User reviews

What Steven Bochco did in Hill Street Blues for the Eighties was later perfected in NYPD Blue for the Nineties. It was the concept of a police soap opera. The accent in Hill Street Blues was more on character development than on action, though there certainly was enough of that.

You had about 10 to 12 regulars on the show, some didn't make it through the seven year run of the series and were replaced by others. A few of the regulars were killed off, one Michael Conrad as Sergeant Esterhaus actually did die during the run and had to be written out. But that was like life itself.

We got to know the police and assorted folks at the Hill Street precinct, their problems and frustrations with their job and with every day life. Presiding over it all was Daniel J. Travanti as Captain Frank Furillo, a man with a broken marriage which he healed with Veronica Hamel and a drinking problem which he healed with Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a real human being, but a flawed one.

All of them were flawed in some way which was what I liked about the show. Rene Enriquez as Lieutenant Cayateno was a Latino who may or may not have been advanced due to an unofficial affirmative action policy by the department. He knew it and was trying extra hard to prove he was up to the job for real.

Kiel Martin was detective J.D. LaRue also with a drinking problem. It took him a couple of seasons to get into Alcoholics Anonymous and I still remember the episode at his first meeting when he saw Travanti there.

Veronica Hamel was cool, professional, and drop dead gorgeous. She was a Legal Aid attorney by day and later the second Mrs. Furillo. You can see why Travanti was so attracted to her. First wife Barbara Bosson was the neurotic's neurotic. Maybe it was the pressure of being a cop's wife, but I suspect quite a bit more drove Furillo from here. Bosson later became a victim's advocate and as one who worked in that field, I can tell you that you have a few neurotics working there just like Faye Furillo.

James Sikking was Lieutenant Howard Hunter who had a mask of confidence and unflappability to hide some insecurities. He was constantly sucking up and not above disparaging a few colleagues to push himself up in the department.

Ed Marinaro was Officer Joe Coffey, an all American type former football player as he was in real life. There was a great episode where he busts his former high school coach for patronizing some street kids. Made him reevaluate a few things.

We got to know all these guys inside and out, but my favorite on the show was Bruce Weitz as undercover Detective Mick Belker. That man looked like he lived in a sewer, but that's what made him so effective in dealing with lowlifes and making arrests. It was like Belker found his niche in life and I don't think he was interested in promotion or advancement. In many ways he was the most well adjusted character on the show.

Cops really became three dimensional on this show more than any other up to that time. Bochco had no ending episode for Hill Street Blues, the last episode was like any other day at the Hill Street precinct. With the deaths of Michael Conrad, Rene Enriquez, and Kiel Martin, I'm sure that mitigated against any revival episode. But this is one series I wouldn't mind seeing a twenty year anniversary with some of the surviving regulars.

I'll bet there are a lot of fans who'd like to know what the Hill Street precinct is like in the 21st century.

My favourite 80's drama is getting a from-the-start re-run on my local regional channel and I couldn't be happier. Back then my brother and I thought so much of it that we'd tape two episodes back to back and meet up every second Saturday watching them like a film - great memories.

And d'you know what, it still stands up showing that class lasts. With constantly over-running scenes, overlapping dialogue and carry-over sub-plots from one show to the next, it took very little time for me to get hooked again, now as then.

It goes without saying that the ensemble acting is great and though every one will have their own favourite character, I can't look past Daniel J Travanti as the calm at the centre of the storm, the imperturbable Frank Furillo.

The plots mix tragedy and comedy, drama and the mundane so that you feel that you are the fly on the wall yourself. It deserved everyone of its numerous awards and the only mystery to me is that none of the actors seem to have really broken into Hollywood movie-making unlike say Denzel Washington or David Morse from its sister show, hospital drama "St Elsewhere". Anyway I hope all the actors are still in work (see, I still care about them), either way this great show remains a testimony to a programme where everyone seemed on their game all the time.

Oh and it has a theme-tune title-sequence you'll not want to fast forward past!

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.

Bear with me on a bit of background: For a full decade as a penniless hippie, I didn't have a TV. None of my friends did either. To our minds, TV was a puerile waste of time, pablum for the masses, a substitute for life. Besides, we couldn't afford one. When I settled down tho & my son started going to school, his friends talked constantly about TV programs he knew nothing about. So he wouldn't feel culturally deprived, we decided to get him a little black & white set for his room. Thereafter, whenever I came home from work, I knew where to find my wife & son - both in his room glued to the tube.

