"We take you now behind the scenes of a police headquarters in a great American city. Where under the cold glaring lights will pass before us the innocent; the vagrant; the thief; the murderer. This is... the Line-Up!"
The Line-Up was a CBS police procedural drama that aired from July 6, 1950 to February 18, 1953. Having unwisely passed on Jack Webb's Dragnet, you can see the Line-Up as CBS' attempt to get on the bandwagon. The series was produced and directed by Elliott Lewis (who had himself acted on a few early episodes of Dragnet) and starred Bill Johnstone as Lt. Ben Guthrie; Wally Maher portrayed Sgt. Matt Grebb. After Maher passed away in 1951 the character of Sgt. Pete Karger was introduced and portrayed by various actors. The supporting cast was a treasure trove of terrific old-time radio talent, everyone from Joseph Kearns to William Conrad - even Dragnet's Raymond Burr, who played Pete Karger among other characters (in fact, it looks like Burr started appearing on the Line-Up a month after his last episode of Dragnet).
The police procedural shows who followed Dragnet's wake attempted to sound like that program and tended to emphasize certain elements of Dragnet - the naturalistic dialogue, the mundane details that go into police work. There was a real effort to transcend the likes of Calling All Cars and Gang Busters, which had previously set the standard for police programs. Of course, dialogue and details weren't enough to stand out - you also needed a gimmick, rather than imitate Dragnet whole cloth. For the Line-Up that gimmick was... the line-up.
Rather than the Calling All Cars-type of program where a crime would occur at the opening of the show, then depict the pursuit of the criminal by the law, the Line-Up would open after the crime had already occurred. The show would always begin in the police station as Sgt. Grebb introduced the line-up, usually closing with these words:
"These suspects are merely to get a natural tone of voice, so do not pay too much attention to their answers as they often lie; bring on the line."
A witness would then single out a member of the line-up and Lt. Guthrie would begin his investigation. From there, the show was a very typical old-time radio police procedural (usually the episodes would end with Grebb announcing another line-up for a different case). The line-up sequence gave the show a unique audio sound; it also helped that, like Dragnet, the investigations would unfold with the police and the listening audience at more-or-less the same level, following the trail of evidence to uncover the crime. As in Dragnet, the investigations would hit blank walls, suspects would prove to be innocent, unforseen complications would arise. In some episodes, even the line-up itself is fruitless and the detectives have to work harder to get a lead on a suspect. By the final season, the line-up became merely perfunctory; each episode would open with one but it became more typical for the line-up to be interrupted with Lt. Guthrie being called away and told to investigate another case.
Of course, with all the comparisons I've made to Dragnet you might well ask... why not listen to Dragnet instead? I'll admit Dragnet is the superior program but it's not a contest; if you've heard a lot of Dragnet and you like that show but want to hear something similar, I don't think I'm steering you wrong by suggesting the Line-Up. Bill Johnstone was one of radio's finest talents (he was, of course, the man who followed Orson Welles as the Shadow) and his voice is quite pleasant as the protagonist. I didn't hear any episodes of the Line-Up that really stood apart from the rest, but neither were there any episodes that I considered terrible radio. There's simply too much talent on display in the Line-Up for me to dismiss it, it's good radio drama.
The show's production values changed around 1952 and I'm not certain why; suddenly, the organ became the chief musical instrument and it started sounding a lot like Escape, even though the Line-Up acquired a sponsor in 1952 (Wrigley's chewing gum). The earlier years of the show have more varied musical cues than the final seasons.
The Old Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of 79 episodes from the Line-Up:
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