Free: Listen to 298 Episodes of the Vintage Crime Radio Series, Dragnet

Before it was a film, and before it became a clas­sic tele­vi­sion series, Drag­net start­ed out as a long-run­ning radio show, air­ing from June 3, 1949, to Feb­ru­ary 26, 1957. One of the most influ­en­tial crime dra­ma shows from the 50s, Drag­net was the brain­child of Jack Webb, the actor, direc­tor and screen­writer who played the lead role of Sergeant Joe Fri­day. We best remem­ber Joe Fri­day implor­ing female infor­mants to pro­vide “Just the facts, ma’am.” But, in actu­al fact, he nev­er uttered pre­cise­ly those words. “All we want are the facts” is what he real­ly said. But I digress. Thanks to Archive.org you can now trav­el back to the 50s and lis­ten to 298 episodes of the show, which was known for its real­is­tic depic­tion of police work — the bore­dom, the drudgery, the dan­ger, the occa­sion­al acts of hero­ism, and every­thing in between.

Note: There were 314 episodes in total. And Archive.org does not house the very first episode called “Rob­bery,” which first aired on June 3, 1949. That’s avail­able here.

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