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I have been watching Homicide: Life on the Streets, the best cop show ever, the entire series from beginning to end via Netflix. I watched about half to a third of each season when it aired, but never the whole thing from beginning to end. Also, I have not seen the movie, so please do not spoil me for that. I am now watching season four.
Homicide is based on a book by a writer who followed the Baltimore Homicide division for a year, and is generally considered to be the most realistic cop show ever. Not the faux gritty realism of NYPD Blue, where ass shots and swearing and glorification of police brutality pass for truth, but real realism: cases aren't always solved, bad guys aren't always caught, lots of time is devoted to the detectives kicking back and waiting around and bantering with each other, and half the time it's perfectly obvious from the get-go who did it, and the issue at stake is how or why or catching the person. It is quite realistic about racial politics and has more black people in the show than any other show I've seen that wasn't specifically directed at a black audience. And it's well-written, incredibly well-acted, often very funny and even more often heartbreaking, and has one of the best character arcs I've ever seen on TV.
In the very first episode, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor, most recently seen as Jake Kane on Veronica Mars) shows up, a rookie Homicide detective lately of the SWAT team, if I recall correctly, lugging a box of his stuff because no one's given him a desk yet. He's young, he's idealistic, he gets paired with Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher, who had earlier been brilliant as the freed man in Glory) who is the squad's resident genius, especially good at getting confessions from suspects in "The Box," and who probably needs a partner because he's so abrasive that no one else can stand to work with him.
When the phone rings with a homicide report, whoever picks it up becomes the primary detective on that case. The name of the victim is written in red on a board below the detective's name, and if they solve the case it's rewritten in black. Bayliss' first case as the primary is the murder of a little girl, Adena Watson, and that case haunts him for the entire rest of the show-- seven years-- and is pivotal in the series finale, which also involves Bayliss, Adena Watson, and a box of Bayliss' stuff. In an episode in season one, "Three Men and Adena," Bayliss and Pembleton spend the entire episode in the Box trying to wring a confession from the man who Bayliss thinks killed her and Pembleton doesn't. It's one of the best single hours of TV I've ever seen.
If Pembleton is the brains of Homicide, Bayliss is its heart; and I won't say what happens to Bayliss over the course of the show except that he's got the character arc I referred to earlier. If Pembleton's scenes crackle with energy, Bayliss' quietly seethe; and the relationship between the two of them never stops being fascinating and complex and funny and very very sad.
There are other detectives, of course, and it's more of an ensemble show than I've made it sound like. Kay Howard starts out as the only female homicide detective in Baltimore; she's one of the guys, she takes no crap, she has the best record of any of them (even better than Pembleton, though that's mostly a matter of Kay having a lucky tendency to get easier cases), she has incredible hair, and she is one of the few people in the department who I could imagine having a happily ever after. Giardello (Gee), played by Yaphet Kotto, is the enormous black Sicilian lieutenant, who is a very decent human being who's not above looming over and intimidating people. I love Gee.
Meldrick Lewis didn't make much of an impression on me when I first watched the show, but watching it now I'm impressed by how consistently good and subtle his acting is; John Munch is kind of annoying but also funny. Bolander and Crosetti never made much of an impression on me and still don't, and while I liked the relationship between Felton and Howard I was never that into Felton himself.
In season four Mike Kellerman, a pretty strawberry blonde arson detective, joins the team. I didn't much like him when I first saw the show, but he's grown on me on second viewing. Also, he has a really great extended storyline that runs through seasons five and six.
Later I will ask for recommendations on what episodes I need to watch in the generally disastrous season seven in order to catch Bayliss' storyline, and avoid the many dreadful episodes featuring new characters I hate. Because as I said, the series finale makes up for the awfulness of the final season, and is a mustn't-miss. Also, I want to see the movie, though I will probably cry all the way through it.
Homicide is based on a book by a writer who followed the Baltimore Homicide division for a year, and is generally considered to be the most realistic cop show ever. Not the faux gritty realism of NYPD Blue, where ass shots and swearing and glorification of police brutality pass for truth, but real realism: cases aren't always solved, bad guys aren't always caught, lots of time is devoted to the detectives kicking back and waiting around and bantering with each other, and half the time it's perfectly obvious from the get-go who did it, and the issue at stake is how or why or catching the person. It is quite realistic about racial politics and has more black people in the show than any other show I've seen that wasn't specifically directed at a black audience. And it's well-written, incredibly well-acted, often very funny and even more often heartbreaking, and has one of the best character arcs I've ever seen on TV.
