Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Saunders: 'Hill' an arresting cop classic

Published February 22, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

More Entertainment Columns & Blogs

More stories »

I'm always bewildered by the DVD business when it comes to reissuing old television series. Classic TV is one thing, out-of-date TV is something else.

Who would buy the first complete season of Too Close for Comfort (1980), a mediocre sitcom starring the late Ted Knight of The Mary Tyler Moore Show fame?

Ah, Mary Tyler Moore's series, produced by MTM Productions, the most creative independent studio in the history of television. That was classic comedy. I've probably watched my copy of the Chuckles the Clown episode a dozen times.

And it was MTM Productions, headed by Moore and then husband Grant Tinker, that brought Hill Street Blues to NBC in January 1981. That was classic drama.

In honor of the cop series' 25th anniversary, 20th Century Fox last month released a DVD containing all 17 first-season episodes, along with audio commentary on selected episodes and a featurette, Roll Call: Looking Back at Hill Street Blues.

This collection is more than a nostalgic look at network television. The episodes will have an impact on loyal fans who cherished the series, as well as younger viewers who may have only heard about the show that had 98 Emmy nominations during its seven-year run.

Hill Street Blues was truly ground-breaking in the cop-drama genre. Today's zillion ensemble cop shows take their cue from the gang at the Hill Street station, located in the ghetto of an unnamed, big Eastern city.

Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, the series broke new production ground by centering much of the action in a loud and busy precinct house peopled with robbers, lawyers, sleazy characters, assorted hangers-on and cops whose professional and personal lives were often as confusing as the precinct house.

Rising above all of this was tall, fatherly Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (the late Michael Conrad, who died in 1984), who ended each roll call with the same phrase ("Let's be careful out there"), uttered in biblical fashion.

The huge main cast was talented and a variety of actors in smaller roles (Dennis Franz, Ken Olin and Jeffrey Tambor) went on to find major success in their own series.

One amazing aspect of the series was its frankness in dealing with sexuality. An ongoing story line featured the romantic relationship between harried precinct Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and his secret lover, public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel).

In retrospect, I'm surprised their bubble-bath scenes got past the network's standards and practices department.

Perhaps these censors were aware these characters were adults and such brief scenes at the end of the hour were played out in romantic, rather than lascivious style.

TV critics were partly responsible for Hill Street Blues' initial success and an important story line change. The initial hour, previewed several weeks before it aired, ended with two well-drawn characters, officers Bobby Hill (Michael Warren) and Andy Renko (Charles Haid) being blown away in a shootout during a drug raid. Both were left for dead before the final commercial.

Critics from around the country, while praising the premiere, wrote it was a mistake to write out these fascinating and at times adversarial characters - one black, one white. Bochco and Kozell relented, rewriting the final scene. Bobby and Andy, only severely wounded, went on to become integral characters.

Initial audience ratings ranged from poor to mediocre, despite the support of critics, and the network considered cancellation. Then show biz lighting struck in the form of 21 Emmy nominations and a record-setting eight Emmy wins - the most ever by a prime-time show during one season.

That was an era when TV critics had more of an impact on the life and death of a series; Bochco has always contended Hill Street Blues would not have survived without such support.

Haid, who has gone on to a TV directing career (Murder One and Criminal Minds) once told me that television, in its rush for quick success, rarely has time to gaze in a rearview production mirror.

"Networks and producers like to think they're offering something original when it comes to cop dramas," Haid said. "Nearly all this so- called originality in format came from Hill Street Blues."

TODAY'S NOSTALGIA: Feb. 22, 1970, CBS made the first step in changing its image as the home of aging and rural-based comedy series. The network announced that hours fronted by Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason would be missing from the fall schedule along with situation comedies Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.