If you’ve ever wondered where Dick Wolf stole the idea for his enormously successful LAW & ORDER, look no further than ARREST AND TRIAL, one of the most obscure television series to receive a DVD release. Obviously, the title is one tipoff that Wolf remembered this 1963-64 crime drama, but its format is the most obvious clue. Like LAW & ORDER, ARREST AND TRIAL was split into two distinctive sections. The first half ("The Arrest") starred Ben Gazzara (ANATOMY OF A MURDER) as Sgt. Nick Anderson, an unusually introspective Los Angeles police detective who investigated that week’s crime. In the second half ("The Trial"), Gazzara gave way to Chuck Connors (THE RIFLEMAN) as defense attorney John Egan, who went to court to defend whomever Anderson arrested.

The reason you’ve probably never heard of ARREST AND TRIAL is its unusual 90-minute format. Only 30 episodes were ever filmed (ratings woes were likely the result of its killer timeslot against THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW on CBS and BONANZA on NBC), and its 90-minute format has kept it out of syndication in the 45 years since it went off the air. The other unusual aspect of the series—and its biggest difference from LAW & ORDER—is that the “Trial” portion took the point of view of the defense, spending the rest of the episode attempting to free the guy Anderson busted his hump to arrest during the first half.

There’s little question Wolf swiped the ARREST AND TRIAL concept for his LAW & ORDER, now in its 18th season on NBC. Of course, L&O is almost entirely plot-focused, eschewing stories about its characters in favor of murders “ripped from the headlines.” With ARREST AND TRIAL’s hour and a half to play with, writers were encouraged to create full-figured characters for the weekly guest stars to have fun with. Scenes that would be considered padding in today’s ADD television landscape were allowed to play out in full, adding layers to characters’ motivations and giving name actors a reason to sign on to an episodic guest role.

Treeline Media has released its first volume of ARREST AND TRIAL episodes on DVD (with a second forthcoming). As a showcase for your home theater, it isn’t even close to ideal. Reportedly, Universal (which, by the way, also owns LAW & ORDER) agreed to lease Treeline the rights to ARREST AND TRIAL, but provided no elements. Therefore, Treeline prevailed upon private collectors to lend 16mm prints, which, at least in the case of Disc 1 of Volume 1, resulted in the episodes having no opening titles and suffering from various scratches and blemishes. Don’t get me wrong—the episodes are more than watchable, but they have not been cleaned up in the slightest.

It’s possible that the show’s skillful dramatics will overpower the 16mm visuals anyway. Reportedly, some critics of the time cast doubt on Connors’ ability to overcome his exceptionally popular RIFLEMAN persona and believably wear a three-piece suit and tie, but both he and Gazzara are very good. The natural casting process would have been to switch the two actors’ roles, but both actors playing against type seem to relish the opportunity. By the way, you’ll also see future IRONSIDE sidekick Don Galloway as Connors’ assistant, perennial guest star Roger Perry as Gazzara’s partner, and John Larch and John Kerr as district attorneys.

Egan’s client is Sgt. Anderson in “A Shield Is for Hiding Behind,” in which the detective guns down a teenage hoodlum played by future HAWAII FIVE-0 sidekick James MacArthur. The boy’s father (Barry Sullivan) refuses to believe his son could be a killer, leaving it up to the only witness, MacArthur’s younger brother, to clear Anderson’s name.

“Whose Little Girl Are You?” boasts a powerful performance by Joseph Schildkraut (THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK) as an elderly tool-and-die maker unable to come to grips with the loss of his physical dexterity due to age. Stubbornly refusing to step aside to make room for the young at his brother-in-law’s (Leif Erickson) plant, Schildkraut kills a co-worker in a rage, leaving it to Egan to convince the jury it was all an accident.

Michael Parks (THEN CAME BRONSON) is also quite good in “We May Be Better Strangers” as a 19-year-old vandal who gets into a beef with a judge (Everett Sloane), busting up his collection of ancient weaponry and beating a security guard almost to death. As with the Schildkraut character in “Whose Little Girl Are You?”, Parks isn’t an ordinary thug, and a great effort is made to humanize him and explore the reasoning behind his violent acting-out. Gazzara and Connors have little to do in this episode, which revolves around Parks, Sloane and Lillian Bronson as Sloane’s wife. Martin Sheen also appears as Parks’ friend; Sheen later guest-starred in Parks’ THEN CAME BRONSON pilot, and Parks played Sheen’s brother in the TV-movie THE STORY OF PRETTY BOY FLOYD.

Nine episodes make up Treeline’s first volume, and another nine are included in the upcoming second volume, due later this month. Despite the less than pristine prints, ARREST AND TRIAL is definitely worth a view for crime drama fans.

If you ever had cause to wonder, wouldn't you already know? :ph43r:

The episode with James MacArthur has a scene at a movie theater. The poster shown outside the theater is of Steve Reeves' THE TROJAN HORSE. Later in the episode, MacArthur dismissively refers to the movie as "that bomb about the fall of Troy."

Several years ago I was watching one of those network lineup preview specials a graymarket VHS company used to put out, and I remember the hmphs of surprise when the teaser for ARREST came on. This definitely sounds worth checking out now that we can see some episodes in their entirety. (Now, if only some enterprising company would put out legitimate releases of those preview shows...)