One evening I was leaning in the doorway waiting for a commercial so I could talk to them & I got caught up in what they were watching - some tough portly mustached detective had been captured by a lunatic with a shotgun & bound to a chair. Tense! When the commercial did come, I said, "Hey, this is a pretty good movie, what is it?" "That's not a movie", they told me, "it's Hill Street Blues, a TV series!" No way, I thought, they had to be pulling my leg. I couldn't believe TV had reached that level of sophistication. They'd taken your standard soap opera format, where no one character predominates & the interwoven stories carry over from episode to episode, & applied it to cops. Cops lead what has got to be hands-down the most bizarre lifestyle imaginable & the viewer's sense of involvement is certainly heightened by knowing that at any moment one of your favorite characters might be gunned down. The show was brilliant & I was hooked. From there on, I watched every episode of HSB I possibly could.

Years later, suffering thru a near-suicidal post-divorce funk, coming home to the aching loneliness of an empty apartment with not even a dog anymore to wag his tail in greeting, too depressed even to look up old friends let alone make new ones, I found myself watching the show again. They were showing HSB reruns 5 nights a week just then, so I got to spend an hour each evening with all these familiar faces I'd come to know so well & care about, my own grief momentarily forgotten amidst their trials & tribulations. It's the only thing I can recall with any pleasure from that period & it's not much of an exaggeration to say HSB pulled me thru.

So now that the series is finally being released on DVD, I'm pre-ordering it as fast as it comes out. Seeing it again now, I'm much more aware of its flaws - improbable scenes like the EATers shooting up that liquor shop in the very first episode & other contrived situations that strain to produce a few chuckles. Yet I like it all the more for that; it transcends such flaws so easily. Watching it now for maybe the 4th or 5th time, I'm still amazed at the depth & range of characterization, not to mention the added kick of spotting well-known actors like Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker & David Caruso who appeared on the show before they made it big. More sophisticated shows now like NYPD Blue, ER & Sopranos may make HSB seem quaint by comparison, but they could never have existed if HSB hadn't led the way. Not for nothing was it one of the longest-running dramas on TV.

I still don't think much of TV, but Hill Street Blues will always hold a special place in my heart.

Hill Street Blues is perhaps the best cop drama in television history. It was groundbreaking then and now! It is well-casted with a diverse ensemble. The writing is unbelievably brilliant enough to stand two decades. This is what classic shows are about. It is now seen frequently on Bravo with a fantastic theme song. The cast like Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, Barbara Bosson, Betty Thomas, Dennis Franz, Ed Marinaro, and so many others perform brilliantly to make this show likable. The characters are real, candid, rather than just stereotypes. Watching most shows today, I miss the golden age of eighties television where the best shows like Hill Street Blues completed the NBC lineup. It was never a ratings winner but the network kept a quality show like this on to win countless awards including Emmys and Golden Globes. NBC in their Golden Age allowed Hill Street Blues and shows like St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law to flourish without worrying about ratings. Too bad, they still do not exist anymore. While the shows are now produced by networks who do a terrible show, a show like Hill Street Blues would never be approved or foreseen as a brilliant show.

I recently began watching this show again in re-runs and find it every bit as compelling now as when it originally aired. The writing is gritty and realistic and the story lines often have a universality one doesn't find in other shows, then or now. It maintains a break-neck pace that is always involving. The acting is so consistently excellent that I find it hard to pinpoint a favorite character. It's also fascinating to see the number of actors here, some guesting, some series regulars, who have gone on to greater fame - Alfre Woodard, Dennis Franz, David Caruso, Lawrence Fishburne, Jennifer Tilley, Don Cheadle, Tim Robbins, Mykelti Williamson, Ken Olin, Jane Kaczmarek and many more.

If you don't think that this is one of the best shows ever made, then I don't know what more I can tell you to convince you otherwise. What didn't this show have?

That's no exaggeration. It won so many awards, they became meaningless. It was unbelievable acting, great writing and BAME in your face reality of being a cop, with all the good and the bad. It was an amazing experience. Can not miss this.

"Be careful out there!"

