An absolute waste of money

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

You know if you watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's" you get to see New York at street level, alley level all kinds of levels. Naked City takes you inside all of those nooks and crannies you might wonder about as you watch Holly Golightly race down the streets and alleys after her cat.Naked City not only excels in its cinematography of this great city but consistently includes captivating, colorful stories "one of the 8 million" as well as characters with dimension and growth throughout the original 4 seasons. The show exists in an era where our modern age is in its infancy. We see modern air travel mixed with ancient cold water flats and old- timer police detectives physically beating out confessions in contrast to newer psychological techniques used to help the citizens and the police understand each other. The changes in automobiles and communications technologies, the dimensions of the professional detective and the tolls the job can take on their personal lives. The creators of this show were not caught up on "solving" every case neatly. They left room for the collateral damage of true tragedy and unfair justice to bleed through the scripts, demonstrating a very human quality and realism in its raw glory.Before attempting to review this masterpiece I was sure to watch each and every episode thanks to RETROTV and DECADESTV. Before 2014 I had never heard of this show but have always appreciated great writing and colorful character development, Naked City has all that. It's also worth noting how many actors have sprung from this series into critically acclaimed and solid performers still going today. In many cases Naked City was their first television debut or close to it. Finally Paul Burke, Horace McMahon, Harry Bellaver and Nancy Malone deserve a place highlighting their fantastic chemistry and ensemble performances in television history. After watching every episode at least once, I can't believe we didn't see more from Paul Burke and Nancy Malone as well as Bellaver even though it's noted that Horace McMahon died just a few years after the series concluded, one of his last performances in Family Affair.

This one is the kind of series that made early TV the first rate entertainment is was (but seldom is today). Naked City was also the fertile ground wherein the show "Route 66" was also born. One of the early episodes--"Four Sweet Corners"--was about two young guys who teamed up to go against a neighborhood gang. Those two (played by Bobby Morris and George Maharis) would be the catalyst for the Route 66 series, except Bobby Morris died unexpectedly, so Martin Milner starred opposite Maharis in Route 66.Actress Lois Nettleton, one of the guest stars on Naked City, explained why the show was so well done, saying that it, "..focused on the atmosphere and reality of the people involved in the story. It was more personal." She is right. They just don't put this kind of effort into dramatic shows today. The star of this show was actually the streets New York City. You can't beat that kind of casting.For a good take on the series, I recommend Jim Rosin's book, "Naked City, The Television Series." Then get some DVDs of the show and see why it was ahead of its time.

The real fun of this film isn't the acting or the story, it's the background. To travel into a time machine and see non-actors going about their daily lives in so many scenes, unaware that they are being filmed (you wonder if there was some 'splaining to do, Lucy, when people were filmed where they shouldn't have been or with people they shouldn't have been with). As a younger (cough, cough) member of a New York family (and I'm Italian so take "family" however you like...I miss the Sopranos already...) it was great to literally see the "old stomping grounds" that my brothers and sisters and parents knew and saw every day.Others may enjoy the story, but for me, it's all about the background. A great city, unaware of being observed.

I've just been introduced to this series through the DVD releases and have found myself highly impressed by the location photography in New York and the atmosphere of the stories. The show serves the dual purpose of being entertaining, and also a fascinating visual time capsule of a lost period in New York history. Although its unfortunate the DVDs are not released as Season sets, it's still impressive that the original bumpers and commercials have been left intact! A rare chance to see TV as it was experienced at the time.On the matter of the narrator though, I'm afraid IMDb has it wrong. It is most assuredly NOT Paul Frees, at least not on the 1960-61 episodes I've seen on DVD. That voice is clearly Lawrence Dobkin, a noted radio actor of the 50s with a number of acting and directing credits all the way up to the 1980s.