Review of Homicide: Life on the Street

I give NBC tremendous credit for keeping this show on the air in the first place- even if its air times were sporadic and its fate had to be suspended across every summer before the executives decided to keep it for one more season. It wasn't a typical crime drama, not using a lot of car chases, explosions, or erroneous soap opera plots. The mundane of the precinct office and its eccentric inhabitants were the real stars of the show. The shows were character studies, frequently only focusing on one or two leads per hour- which made for a lot of story telling across the large ensemble cast. And though some have criticized the series' excessive use of hand-held camera and jump-cut editing, I think that gave the performances a more spontaneous, breathless appearance. This wasn't just television, it was theater. One could imagine this series being shown 50 years ago at the time of "Studio One" or "Playhouse 90," when live television drama was the norm: gritty in appearance, but sleek, literate dialog and excellent acting. (Witness episodes featuring Clark Johnson and a suicidal Reed Diamond on a sailboat; or guest star Vincent D'Onofrio mono-a-mono with Andre' Braugher while lying crushed under a subway train; or an entire episode dedicated to the graveyard shift at the height of a sweltering summer- with no working air conditioners.) This show revealed wonderful theatrical performers not only in Braugher but in Richard Belzer, Kyle Secor, Ned Beatty, Melissa Leo, and Daniel Baldwin, to name a few. I'm glad I witnessed it on network television.