited Friday nights at 9:00 (EST) on NBC. Frank Ballinger always got the bad guy, and we got to hear some really cool music along the way. The late fifties and early sixties were a golden age for TV cop shows and TV music -- this show was one of the main reasons. After much travail, I have managed to obtain a rare videocassette of two episodes, and even rarer, a copy of a CD reissue of the sound track LP. Great stuff! The "Police Squad!" opening credit sequence, and the characters of Frank Drebin and his boss, were lifted (lovingly, I am sure) from this show.