This oddly titled Naked City entry, On The Battlefront Every Minute Is Important, is above average for the series, and as usual has more than a couple of story lines going on, which makes it at times confusing early on. It comes together satisfactorily as the plot threads slowly but surely start to comes together, and it ends in tragedy; but then it began that way so this came as no surprise.
The opening, somewhat cryptic narration doesn't wholly suit the drama that follows, and the title is confusing, but no matter. This was often the case with this unique series, which is fascinating as much for what it shows, old New York, clearly in decline, before it became Fun City under Mayor John Lindsay, and just before the horrifying Kitty Genovese incident in which a young woman's cries for help were not heeded by her neighbors when she was brutally murdered outside her home in Queens. The feeling of a great metropolis in decline is palpable in Naked City generally, and in this episode in particular.
What made this one work for me was the relationship that developed between a wealthy ad man, well played by David Janssen, and Paul Burke's plainclothes cop, as Janssen attempts to lure the policeman into working for him, perhaps in recognition of the hard-working cop as a kindred spirit,--or maybe he has other motives. After all, his office has been burgled, and a man murdered in a struggle the police can't make much sense of, as very little money was taken and, even more strangely, several ashtrays were stolen. What were the robbers really after? They were an odd bunch, even for criminals, as we see in the opening scenes. Questions abound, unsettling things happen, such as Janssen finding that someone buried an ax in his office door. One can't but wonder whether someone has it in the ad man; and if so, why.
One of the things that makes this series unique, aside from its location shooting, unusual for its time, is that it often posed big questions, offered what appeared like large mysteries early in an episode, only to have the questions raised in the course of the story answered in simpler terms than one might have expected, as invariably character trumps plot in the Naked City, and in the end we learn something about human nature, with issues not so much resolved as humanized, embodied in the people the stories are about, not as something apart from them but embedded in who they are. The endings are nearly all sad, so it's no wonder the series ran only a few seasons.
The opening, somewhat cryptic narration doesn't wholly suit the drama that follows, and the title is confusing, but no matter. This was often the case with this unique series, which is fascinating as much for what it shows, old New York, clearly in decline, before it became Fun City under Mayor John Lindsay, and just before the horrifying Kitty Genovese incident in which a young woman's cries for help were not heeded by her neighbors when she was brutally murdered outside her home in Queens. The feeling of a great metropolis in decline is palpable in Naked City generally, and in this episode in particular.
What made this one work for me was the relationship that developed between a wealthy ad man, well played by David Janssen, and Paul Burke's plainclothes cop, as Janssen attempts to lure the policeman into working for him, perhaps in recognition of the hard-working cop as a kindred spirit,--or maybe he has other motives. After all, his office has been burgled, and a man murdered in a struggle the police can't make much sense of, as very little money was taken and, even more strangely, several ashtrays were stolen. What were the robbers really after? They were an odd bunch, even for criminals, as we see in the opening scenes. Questions abound, unsettling things happen, such as Janssen finding that someone buried an ax in his office door. One can't but wonder whether someone has it in the ad man; and if so, why.
One of the things that makes this series unique, aside from its location shooting, unusual for its time, is that it often posed big questions, offered what appeared like large mysteries early in an episode, only to have the questions raised in the course of the story answered in simpler terms than one might have expected, as invariably character trumps plot in the Naked City, and in the end we learn something about human nature, with issues not so much resolved as humanized, embodied in the people the stories are about, not as something apart from them but embedded in who they are. The endings are nearly all sad, so it's no wonder the series ran only a few seasons.
