Television series

Police Squad!

Six episodes, cancelled after one season for being "too funny" — meaning viewers had to actually watch it instead of half-listening while doing chores. Leslie Nielsen plays it dead straight as Detective Frank Drebin, narrating hard-boiled nonsense while the show pelts you with visual gags, literal wordplay and Quinn Martin parody. Dense, rewatchable, and the direct blueprint for The Naked Gun.

TVMaze rating8.0

If you liked this

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!1988

Same team, same Frank Drebin, same brain of literal gags and deadpan delivery — just stretched to feature length and polished to a shine. The purest continuation of what Police Squad! started.

But It's the most obvious next step, so you may already have seen it a dozen times.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! poster

Airplane!1980

Written and directed by the same ZAZ trio, this is the film that proved the formula worked and got Police Squad! greenlit. Wall-to-wall gags, zero mercy for pacing.

But Its jokes are so embedded in pop culture you may find you're quoting it before you've watched it.

Airplane! poster

Top Secret!1984

ZAZ again, this time spoofing Cold War spy thrillers and Elvis musicals simultaneously. Val Kilmer's film debut, and just as relentlessly silly and inventive as their cop and disaster work.

But Less beloved than Airplane! or Naked Gun, and its double target (spy films plus musicals) can feel scattershot.

Top Secret! poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dragnet1951

Police Squad! isn't inspired by Dragnet, it's built directly on top of it — same narration style, same structure, same music cues, played entirely straight until the joke lands.

This is the actual thing being parodied — clipped narration, humorless procedure, a just-the-facts moral seriousness that Police Squad! copied almost shot for shot and then detonated.

But It's not trying to be funny at all, and decades of parody have made its straight-faced solemnity land as comedy whether Jack Webb intended it or not.

Dragnet poster
More like this (8)

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear1991no page yet

More Drebin, more sight gags, a Bush-era energy crisis plot that barely matters, and O.J. Simpson in a role history has made deeply strange to watch now.

But Diminishing returns compared to the first film — still funny, but you can feel the formula settling in.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult1994no page yet

The trilogy capper, aware it's the last go-round and throwing everything at the wall, including a genuinely great Oscars parody sequence.

But The weakest of the three films — some gags feel recycled, and the energy is visibly tiring.

Angie Tribeca2016no page yet

Rashida Jones leads this modern heir to Police Squad!'s throne — same literal-minded cop absurdity, same commitment to never winking at the camera, just with 2010s production polish.

But It knows exactly what it's imitating, which means it sometimes feels like homage rather than its own thing.

Hot Shots!1991

Jim Abrahams solo, spoofing Top Gun with the same appetite for sight gags and dumb puns. Charlie Sheen has never been more gleefully ridiculous.

But It leans harder into raunch and slapstick than Police Squad!'s dry wit, a different comic register entirely.

Hot Shots! poster

The Kentucky Fried Movie1977no page yet

The ZAZ warm-up act — a scrappy sketch anthology spoofing trailers, kung fu films and news broadcasts. You can see the DNA of everything that followed.

But Rougher and more uneven than their later work, with some sketches that land far better than others.

Sledge Hammer!1986no page yet

A cop show parody that took Police Squad!'s cancellation as a dare, running for two seasons with a trigger-happy, oblivious lead and the same taste for escalating absurdity.

But Broader and more sitcom-shaped than Police Squad!'s precision; the jokes are louder, not always sharper.

Cops1922no page yet

Police Squad!'s visual gags (the tow truck shaped like a toe) descend from a much older lineage — Keaton's belief that a joke should be buildable, escalating, and entirely visible, no punchline required.

Buster Keaton's eighteen-minute silent short is pure escalating sight-gag architecture — a chase, a misunderstanding, and increasingly elaborate physical comedy with not a word of dialogue needed.

But Silent and very short; if you need dialogue-driven jokes rather than visual ones, this asks you to recalibrate entirely.

Danger 52012no page yet

Same engine — hyper-literal genre pastiche delivered dead straight — but transplanted from cop procedural into spy-fi, and turned up several notches into full pulp lunacy.

An Australian pastiche of 1960s spy shows, all garish color and deadpan absurdity, including a running gag about Hitler that somehow never gets old across two gonzo seasons.

But It's stranger and trashier than Police Squad!, with a grindhouse aesthetic and gore-adjacent gags that some will find too weird or too much.

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Recommended by

Community, Get Smart, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, Dragnet, Top Secret!