Ed O'Neill has regrets on New Dragnet!
Sprockets
Ohio native Ed O'Neill promoted to lieutenant in revamp of cop series
By R.D. Heldenfels
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/entertainment/6321707.htm
HOLLYWOOD - Joe Friday goes on. But his world is changing.
In January, Law & Order impresario Dick Wolf brought back the classic cop drama Dragnet with Youngstown's Ed O'Neill in the role made famous by Jack Webb. Ethan Embry was the latest actor to play a Friday partner.
The series did well enough to get picked up for a second season. But that will be under a new title, L.A. Dragnet, in a new time slot (10 p.m. Saturdays) and with a modified format. Friday has been promoted from sergeant to lieutenant and is running a Robbery Homicide Division squad of tough young detectives.
Embry is out as a regular, although he may guest-star. Joining the cast are Desmond Harrington (Taken) as hot-tempered detective Dexter McCarron; Roselyn Sanchez (Rush Hour 2) as Lisa Macias, who comes to police work from the military; and Christina Chang (28 Days) as assistant district attorney Sandy Chang.
If that sounds a lot different from the old Dragnet, not to mention last season's, well, the name has been changed to reflect that it's different.
Wolf said the changes stemmed partly from the need to get more women into the cast, to draw more female viewers. It's also part of the evolution Wolf has seen in his other shows over time.
Not that the evolving is done. ABC sees the Saturday time slot, where neither viewing nor ratings pressure is very high, as an incubator for the show while it changes.
``If the show progresses the way we think it will over the first three or four months, we can then figure out how best to schedule it,'' said Lloyd Braun, chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group. ``I doubt that Saturday at 10 is going to be the permanent time slot for the show.''
Braun also admitted that L.A. Dragnet will not benefit from its lead-in, which will be the transplanted Wonderful World of Disney. ``We have not felt, and do not feel now, that there's any flow to that.''
So Wolf has time to tinker, although he said some things -- including Joe Friday -- are basically unchanged. The show will still rely on Friday's monologues as a narrative device, and he won't be stuck behind a desk.
``He's exactly the same guy as last year,'' Wolf said. ``He's not going through a personality transformation.... He's not a guy who wanted to be a lieutenant, but it's now gotten to the state where there is kind of a responsibility with older cops to pass along the 25 or 30 years of experience.''
O'Neill regrets one of the changes.
``I loved working with Ethan,'' he said after an L.A. Dragnet press conference. ``I worked with him before, in (the movie) Dutch, when he was 12 years old, so we had kind of a shorthand.... I thought we worked very well together.''
But he said the overhaul will free him from the grind of 14-hour working days, day after day. ``They built the pyramids like that,'' he joked.
``It's physically impossible to do it the way we did it'' the first season, he said. ``We did 13 (episodes). We couldn't do 22 (for an entire season) that way.... You can't imagine how tiring it is. We're talking about an incredible amount of work, and we were in every scene.''
Then O'Neill would have to go record his narration as well.
``There wasn't enough time,'' he said. ``It was just always running back and forth to location. We were out an awful lot. We were out, like six (days) and two in. And shooting location work is a little more difficult. It's not a controlled environment as inside the studio would be. So this year I think we're going to try to go four and four.''
The new format ``gives me a chance to breathe a little,'' he said. ``Hopefully, you're going to do better work if you're not exhausted.''
O'Neill never threatened to leave the show because of the workload. But, he said, ``I was telling them throughout the season, `Guys, you've got to find another way. Because this, the way it's going, it can't be done. And they were aware of that.' ''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------