HOLLYWOOD — "Dragnet" becomes "L.A. Dragnet" when it returns in the fall, and there will be more changes than just the title.
"After 50 years, I figured it was time for Joe Friday to get a promotion," said executive producer Dick Wolf. The newly minted lieutenant will be "in charge of a squad of younger, hard-charging detectives" in the LAPD's robbery/homicide division. "It's the best cops on the worst cases."
But first-season co-star Ethan Embry is out. And the updated version of the '50s and '60s series is going to get a second chance to find itself despite not exactly catching fire in the ratings after debuting in January. But ABC's top programmers have decided to bet that Wolf, who produces the "Law & Order" triumvirate for NBC, can make "L.A. Dragnet" work.
"We really wanted to bring 'Dragnet' back," said ABC Entertainment chairman Lloyd Braun. "Dick Wolf was incredibly smart about the changes he wanted to make. … We felt that if we were going to bet on anyone, we should be betting on Dick Wolf."
Wolf said that, like "Law & Order" when it began, his version of "Dragnet" was "a little testosterone-driven. Women like watching women." Thus two young female detectives (Eva Longoria and Roselyn Sanchez) and a female district attorney (Christina Chang) have been added to the cast, along with two young male detectives (Desmond Harrington and Evan Parke).
They'll be part of a 'kind of mini-rotating ensemble,'" Wolf said, with Ed O'Neal's newly minted Lieutenant Joe Friday leading the way every week.
"What we're trying to do is utilize Ed's enormous presence in the show as first among equals — the rock that everything else is built on. The glue that holds the cast together," Wolf said.
Friday is going to be "more of a mentor to these young detectives," said Jonas Pate, who, along with his twin brother, Josh, has been brought in to run the show this season.
Wolf insists that, while he's making big changes, they're not that big. "It's evolutionary in the same way that a lot of shows have been evolutionary," pointing to changes he made between the first and second seasons of "Law & Order: SVU." "This is kind of business as usual. It's a great vote of confidence on the part of the network and I think it's going to be a better show."
Not that the network is all that confident. "L.A. Dragnet" will air on Saturdays at 9 p.m., a time slot when not much of anybody is watching much of anything on network television.
"We wanted to find a time period to allow Dick to incubate that show …. Fortunately, Saturday at (9) is not a very competitive time period," said Braun, who vowed "patience" while incubating the show. "Our hope is that if that show progresses the way we think it will over the first three or four months and really starts to work. we can then figure out how to best schedule it going forward. I doubt Saturday at (9) is going to be the permanent time slot for that show. But my guess is that we'll have other time slots on the schedule that can use a drama that's working if Dick's able to get it there."
WHITHER ETHAN? Joe Friday (O'Neill) has been promoted, but his partner from last season, Frank Smith (Ethan Embry) is apparently going to disappear from the show. Embry was invited to be a member of the rotating ensemble of detectives, but, not surprisingly, didn't seem interested in a demotion from co-star to recurring supporting player.
"Ethan is a very fine actor," said Wolf, who, in somewhat of a non-sequitur, quickly added, "He got hurt at the end of the season last year." (Embry broke his arm during filming.)
Wolf didn't completely close the door on the actor returning, but it doesn't seem likely. "We're still in discussions because we would like him to have a continuing role on the show," he said, "but he has a feature-film career and it may be impossible for him to break free since he's not going to be in every episode."
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