Over here in Holland the show is currently rerunning on RTL5, 5 days a week. We've just had the great episode "Grace Under Pressure", so we've just lost Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (played by Michael Conrad, who died in real life as well). It was the best so far. I'm very sorry to found out about the deaths of Kiel Martin, René Enríquez and Trinidad Silva. Whenever I watch the show, I really get into it. My favorite character is Belker, but I also like Furillo and Goldblume. Also I was really impressed by the fact the Dominique Dunne's wounds we're real, while she played the role of the mother who abandoned her baby. I don't have anything more to tell, but I will always love this show for it's realistic content. And I just love the scenes in the station house. They're chaotic, with lots of people moving around. It couldn't have been more realistic.

A great but sad show about the beginning of the end of America. Good to see though how cool it was when actors still thought acting was important, and it was not just about pretty faces and visual effects.

This review is based on Season 2.

Yes, it is slightly dated, and yes some of the acting is not all that great. But their are reasons why the show is still not only important, but entertaining.

Firstly their are a handful of performances (Travanti, Spano, Hamel, Wyner) that are as good as any that would come to television in later years. Travanti especially, provides remarkable leadership, and is the true Helm. As true a helm as Stewart's Capt Jean Luc Picard. His on screen romance with Hamel is text book chemistry.

Secondly, though the show sometimes possesses weaknesses in terms of its writing, at other times it packs (and still packs) a strong emotional wallop. I am talking a feeling in the gut, tears in the eyes wallop.

Thirdly, It laid the ground work for realism in television, which yes, of course has been done to greater effect since. But let's give the show the credit it deserves. It did things differently then what had gone before it terns of police dramas.

All I can tell you is that any show that is 40 years old that can still entertain and hold your interest, is a pretty special show.

I say that Hill Street Blues is that type of show.

My husband and I have just started watching this show from the beginning. I remember that it was one of my favorite shows when it first aired, back when I was young and single. My overall impression is that the characters that irritate me and the characters that I like are exactly the same 38 years later!

Furillo is sometimes way too tense and that can be frustrating. He's too indulgent of his wacky ex-wife as well. Speaking of Faye, I find all of the female characters on the show, with the exception of Lucy, completely nuts! Grace is over-the-top and very unrealistic. Joyce is a total and complete witch. She's nasty, arrogant and needlessly rude.

I do love Lucy as well as her partner Joe. As it was in 1981 my other favorites are LaRue, Washington, Hill and Renko. I love Esterhaus as well, but wasn't he dating an underage girl prior to the over-sexed Grace? That was odd. Belker is sometimes okay, but often annoying, and seems to have a bias against dogs! Howard is over-the-top but oddly enjoyable at times. Goldblume and Calletano are fine and rarely annoying.

One last thing; when I watched the show in the early 1980s I always assumed that it was New York City. Now that there's the internet and I've read about the show I've learned that the location was ambiguous. I've read that Bochco wanted it to seem like Chicago or Pittsburgh. There are way too many New York accents for that to be believable. I am 100% convinced that it's New York or Newark!

This is well deserving of an 11. A defining series on television, this show dealt with everything - in a real life way. The acting was amazing, and the show was written fantastic. Must watch.

Having watched the original series avidly and now being retired, I have the pleasure opportunity to binge watch the lot 5 or 6 at a time. God it is even more brilliant and stunning than I remembered. It has not aged at all, the performances are outstanding and the stories top notch. It still has the capacity to make me weep with laughter and then in turn bring a lump to the throat. Cannot believe the 3 comments under the one star entries. They were obviously "Dixon of Dock Green" fans. Certainly this is way above 10 stars, then, now and I would suggest any time in the future

Until Hill Street Blues came along mist cop shows were the same. The story of two cops, their stories, and may be a touch of their family life.

Hill Street Blues is set in an unknown American city. There has been much speculation over the years but no one can prove what city with any certainty.

This show grabs you in the first few episodes. You go thru the attempted murder of what you think are the main characters in the show only to realize that every member in the cast tells their own stories every week.

The thing that really made this show different was it's huge cast. It wasn't a group of a few cops but about 15 characters. All with their own stances on politics, sex, police work, and anything else a person would stand for or against. This show had star after star in it as guests. You see very you g stars of today, playing gang leaders, crime victims, other cops, it's really amazing. I would recommend this show to anyone on the job, they will be able to relate to it. Even after 30+ years the stories, strong acting, and excellence still shines thru. I am now a retired cop and never had the pleasure for working for a Captain who would stand up to the Chief, Mayor, or Press as it is depicted in this show.

