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IN THIS ISSUE
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EDITOR'S DVD PICK |
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HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS
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A series that is fueled by characters, and not immediate attention grabbing fast car chase/guns firing action. A series in which the day to day process of investigating murder is the exploratory material? What kind of madness are you trying to pawn off on the unsuspecting TV audience?
Well, it's not too far from the truth. NBC took a gamble once on a show based on David Simon's gritty realistic account of the workings of Baltimore's homicide units. Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana were the culprits who wanted to investigate the process of a homicide detective's day to day routine.
It became one of the best, if not the best, human character dramas of our time. NBC would whittle away at it, try and dumb it down, try and change it into Nash Bridges, try to make it what it never could be.
A show that had no chance in hell, lasted, or outlasted its stay for some five or six seasons for the axe fell. Actors and their characters would come and go, but throughout, Yaphet Kotto as the driving Lieutenant G. was the anchor, the rock.
The jump cut was prominent the first two seasons. Some unsure viewers found it giddy. I enjoyed it. Cutting fast from point A to point C or E. A tense rhythm that illuminated the drive of the storytelling.
It was a breath of adult fresh air. Film directors came calling to do episodes. As later on they would do as well on Fontana's HBO series, Oz. The directors would have to learn the Homicide mosaic. They would have to learn to work within it.
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The current DVD collection contains the complete first two seasons, which were probably the strongest, because NBC had not yet tried to unpin its foundation. The first season sets you up wondrously, beginning with rookie detective Bayliss' first day on the new job(Kyle Secor, who's character would go from an ideal naive human to a dark violent human, as the show finally wrapped itself up)in Gone for Goode. It ends with Bayliss finally answering his first Homicide phone call, and getting the horrible legacy of a murdered young girl, who's murder is never ostensibly closed. The board is a prominent member of the cast. Open cases not solved in Red, Closed cases in black. This young girl's murder will become Bayliss' albatross. The show never lets its people off easy. In subsequent seasons characters such as Reed Diamond would find his dark nature. The characters are always vulnerable, the conditions believable, the drama never pat or predictable. I stopped watching NYPD Blue because I could tell what Dennis Franz's Sifowitz would say before he said it. I could never really tell what would happen on Homicide. The highlight of the first season, possibly one of the best shows ever put on TV in the format of an episodic drama was Three Men and Edina. Moses Gunn is the suspect in that little girl's murder, and Bayliss and Pemberton(The one and only wonderful Andre Braugher who breathed fire in the series as long as he was on)have limited time to make him confess before they have to let him walk. It is like watching theater, the majority of an hour show resting on three actors, and what they do with each other in an interrogation room. A stupendous hour of drama that transcends its genre. David Simon has gone on to give us the current The Wire on HBO, another wonderful nuance driven series. But that was only made possible by Homicide, and the care, and adult art in that show. It's a cop show for people with minds and hearts. It's a cop show about human beings. It's a show for anyone who feels. Scott Wannberg |
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