In the very first episode, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor, most recently seen as Jake Kane on Veronica Mars) shows up, a rookie Homicide detective lately of the SWAT team, if I recall correctly, lugging a box of his stuff because no one's given him a desk yet. He's young, he's idealistic, he gets paired with Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher, who had earlier been brilliant as the freed man in Glory) who is the squad's resident genius, especially good at getting confessions from suspects in "The Box," and who probably needs a partner because he's so abrasive that no one else can stand to work with him.
When the phone rings with a homicide report, whoever picks it up becomes the primary detective on that case. The name of the victim is written in red on a board below the detective's name, and if they solve the case it's rewritten in black. Bayliss' first case as the primary is the murder of a little girl, Adena Watson, and that case haunts him for the entire rest of the show-- seven years-- and is pivotal in the series finale, which also involves Bayliss, Adena Watson, and a box of Bayliss' stuff. In an episode in season one, "Three Men and Adena," Bayliss and Pembleton spend the entire episode in the Box trying to wring a confession from the man who Bayliss thinks killed her and Pembleton doesn't. It's one of the best single hours of TV I've ever seen.
If Pembleton is the brains of Homicide, Bayliss is its heart; and I won't say what happens to Bayliss over the course of the show except that he's got the character arc I referred to earlier. If Pembleton's scenes crackle with energy, Bayliss' quietly seethe; and the relationship between the two of them never stops being fascinating and complex and funny and very very sad.
There are other detectives, of course, and it's more of an ensemble show than I've made it sound like. Kay Howard starts out as the only female homicide detective in Baltimore; she's one of the guys, she takes no crap, she has the best record of any of them (even better than Pembleton, though that's mostly a matter of Kay having a lucky tendency to get easier cases), she has incredible hair, and she is one of the few people in the department who I could imagine having a happily ever after. Giardello (Gee), played by Yaphet Kotto, is the enormous black Sicilian lieutenant, who is a very decent human being who's not above looming over and intimidating people. I love Gee.
Meldrick Lewis didn't make much of an impression on me when I first watched the show, but watching it now I'm impressed by how consistently good and subtle his acting is; John Munch is kind of annoying but also funny. Bolander and Crosetti never made much of an impression on me and still don't, and while I liked the relationship between Felton and Howard I was never that into Felton himself.
In season four Mike Kellerman, a pretty strawberry blonde arson detective, joins the team. I didn't much like him when I first saw the show, but he's grown on me on second viewing. Also, he has a really great extended storyline that runs through seasons five and six.
Later I will ask for recommendations on what episodes I need to watch in the generally disastrous season seven in order to catch Bayliss' storyline, and avoid the many dreadful episodes featuring new characters I hate. Because as I said, the series finale makes up for the awfulness of the final season, and is a mustn't-miss. Also, I want to see the movie, though I will probably cry all the way through it.
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We're through season three. I missed the episode with the two of them in the box and I regret it. I love Pembleton and Bayliss together, but to me Pembleton *owns* the screen when he's on.
I like Howard and Lewis too, and the female watch commander whose name I can't recall, when she's on the job at least.
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Also, Kyle Secor's now on Commander in Chief.
And I will be happy to give recommendations for season 7 when you get there :-)
Yay Homicide!
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(Accidentally posted this in a thread; apologies for being an inept LJer.)
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Oh, and a general shout-out to the amazing Max Perlich as Brodie.
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Written by Eric Overmyer (story credit goes to Tom Fontana, Henry Bromell, and Overmyer). Last I heard/noticed, Overmyer was an exec producer on Law & Order. I'm a fan of his work on Homicide and then one day I noticed he wrote the play "On The Verge" which I saw three times at the Guthrie once upon a time. Very cool.
Directed by the team of Larry Williams and Leslie Libman. Williams passed away a couple years back, but Libman's still directing TV, I just saw her credit on some show or another.
And yeah, the Reverend Horton Heat is in the episode (as a "crazy preacher" appropriately enough) and the Rev song "In Your Wildest Dreams" is used in the episode. Can't get much cooler than that.
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A word of warning: don't read the Netflix summary of the movie. Though it only describes the film's premise, it contains a spoiler that shocked me as a fan of the show.
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Anyway, 1) Yes, and he and Andre Braugher (who is also brilliant) are the leads, and... arrrgh... there are things I could tell you about his character that would make you instantly sign up to watch the show, but they're all huge spoilers. Well, I could tell you that he's brilliant and sexy and beautiful and sometimes scary and disturbing, and that he generates chemistry with pretty much every character he shares a screen with.
