Jack Webb has a hand in some of our favorite crime shows of all time. From Dragnet to Adam-12, it's no wonder that nearly every show he pitched managed to maintain lasting success.

But while Webb certainly had a preference for genre, he didn't take it as an opportunity to get lazy. Each of his shows was able to stand on its own as an individual series.

When discussing his new series, Adam-12, Webb maintained that despite the two's shared genre, the shows weren't one and the same.

Watch Dragnet on MeTV!

Weekdays and Sundays at 5 AM

*available in most MeTV markets

 Add to Favorites  Remind Me

As policemen, Officers Malloy and Reed were the first ones on the scene of the crime. Any detective work seen on Dragnet occurred later.

"It's [Adam-12] totally different from Dragnet, but there is a similarity of approach because the characters are policemen," said Webb during an interview with the Great Bend Tribune. "They'll find themselves answering emergency calls, handling family disputes, burglaries, and the like. They are the shock troops of the force. The detectives come along later."

Of course, despite his mastery of the medium, Webb didn't seem to have very much faith in television at all. He felt this was especially true when comparing something like television to other entertainment fields like film and theater.

"Television has created no lasting properties as have movies and the theater, and under the present system, it isn't likely to," said Webb. "We have no heritage because a format or a type of show is killed off every cycle or so. The only exception I can think of is my own series, Dragnet."