The other day I was watching a few episodes of the old Adam-12 series and I began to think that most tv dramas are a hour and sitcoms are half-hours. I begin to think of the different half-hour shows that could be classified as dramas. For example: Adam-12, Dragnet, The Twilight Zone (I know they did have a few hour episodes, but basicly it's a half-hour show) what are some other half-hour dramas?

Daytime dramas:
Loving
Port Charles
The Bold and the Beautiful
Dark Shadows
Search for Tomorrow
The City
Ryan's Hope
The Edge of Night

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

ZIV did a slew of them in the 1950s including:

Highway Patrol.

Sea Hunt.

Ripcord.

Bat Masterson.

Science Fiction Theatre

Harbor Command.

I Led 3 Lives

Waterfront

Lock-Up

The Man Called X

Everglades

Men Into Space.

Mr. and Mrs. North
Man Against Crime / Mike Barnett
Naked City (early seasons only)
Gunsmoke (early seasons only)

Dragnet
Dragnet 67
The Twilight Zone (except season 4)
Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond
Branded

I consider 'Nurse Jackie' to be a half-hour drama, even though it is classified as a comedy for awards purposes.

'Adam-12' may have been one of the last multi-season broadcast half-hour dramas in primetime. One's that came after it would include:

'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (NBC)
'Amazing Stories' (NBC)
'Twilight Zone' (UPN)
'Werewolf' (FOX)

I can't think of a police or western drama that came after the seventies.

I think the reason half-hour dramas disappeared is that they don't pair up well with sitcoms, and there are too few half-hour dramas available to couple up with for stripping across the hour (doesn't Antenna put 'Adam-12' with 'Dragnet'?). In syndication on cable, most of the above dramas just got paired up with themselves.

Ivan Tors, who worked with several of the ZIV TV Series of the 1950s and early 60s, made several TV series of his own in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including:

Flipper

Gentle Ben

Daktari

Primus

The Half-Hour Drama is one of those things that has died out. The networks would rather produce those :censored: "Reality" shows these days. :mad: :angryfire

I remember NBC running Dragnet and Adam 12 back-to-back on Thursday evenings.

Degrassi is a current drama that is a half hour show.

The Lone Ranger, The Rebel, The Guns of Will Sonnett, Peter Gunn, Soldiers of Fortune, The Tall Man, The Lone Wolf.

You could argue a lot of HBO/cable sitcoms straddle the line between comedy and drama. Girls, Louie, Sex and the City, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, ect.

Regulus, unless I'm mistaken Daktari was always an hour-long show. They edited in a lot of stock animal footage...!