2) Yes, he plays a software billionaire who is the father of the murdered girl and Veronica's father's chief suspect in the murder. He's a supporting character, but he's got some great moments.
3) You mean the Homicide movie? Yes.
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There were also at least a couple of Homicide/L&O crossovers (I remember one in particular about a church bombing) so I saw the Homicide characters on L&O and probably watched the ep in question, so the story would make sense. I remember there being a lot of chemistry between him and Jill Hennessey, I think.
there are things I could tell you about his character that would make you instantly sign up to watch the show, but they're all huge spoilers. Well, I could tell you that he's brilliant and sexy and beautiful and sometimes scary and disturbing, and that he generates chemistry with pretty much every character he shares a screen with.
d00d! ((perks up))
Man, my Netflix queue is going to be insane when we finally get it....
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So much good stuff to come. And yeah, I loathed many of the new cast members that were added (Michelle Michael, in particular), but they used some of them in good ways. Jon Secada's character, for instance, is useful in the playing-out and resolution of the Mahoney storyline, which of itself is one of the best multi-season arcs I've ever seen.
But mostly I miss Frank Pembleton on my television. Man, he was fantastic, and I mourn that Braugher will probably never get another role that's anywhere near as good.
Rumor had it the reason Homicide never won any Emmys was that it was shot in Baltimore and therefore nobody in LA voted for it. Pffft.
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He asks the guy, Can you read these books? Of course he can't, but he opens up a page and extemporizes about the general topic, pretending he can, and with that sick grin Pembleton turns the book around and sight-reads two sentences perfectly.
Just beautiful, the way he reads out in that archaic Greek style, all deep education and joy of learning, screwing his real, earned superiority into this weaselly little shmuck in front of him. The look on Buscemi's face.
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I loved all of the cast - they were something akin to a crazy extended family for me after seven years - but Pembleton made me cry and therefore, like Watership Down and Cyrano de Bergerac, owns a little bit of my soul.
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My only caution is that it's about, well, homicide, and so contains a lot of disturbing material of an emotionally intense and possibly triggery nature. It's not graphically violent, though. If you're concerned about that, email me with specific flash points and I'll tell you if there's any episodes you might want to skip. I don't want to do that here because it'll probably be spoilery.
Other suggestions would be the first season of Veronica Mars, which is snarky noir with an emphasis on class issues, and others to be named later because a friend came and I have to go get afternoon tea with her.
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More non-fantasy/sf/anime TV recommendations: HBO
Sex and the City is a very funny series about four rich single white women in New York City; it ran for six seasons, and got better and deeper as it went along. It's very much a snapshot of a particular social class at a particular point in time.
Six Feet Under had a brilliant first and second season, then went in weird directions. It's about a family of morticians and is very funny and well-acted.
The Sopranos is about a family of mobsters in New Jersey. Extremely dark and, in the first few seasons, full of black humor and operatic intensity. Tony Soprano's mother Livia is an instant archetype, a manipulative witch who, in her best moment, responds to her teenage grandson's confession of loneliness and existensial fear by snarling, "We all die in our own arms!" Very dark, graphically violent, and the last few seasons have been unwatchably depressing, but I recommend the first two or three.
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Re: More non-fantasy/sf/anime TV recommendations: HBO
Of course, this now brings our Netflix queue to 150 and counting, so it's gonna be a while...
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Re: More non-fantasy/sf/anime TV recommendations: HBO
ROME, which George R. R. Martin has been raving about on his website, is terrific, one of the best dramas set in the classical world I've ever seen. No, it's not as literate as I, CLAUDIUS, but it brings the city itself to life in way that BBC production never could (or to be fair, tried to do). Plus, as Neil Gaiman once observed, I, CLAUDIUS the mini-series often made the mistake of forgetting how truly alien to us the Romans were and how seriously they took their religion (something that the Graves' novel didn't forget to do). ROME does well on both counts. At first I thought that Ciaran Hinds (the Captain in the film adaptation of Austen's PERSUASION) was a bit uncharismatic as Caesar (who was a charmer in real life), but by the end of the season I found him magnificent. Max Perkis, the kid from MASTER AND COMMANDER, is the best Octavian I've ever seen (and convincing as a genius). Polly Walker is fun as his scheming bitch-mother Attia. But Kevin McKidd (from TRAINSPOTTING and DOG SOLDIERS) and Ray Stevens are the heart and soul of the show as Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, two very different Centurions who are my current favorite tough-guy buddy team. Especially Stevens, who pulls of the difficult trick of making you like a man who beats the husband of the Greek slave he loves (and has freed) to death in a rage when he finds out she's married.
