Hill Street giorno e notte

I remember coming home from swimming in the evening, waiting to see Hill Street Blues. My mum would hold my hand as I walked down the street, just as the lady did at the begining of HSB when the police car is driving in the snow the camera picks up on a lady and her child walking down the street, reminds me of me and my mum. The programme was ace, just too dam good. Television today has a lot to learn. One thing I will always remember about that show was the music, it was so sad, but lovely to hear. p.s I wonder where that boy and mother are now?

During an era of cop shows where the main characters were often portrayed as superheroes or as charicatures, this priceless classic was born. For the first time since the days of Jack Webb and Joseph Wambaugh, we finally had a show that showed police as real people with all the faults and failings that all people had. You had Furillo, who was a recovering alcoholic, Renko and Hill, who were dealing with their own fears, Hunter, the reactionary head of the S.W.A.T. team, Bates, who just wanted to prove that she was a good police officer as well as a woman, Belker, the maniacal undercover cop, and of course the fatherly Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, the father figure for the whole squad. This show definitely set the stage for shows like N.Y.P.D. Blue and the Law and Order franchise and will always be a classic.

In the days of E.R and NYPD Blue, it's hard to remember just how ground-breaking a show HSB was. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. The quality of the acting and writing, the documentary look and feel, the seedy broken down environment, the brutally frank situations and language (for the time), the fact that the "bad" guys got away with it as often as not, the huge ensemble cast, the long one-take scenes, the unhappy endings etc. etc.

Needless to say, the American people wanted nothing to do with such quality at first - until it won a record number of Emmys and they couldn't ignore it anymore. If nothing else, this series proved to the networks that quality can sell soap after all.

If you like your E.R. think a kind thought for Hill Street Blues - the series that made it all possible.

This TV series is a testament to Brandon Tartikoff, who was then head of Entertainment at NBC, who championed this show and stayed with it because he knew that this was a groundbreaking show.

I remember watching the pilot for this show way back in high school. It was unlike anything I had ever seen on television. I remember the episode when the characters Renko and Bobby Hill were shot and lying in the hallway, and you had no idea if they were alive or dead. I remember gasping out loud. Stuff like that just wasn't on TV at the time.

Ensemble casts, story lines that continued for weeks at a time, and truly compelling, realistic writing. Television was pretty much a wasteland back in 1981 -- and unfortunately, has gotten far, far worse -- and this show, which took a year to find a permanent spot on NBC's lineup and introduced the whole concept of the landmark Thursday night at 10 pm drama on NBC.

Another testament to this show is that in one year every single Emmy nomination for the outstanding supporting actor in a drama series category was for a cast member from Hill Street Blues. That was, and still is, unprecedented stuff. I had the pleasure of taping the show as it came on late night on one of the local channels here in NYC several years ago. Brilliant, and still holds up well. What I would give for something similar to blanket the vapid horizon that is network television today.

An American cop show - who'd have thought an American cop show of all things could exemplify the best of television. From the land that gave us the pits of tv (have you seen Donahue?) there comes, once in a while, a beacon of greatness. The last episode of M*A*S*H, and the whole of HSB make the invention of television worthwhile.