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May 8, 2014 · TV is full of dramas that are as complex as the best novels or films. But they all owe some debt to the pioneering gritty cop show Hill Street Blues, which has just been released on DVD.
- Eric Deggans
It was a serialized mixture of drama and comedy featuring diverse, colorful and three-dimensional characters – the policemen and policewomen of the rundown Hill Street Station. It was well ...
- The series was directly inspired by the 1981 Paul Newman movie Fort Apache, the Bronx, in which Newman plays an NYPD officer. Then-NBC President Fred Silverman was a fan and he asked television producers Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll to create a cop show for the network with the movie in mind.
- The writers’ room on the series was full of major talent. It included Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, Miami Vice creator Anthony Yerkovich, Twin Peaks cocreator Mark Frost, playwright David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross), novelist Robert Crais (the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels) and screenwriter John Romano (The Lincoln Lawyer).
- Ed Marinaro, who played Officer Joe Coffey, visited production company MTM Enterprises, who were casting for Hill Street Blues, to audition for a movie about male strippers they were making, not the television series.
- Test audiences hated the pilot. They said the main characters were not good at their jobs and had flawed personalities. The ending wasn’t satisfying and there were too many loose ends.
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Hill Street Blues: Created by Steven Bochco, Michael Kozoll. With Daniel J. Travanti, Michael Warren, Bruce Weitz, James Sikking. The lives and work of the staff of an inner city police precinct.
- (11K)
- 1981-01-15
- Crime, Drama, Mystery
- 60
May 3, 2014 11 AM PT. The ambitious police drama seemed doomed even before it hit the NBC airwaves on Jan. 15, 1981. Test audiences were unimpressed by the gritty pilot that focused on the ...
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the Metropolitan Police Department staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city, although the opening credits show scenes from the city of Chicago, contrasted ...
Hill Street Blues TV-14 1981 - 1987 7 Seasons Crime Drama List 97% Avg. Tomatometer 56 Reviews A gritty, realistic look at the life of cops in a large (and unnamed) metropolitan city.