One of the interesting things about the series is that, while its characters are often likeable and sometimes noble, their virtues are those of their time. Octavian seems concerned with the good of the common people, but he's dismissive of slaves (although not prone to beat them like his mother is) and keeps reminding the lowborn characters of their place -- although he seems to genuinely admire Vorenus and comes to truly like Pullo, he won't quite let them treat him like an equal. The morally upright Vorenus thinks nothing of owning slaves (or bringing home a German phallus as a trophy) and his and other characters' devotion to a Republican ideal does NOT mean they have any concept of modern democracy. And while Vorenus is a decent man who genuinely loves his wife Niobe (played by the luminous Indira Varma from KAMA SUTRA, who's up there with Maggie Cheung and Aisharawa Rai as a screen beauty), the show makes you believe he might just kill her if he ever finds out she had a child by her sister's husband when he was off fighting in Gaul (she thought he was dead, as a bureaucratic snafu had ended his pay, but after discovering this wasn't true she compounded her "guilt" by making him believe the child is really his grandson).
There may or may not be a 2nd season, but ROME should be out on DVD soon.
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And then there's DEADWOOD, which just rules
Indeed, the writing is what really impresses me about the show. Don't believe those people who try to tell you it's nothing but a lot of cursing. Yes, the characters say "fuck" a lot, but only some of them (how much they curse is very much determined by their status in this society), and they generally say it in a convincing period way. What I love about the dialogue is how it mixes the profane and scatalogical with archaic usage and complex phrasings and rhythms derived from Shakespeare and the King James Bible. No, it's not completley accurate. Many people in the Old West were known for their "blasphemous" and "obscene" language, and we know that real historical figures like Mark Twain and Sir Richard Francis Burton and the author of MY SECRET LIFE used words like "shit" and "piss" and "goddam" and "fart" and even "cunt" and "fuck." What they probably didn't do was use the words "cocksucker" and "motherfucker," epithets of which the more profane speakers on DEADWOOD are particularly fond (although the concepts certainly weren't unknown), but even these anachronism work in the flow of the complex language and I can't imagine the dialogue being as effective withou them. It's as densely written as Pinter or Stoppard.
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_Homicide_ has fabulous snappy dialogue, characters who look and act like actual people, and a beautiful *rhythm* to it that's really fun to watch. It's not perfect, but on the whole it's very good.
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I read a piece last year by one of the writers or producers. He said they insisted that the writing staff move to Baltimore, and said that was key to how they worked together. He also said that he got hassled about putting a woman in homicide, because there weren't any female homicide detectives at the time, but by the end of the show, they had (I think) three.
I keep meaning to rent the DVDs in order. I think you just moved it up the list :)
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I remember not liking seasons 6 & 7 much when I watched them as originally broadcast, but when the season 6 DVD set came out I watched that season and thought it quite good after all, better than I'd remembered. I've only started season 7-- there are at least two really good episodes there and others with good bits in them. I haven't seen most of the episodes (save for the finale and a couple others) since they originally aired-- will be interesting to see how it looks to me now. Happy to make episode recommendations, though IIRC there's stuff pertinent to Bayliss' arc in most of the episodes.
I'm such a fan-- when they had a sale in Baltimore to sell off props from the show-- I begged other fans to buy me a few things there. So I'm the proud owner of Crosetti's wallet, sunglasses, keychain, etc. (as featured in the episode "Crosetti") and of business cards for a lot of the detectives and of one of Beau's shirts (seen in a number of my fave episodes) and one of Kay's notebooks and silly stuff like that. I've still never been to Baltimore though I hope to visit someday before Fell's Point changes too much.
Kyle Secor had a memorable several episode run on St. Elsewhere; he's a castmember on Commander-In-Chief this year, has had memorable guest spots on a number of shows (including CSI and the pilot for Crossing Jordan), he was on some lackluster hospital drama for a season (post-Homicide), and you know about Veronica Mars. I try to mention any guest appearances by Homicide alums in my tv picks each day.
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I loved almost everyone, even on the first viewing. Lewis and Kellerman's relationship is so amazing. And all the stuff you've said. I love Kellerman's first episode-- how hostile Lewis is to him, after what had happened.
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Someone needs to bring up Gee the next time the whole "OMG Blaise can't be black and Italian!" wank comes around.
Great entry, btw. Oh, H:LOTS. :D