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Tough but not swaggering, serious but not solemn,
S.W.A.T. won over its 1970s television audience with several unexpectedly
interesting elements: A degree of storytelling sophistication; visually
exciting, guerrilla-like street violence; and a subtle but determined
fascination with the psyches of the show's five principal characters. To a
non-viewer, S.W.A.T. looked like a fatuously reassuring, law-and-order
shill in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and Watergate. In reality,
creator-producer Robert Hammer (a Peabody Award winner for the 1979 POW TV
drama, When Hell Was in Session) managed to make an ideal, mid-'70s Aaron
Spelling cop show with an extra emphasis on the human factor in peacekeeping. Spun off from an earlier Spelling series, The Rookies, S.W.A.T.
was the story of Special Weapons and Tactics, an elite branch of the Los Angeles
Police Department assigned the most critical cases of urban violence in an
American era of cult terrorism, snipers, assassinations, traumatized war
veterans and organized crime.
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