VIDEO REWIND : Trying to Squeeze O.J. Out of the Picture? Try ‘Police Squad!’

One of the more negligible side effects of the O.J. Simpson murder trial is the soul-searching it has caused television executives who want to air the “Naked Gun” movies in which Simpson co-starred.

Yet there is a simple way of avoiding controversy or guilt for anyone who wants to broadcast, or watch, some Jim Abrahams-David and Jerry Zucker screwy comedies about police detective Lt. Frank Drebin: Show the short-lived “Police Squad!” TV series that spawned three hit “Naked Gun” movies.

Leslie Nielsen stars in both as the hapless Drebin, with Alan North as Drebin’s sidekick, Capt. Ed Hocken, the role taken by George Kennedy in the movies. And there’s no O.J. issue because he wasn’t in the series.

In 1982, Abrahams and the Zucker brothers set out to create a TV series for ABC in the mold of their loopy movies such as “Airplane!” They came up with “Police Squad!,” a wild sendup of every stern cop show and detective series ever broadcast.

Only six episodes were made and all are available on video, though it may take a bit of perseverance to find a video store that carries them. Aired as a spring-summer replacement series, it appeared sporadically, preempted so often that only the truly faithful managed to see it through.

Not surprisingly, it flopped and was canceled. That makes it quite possibly the only failed TV show to launch a series of hit movies.

The fact that the original show never found an audience, however, shouldn’t be taken as a measure of its comedy quotient. If the folks debating about whether to air the “Naked Gun” movies showed “Police Squad!” episodes three at a time, anthology style, they’d wind up with a far more consistently funny package than any of the films.

That’s because the half-hour format was perfect for the Abrahams-Zucker mile-a-minute brand of humor. You virtually don’t want to blink for fear of missing one of the fast-flying gags. There are none of the long dry patches that slow down the movies. And Alan North, with his deadpan, hangdog face, brings a subtler comic presence than Kennedy can muster.

The series had more gags as throwaways in each episode than most sitcoms attempt in a month, beginning with the opening credits in which the announcer intones: “ ‘Police Squad’--in color!” Quickly, the guest star of the week, be it Lorne Greene or Florence Henderson, is knocked off before the episode even begins. Drebin displays his remarkable talent for finding trash cans to knock over wherever he parks his unmarked squad car. Then there’s the seemingly limitless street knowledge of Johnny the shoeshine boy.

Physical humor, visual non sequiturs, audacious puns--virtually every way of eliciting a laugh is exploited. From beginning to end, the proceedings defy everything we expect TV characters to do or say.

Every scene adds to the overall comic punch. When Drebin and Hocken go to tell a woman that her husband has been killed in a holdup, she sobs: “What about my daughter--what’ll I tell her?”

That opens the door for the two well-meaning cops to offer a string of increasingly ridiculous suggested explanations: “How about a big monster came and took him to daddy heaven!”

“He threw himself on a grenade and saved a battalion!”

“You could say he was killed by left-wing insurgents from Paraguay!”

With the woman sobbing even louder, Drebin corrects himself: “No. . . . Bolivia!”

Another priceless bit is when the department’s ballistics expert demonstrates the murder weapon to Drebin--by discharging it into a rack of tapes of Barbara Walters specials.

“Notice?” he tells Drebin with utter gravity. “Complete destruction. Right up to the point when she asks Katharine Hepburn what kind of tree she’d like to be.”

If this stuff doesn’t make you laugh out loud, you may be a candidate for brain surgery.

“Police Squad,” (1982). Not rated.