Only the Names Have Been Changed: Dragnet, the Police Procedural, and Postwar Culture

Winner of the 2022 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize, Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) In the postwar era, the police procedural series Dragnet informed Americans on the workings of the criminal justice system and instructed them in their responsibilities as citizens. Among shifting politics, tastes, and technology in television history, one genre has been remarkably persistent: the cop show.Claudia Calhoun returns to Dragnet, the pioneering police procedural and an early transmedia franchise, appearing on radio in 1949, on TV and in film in the 1950s, and in later revivals.More than a popular entertainment, Dragnet was a signifier of America's postwar confidence in government institutions-and a publicity vehicle for the Los Angeles Police Department. Only the Names Have Been Changed shows how Dragnet's "realistic" storytelling resonated across postwar culture.Calhoun traces Dragnet's "semi-documentary" predecessors, and shows how Jack Webb, Dragnet's creator, worked directly wi