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Hill Street Blues was a serial police drama that first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987.[1] It received high critical acclaim and its innovations proved highly influential on serious dramatic television series produced in North America. Its debut season was honored with eight Emmy awards, a debut season record surpassed only by The West Wing.
OverviewMTM Enterprises developed the series on behalf of NBC, appointing Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll as series writers. The writers were allowed considerable creative freedom, and created a series which brought together for the first time a number of emerging ideas in TV drama.
Image:Hill Street Blues Cast.jpg Hill Street Blues Cast, circa 1986
The producers went to great lengths to avoid specifying where the series took place, even going so far as to obscure whether the call letters of local TV stations began with "W" (the FCC designation for stations east of the Mississippi) or "K" (signifying a station west of the Mississippi). However, Renko's claim in a season one episode that he had "never been west of Chicago" was one of many indications that the series took place in the Midwest or Northeast. Many of the street names used in the show, especially for identifying crime locations on police radio calls, were from Buffalo, New York. In the episode 'Rites of Spring Part I', Joyce Davenport announces that the Phillies baseball team are "in town," not "at home", indicating the city is not Philadelphia. A first-season episode featured a modified armored personnel carrier (described as an "urban tank") enthusiatically used by Lieutenant Hunter for his SWAT team, which ended up stolen and dumped in the "East River", suggesting the setting was New York City or, less likely, Minnesota. The name of the show was based on Pittsburgh's Hill District. Chief writer Steven Bochco attended college at the nearby Carnegie Institute of Technology and used the downtrodden Hill District as inspiration for naming the show. The distinctive theme tune was written by Mike Post. It was a popular enough theme that it peaked in the top 10 on the Billboard charts for pop singles. The program's focus on failure and those at the bottom of the social scale was pronounced, and very much in contrast to Bochco's later project L.A. Law. It has been described as Barney Miller out of doors — the focus on the bitter realities of 1980s urban living was revolutionary for its time. Later seasons were accused of becoming formulaic (a shift that some believe to have begun after the death from cancer of Michael Conrad midway through the fourth season, which led to the replacement of the beloved Sgt. Esterhaus by Sgt. Stan Jablonski, played by Robert Prosky) and the series that broke the established rules of television ultimately failed to break its own rules. Nonetheless it is a landmark piece of television programming, the influence of which is still seen in such series as NYPD Blue and ER. In fact the very concept of the modern 'ensemble' drama can probably be traced back to Hill Street Blues.
Cast
Trivia
DVD Releases20th Century Fox has released the first two seasons of Hill Street Blues on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. In Region 2, Season 1 & 2 have been released by Channel 4 DVD. It is unknown if the remaining 5 seasons will be released at some point.
Downloadable Video ReleaseThe first 3 seasons of Hill Street Blues have been released for download from Amazon Unbox Downloads (see link below). There is no indication whether future seasons will be available, but Season 3 is DVD quality, and fully un-edited. Computer gameHill Street Blues was also the name of a computer game that was based on the TV show released in 1991 by Krisalis. The game placed the player in charge of Hill Street Station and its surrounding neighbourhood with the aim being to promptly dispatch officers to reported crimes, apprehending criminals and making them testify at court. If certain areas had less serious crimes unresolved, such as bag-snatching, they would soon escalate to more serious ones such as murder in broad daylight.
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