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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 31, 1993
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Homicide: Life on the Street, “Gone for Goode” (Season 1, Episode 1).
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: As I’ve made well aware elsewhere on this site, I am a Buffalo Bills fan first and foremost, which means some of my pop culture and historical consumption is a bit skewed. The Gulf War was notable because of the charged atmosphere within which Whitney Houston sang the national anthem before the Bills’ first Super Bowl. “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” is my most memorable episode of The X-Files because of the part where the Cancer Man himself decreed that the Bills would never win a Super Bowl in his lifetime (and damn it, there he was, smoking through a hole in his throat but still alive in last week’s rebooted X-Files premiere).
So I’ll always remember NBC’s premiere of their new series Homicide: Life on the Street with a twinge of sadness because it premiered directly after Super Bowl XXVII, when the Dallas Cowboys trounced the Bills 52-17, easily the worst of their four Super Bowl defeats. I remember Kevin Nealon’s subsequent Weekend Update crack about not knowing whether the title “Homicide” referred to the TV show or the game that had preceded it. Fair enough, Nealon. It’s a weird thing to remember Homicide for, as it’s one of the most influential and secretly important TV shows of our current age.
Created by Paul Attanasio (Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Quiz Show and Donnie Brasco), based on the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by none other than David Simon (his first foray into TV before The Wire), produced by Barry Levinson (Oscar-winning director of Rain Man and Bugsy), and ultimately overseen by Tom Fontana (who would go on to create Oz), Homicide boasted one of the most storied and influential collections of creative talent any show. The show was revolutionary not just for its gritty depiction of the crime-ridden streets of Baltimore (NYPD Blue would do the same thing when it debuted eight months later) but for its cinematic approach to network television. Just a short list of the acclaimed directors who worked on Homicide over its seven seasons: Martin Campbell, Alan Taylor, Ted Demme, Whit Stillman, Barbara Kopple, Matt Reeves, Mary Harron, Joe Berlinger, Lisa Cholodenko, and Kathryn Bigelow. Just an insane murderer’s row of talent behind the camera.
That extended to in front of the camera as well. Andre Braugher was the breakout star of the show (he won the Emmy for Oustanding Lead Actor in a Drama in 1998), but he was joined by Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor, Reed Diamond, Clark Johnson, Giancarlo Esposito, Michelle Forbes, and more in a brilliant ensemble.
By the time Homicide ended its run in May of 1999, The Sopranos had debuted and the Golden Age of Television had begun in earnest. It would be easier for the rest of us to remember that Homicide established the roots of that golden age if the show were available to stream anywhere, but it’s not. As always, our official recommendation is to raise hell about this. Homicide should be streaming somewhere!
