Radio Recap: Night Watch

Night Watch was a true-life crime series heard on CBS from April 5, 1954 to April 21, 1955. Night Watch was perhaps the obvious culmination of the 1950s interest in greater realism in police/crime programming that Dragnet helped usher in. Rather than trying to find a new angle on police drama (such as 21st Precinct, the Line-Up) Night Watch went for documentary-style realism.

Night Watch was hosted by police reporter Donn Reed. Each episode was a carefully-edited compilation of events that happened while Reed rode alongside detective Ron Perkins of the Culver City, California police. Each episode would conclude with a summation from W. H. Hildebrand, the chief of police. Reed would provide narration during the program to describe things that weren't apparent in his recording or to bridge from one scenario to the next.

Dragnet had proved there was so much interest in learning about authentic police work that even the mundane details could find an audience. Night Watch was a little sensationalistic (the first episode concerns a nude prowler!) but a lot of it is run-of-the-mill. My own brother has gone on many ride alongs with his local police and I was reminded of his stories when listening to Night Watch - such as when Perkins arrives at a bar in answer to a complaint only to find the situation resolved by the time he arrives.

There are plenty of domestic disputes, such as parents quarrelling with their teenaged children or wives and husbands arguing. Perkins seemed to see himself as a calm, rational man who could reason with people's better natures. Certainly while being recorded on Night Watch you can hear him trying to de-escalate arguments, even when abuse was being hurled at him by one of the parties. He does come across as dangerously naive in some cases, as when he took a husband's side after the wife complained of abuse. It reminded me of a joke Christopher Titus told about the LAPD, that they would tell quarrelling couples to figure out between themselves because "we don't want to have to come back here; only, then they would have to come back because the couple had figured it out, and now one of them was dead."

Reed himself can be a bit annoying; his narrations try too hard to tell you, the listener, how you should think or feel about what he'd recorded, such as when he chuckles loudly overtop of a recording of a drunken man.

Despite this qualms, Night Watch is probably one of the most interesting radio shows of its time; it was a show that could only have come into existence when the technology was ready for it. Although it's heavily-edited (notably to remove profanity, which you can hear in the show's outtakes) it's an opportunity to hear what normal people in the 1950s sounded like - albeit, normal people who were in the midst of stressful and dangerous situations. Night Watch is probably not everyone's cup of tea but I find it so unusual that I have to recommend it to OTR fans.

Here's a collection of Night Watch episodes on the Internet Archive.