The police procedural has a long and storied history, from the days of Dragnet to the recent premiere of CIA on CBS. The latter series is the latest creation from Hollywood heavyweight Dick Wolf, the man behind the One Chicago universe and the all-encompassing giant that is the Law & Order franchise. Like any procedural that wants to separate themselves from the pack, the flagship Law & Order series had a unique spin that used a “ripped from the headlines” formula, with episodes split between the police work of the first half that’s needed to bring criminals to justice through the courtroom drama of the second half. Yet the series of the Law & Order universe have nothing on Homicide: Life on the Street, a largely forgotten crime drama that changed the police procedural — and, by extension, television — forever.
‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ Brings the Brutal Reality of Police Work to Television
At its simplest, Homicide: Life on the Street, which premiered in 1993, follows the experiences of the detectives in a fictional Baltimore Police Department homicide unit, based on a non-fiction book by Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, who spent a year shadowing the day-to-day proceedings of the real Baltimore P.D. Homicide Unit (and served as consultant and co-producer). Those detectives, led by Lieutenant Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), include Beau Felton (Daniel Baldwin), Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), and John Munch (Richard Belzer), among a host of others.
There’s nothing simplistic about Homicide: Life on the Street. From the start, it was set up to showcase the ugly reality of working on a homicide unit: the psychological toll, cynicism, paperwork, the hours of interrogation spent talking, the dark humor, and the often-quarrelsome relationships between partners. Homicide: Life on the Street also dared to show the numbing indifference that real homicide detectives approach each case, with Simon saying:
“The greatest lie, I think, in dramatic TV is the cop who stands over a body and pulls up the sheet and mutters, ‘Damn’ and looks down sadly. To a real homicide detective, it’s just a day’s work.”
The on-location shooting in Baltimore, filmed using hand-held cameras, gave viewers that same front-line feel that Simon himself witnessed over his year with the homicide unit. All of it was seamlessly brought together to honor the truth of the thankless — yet necessary — role of a homicide detective.
‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ Radically Changed the Police Procedural Going Forward
Homicide: Life on the Street was a radical departure from the glamorization of the police detective that beset television police procedurals historically, and one of the few shows to accurately bring the reality of that world to viewers (surprisingly, sitcom Barney Miller is cited as another). However, both NYPD Blue, which premiered the same year, and Law & Order, a 3-year veteran at that point, had also claimed a “gritty reality” through complex characters and boundary-pushing elements, a more Hollywood-ized reality than that of Homicide: Life on the Street.
But those series still featured cases that were largely wrapped up within the hour. Homicide: Life on the Street didn’t play by those rules, with a penchant for following concurrent investigations within an episode, some of which were resolved and some of which, as happens in real life, remained unsolved. The most prominent example of the latter comes with the first season episode “Three Men and Adena,” where the investigation into the death of an 11-year-old girl falls apart after 12 hours spent interrogating Risley Tucker (Moses Gunn in his last role) goes nowhere. Coupled with the ambiguity regarding Tucker’s guilt, the episode challenged the idea of a case-of-the-week with an antagonist that falls clearly into black hat territory.
2 Years Before ‘The Wire,’ Its Creator Made a Gritty 6-Part HBO Crime Miniseries That Aged Perfectly
David Simon is the master of the crime genre.
Homicide: Life on the Street proved that the police procedural didn’t need action pieces or neatly-wrapped stories, but rather focused on intelligent, intense, dialogue-driven scenes in the hands of a stellar cast, most notably Andre Braugher, who earned a Primetime Emmy Award in 1998. Braugher is charismatic in the role, with a deliberate and impeccable timing that radiated intensity and confidence — the same things he would utilize effectively is his self-parody role of Captain Ray Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
‘Law & Order’ and ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ Had Crossover Episodes
Interestingly, despite their difference in approaches, Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order held three sets of crossover episodes, the first of which, a two-part event across the former’s “For God and Country” and the latter’s “Charm City,” aired in February 1996. That opened the door for Belzer’s John Munch to join Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 1999, which, in turn, was opened after NBC cancelled Homicide: Life on the Street the same year.
David Simon would find vindication, however, when he created and produced famed crime drama The Wire, which utilized and expanded on his vision of truthfulness, finding a more willing partner in HBO than with NBC, who decried the risks and disregard for the rules of police procedurals (per The Guardian). Homicide: Life on the Street may have lost the battle, with police procedurals falling back to the case-of-the-week format, but it won the war by paving the way for series that defy conventional wisdom to deliver intelligent, challenging stories, and for that alone it should be celebrated.