You know if you watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's" you get to see New York at street level, alley level all kinds of levels. Naked City takes you inside all of those nooks and crannies you might wonder about as you watch Holly Golightly race down the streets and alleys after her cat.Naked City not only excels in its cinematography of this great city but consistently includes captivating, colorful stories "one of the 8 million" as well as characters with dimension and growth throughout the original 4 seasons. The show exists in an era where our modern age is in its infancy. We see modern air travel mixed with ancient cold water flats and old- timer police detectives physically beating out confessions in contrast to newer psychological techniques used to help the citizens and the police understand each other. The changes in automobiles and communications technologies, the dimensions of the professional detective and the tolls the job can take on their personal lives. The creators of this show were not caught up on "solving" every case neatly. They left room for the collateral damage of true tragedy and unfair justice to bleed through the scripts, demonstrating a very human quality and realism in its raw glory.Before attempting to review this masterpiece I was sure to watch each and every episode thanks to RETROTV and DECADESTV. Before 2014 I had never heard of this show but have always appreciated great writing and colorful character development, Naked City has all that. It's also worth noting how many actors have sprung from this series into critically acclaimed and solid performers still going today. In many cases Naked City was their first television debut or close to it. Finally Paul Burke, Horace McMahon, Harry Bellaver and Nancy Malone deserve a place highlighting their fantastic chemistry and ensemble performances in television history. After watching every episode at least once, I can't believe we didn't see more from Paul Burke and Nancy Malone as well as Bellaver even though it's noted that Horace McMahon died just a few years after the series concluded, one of his last performances in Family Affair.

Not every great actor gets to be recognized for great work. Most of the good actors working today have names most of us will never know. But there was a time when TV was THE place to showcase you talents as an actor. The 1950's and 1960's provided tons of actors chances to show what they could do, and many went on to become well known names. But most of them , for reasons that were not their fault, practiced their art in relative obscurity. That's why I love watching shows like The Naked City. Yes Virginia, there was a golden time when great writing and really fine acting made TV such a pleasure to watch. Back then producers had much more time to develop characters and situations because an hour show like The Naked City had far fewer interruptions for commercials. An hour show really was pretty close to an hour. Every time I watch an episode of this fine program I am reminded of just how much change has not been kind to TV. Now a days it's really hard to find good writing and good acting on prime time TV. Constant interruptions for commercials and flashy graphics have distracted us from developing plot lines that people can relate to. The stories in The Naked City were about real people in situations that almost anyone could relate to. I Just finished watching a fine episode that featured Jack Warden and Carol O'Connor. O'Connor would go on to star in All In The Family but he was doing fine dramatic work in TV and movies long before that. And sadly, Jack Warden is still a name most people draw a blank on. I love those dramatic shows from the 50s and 60s. You just don't see those kind of lovingly crafted shows anymore. Too bad....

My uncle worked as an electrician on Naked City and my father was friendly with the very talented Paul Burke (Adam Flint). Watching some episodes on Image's DVD set, it struck me how bizarre and outre Naked City really was. I hadn't seen the show since I was a boy. I remembered the fantastic photography, the crisp, beautifully lit black & white compositions and the documentarian style of the cinematography. There was an amazing power in the way the photographers captured the gritty, grimy, gloomy city streets filled with crumbling tenements and garish storefronts, made all the more depressive by the black & white camera-work. (When they shot street scenes, you could see people gathering in the background, staring into the camera.) Instead of a realistic police procedural, NC's overly dramatic scripts, oddball characters and off-Broadway theatrical dialogue came close to surrealism. It's great to see at least a few episodes on DVD.

The real fun of this film isn't the acting or the story, it's the background. To travel into a time machine and see non-actors going about their daily lives in so many scenes, unaware that they are being filmed (you wonder if there was some 'splaining to do, Lucy, when people were filmed where they shouldn't have been or with people they shouldn't have been with). As a younger (cough, cough) member of a New York family (and I'm Italian so take "family" however you like...I miss the Sopranos already...) it was great to literally see the "old stomping grounds" that my brothers and sisters and parents knew and saw every day.Others may enjoy the story, but for me, it's all about the background. A great city, unaware of being observed.