Naked City: 20 Star-Filled Episodes

This anthology collects 20 episodes from the acclaimed cop series shot on the streets of New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s, starring Paul Burke as idealistic young Detective Adam Flint and featuring an impressive roster of guest stars. In “Portrait of a Painter,” an unstable William Shatner wakes up to find his wife stabbed to death with his own palette knife, and he confesses to the crime even though he can't remember anything. The past confronts gangster Robert Duvall when he hides in the house of his aunt, Sylvia Sidney, in “A Hole in the City.” Jack Klugman appears in “The Tragic Success of Alfred Tiloff” as a two-time loser pressured into the kidnapping of a little girl, and Carroll O'Connor is a businessman on the receiving end of a blackmail scheme in “Spectre of the Rose Street Gang.” “The Night the Saints Lost Their Halos” features Martin Sheen and Peter Fonda as a pair of young street hoodlums. Other guest stars include Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Telly Savalas, James Caan, Christopher Walken, Jean Stapleton, and Dennis Hopper. A great sampler of a superior show (and precursor to modern police dramas) from television's golden age, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)