Police Woman: First Season

Here's TV history, folks: yes, Pepper Anderson pretended to be call girls, streetwalkers, and mobster molls in a series that slammed through a lot of salacious subjects—white slavery, girl bank robbers, porno movies, women's prisons, and more—but Angie Dickinson's bold and brassy lady cop nevertheless managed to make some serious feminist inroads as she held her own working with guys who never expected much but quickly learned to respect her cool-under-fire competence. These 23 episodes, dating from 1974, are a veritable TV time capsule: not just the source of the first celebrity crush for every Generation Xer with a taste for curvy blondes, Police Woman also serves as the cultural headwaters for everything from Charlie's Angels and Cagney & Lacey to the X-Files' Agent Scully and Law and Order: SVU's Detective Olivia Benson. Also including the pilot episode, this digitally remastered set looks as gorgeous as Pepper herself, with DVD extras including commentaries on select episodes from—yes!—Angie Dickinson. Praise the Lord and pass the LAPD-approved ammunition. Recommended. (M. Johanson)