Sunday, July 6, 2014

Classic TV: Treasury Men In Action, aka Federal Men (1950)

Some 20-odd years before Jack Webb produced O'Hara: US Treasury for CBS and Universal, the studio's then-parent company, MCA, had worked with the Treasury department for a half-hour crime drama that lasted 5 seasons, but otherwise has been forgotten and lapsed into the public domain.

Treasury Men in Action, also known as Federal Men, aired on ABC back in the halcyon days of television, and, as with Webb's family of dramas, fictionalized real-life cases. The series featured early appearances by future stars such as Ross Martin and Claude Akins, the latter of whom was doing a lot of Westerns in the 50's.

It comes across as just another crime drama of the period when they were being cranked out as if on an assembly line. Come to think of it, various genre shows, be they Westerns or crime dramas or comedies, mostly had a sameness to them, making them difficult to stand out from the crowd.

See if you agree with the episode, "The Case of the Ready Guns":



I think, given the Federal Men title used here, this is a syndicated print.

Rating: B.

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