All 4 Naked Gun Movies, Ranked by How Surreal They Get

In 1982, there were six episodes of Police Squad! that aired on television, but apparently very few people noticed at the time. That’s despite the acclaim of Airplane! in 1980, which was helmed by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, with the trio re-teaming to do for crime shows what Airplane! did for aviation-related disaster movies. It was a classic short-lived sitcom, and also quite ahead of its time, given it was densely packed with jokes in a way that required more attention than the majority of sitcoms at the time. That’s not to say sitcoms made before 1982 couldn’t be funny, but they were rarely as non-stop as Police Squad!, and it took until later, as seen with the likes of The Simpsons and Arrested Development, for relentlessly paced sitcoms to find more of an audience. Hell, with Arrested Development, it also wasn’t exactly popular, but at least it scraped by and aired three seasons in a row, plus two later on during the streaming era, meaning it had many more episodes than Police Squad!