The earliest days of television saw the beginnings of Network Programing in its various forms and Genres. In those days prior to the introduction of Video Tape, circa 1958, the programs fell into one of three categories: Live programing, kinescope films and the standard filmed TV Series.So we had News, Variety, Drama,Sports and "Local Chit-Chat(a mixture of mostly Local "Soft" News and Personal Appearances by Celebs , who just happen to be in the area.

Later in the mid-1950's, we saw that the Juvenile Western Shows like THE GENE AUTRY SHOW, ROY ROGERS & DALE EVANS and THE LONE RANGER gave rise to a new, revolutionary idea(for TV). Some one out there in TV land came up with the idea of doing "The Adult Western"! Now to this of course, doesn't mean X Ratings or the old "Adults Only!" designation. The Adult Western meant a mature, more realistic, and meatier in characters and storyline.

Other actors on the series are: Kiel Martin, Taurean Blacque, Joe Spano, Bruce Weitz, Betty Thomas, Rene Enriquez, Ed Marinairo, Robert Hirshfeld and so many more who came and left the cast during a 7 year run!

Once the 'Adult Western' cat was out of the bag, with GUNSMOKE(?), a great population explosion of Western Primetime Series occurred. Soon the Adult Western was the leading genre of filmed series on the air.

Well by the mid-1970's, the tide had turned radically. At one point the only series that was even set on the American Frontier was LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. The new "Western" was The Cop Shw. Now, we do mean Police and not the Private 'I' series, which is similar and definitely related. With the coming of HILL STREET BLUES in 1981, a new pinnacle was reached. Until then, most series either were so involved in the activities of the bad time and the Cops (usually Detectives) working the cases.

Conversation between partners often times sounded a lot like it could be used in a training manual or training film. This seemed to be a particularly hard problem with any series involving the backbone of our Polioce Departments, the Uniformed Beat Cops.

Producer/Creator Steven Bochco's inhabitants of HILL STREET were a great improvement and an advancement for all series dramas. Bochco gave the characters 3 Dimensional Personalities, rather than being like comic strip/comic book cartoon characters, talking in formal Police Jargon about Police situations.

HILL STREET introduced the full person to the TV screen. So, if a guy's a Cop, could he be an Oprea Buff or sing with a Barber Shop Quartet society group? Could he have a side business or be a Brick Layer? Whatta bout any Pilots or Scuba Divers?*** And even more importantly, we get a view of personal lives of the men and women of the Precinct. We see divorces, alcoholism, on-the job affairs and all manner of problems that are with us in real life. Early on, they dealt with a Detective McAffey and his being married to 2 women at once. The original Desk Sgt. Phil Esterhaus discovers that an old friend of his is a homosexual and has been paying a lot of attention to him. Sgt. Stan 'Stash" Jablonski(Robert Prosky) comes transferred to the station on bad paper concerning him and a certain Female Lieutennant.

THe whole zoo is presided over by one Captain Frank Furillo(Daniel J. Travante) who is not without his foibles. Favourite characters include:Sgt./Lt. Howard Hunter(James B. Sikking) G.I. type head of the Precinct's Emergency Action Teamor "EATERS", PO's Bobby Hill & Andy Renko (Michael Warren & Charles Haid) a salt-n-pepper pair of Street Smart kids, now grown up, Two special mentions for women characters go to: Fay Furillo(Barbara Bosson) Capt. Frank's ex, and A.D.A.Joyce Davenportand (hey,ain't a Davenport a name for sofa-hide-a-bed?) .

When it comes to outstanding dramas no one will ever come close to one of the greatest cop dramas of the 1980's perhaps the best police drama in television history. "Hill Street Blues" was indeed groundbreaking and realistic in its portrayal of the men and women who put there lives on the line everyday in order to protect and serve the citizens of the city. When "Hill Street Blues" burst onto the scene as a mid-season replacement in January of 1981, no one had never seen a show like this before and it reinvented the cop show genre like no other. Hand-held cameras,stories that lasted multiple episodes and large ensemble casts were pretty new to audiences but it didn't click at first. Ratings for the first season of the series were so low that cancellation seemed imminent. But through critical acclaim,the show grew to become one of the defining shows of the decade,one that set the standard for police dramas to follow. Despite incredibly low ratings during its first season, it surprised audiences and critics alike when "Hill Street Blues" won eight Prime Time Emmy Awards in 1981,breaking the record for the most Emmy wins for a show's first season. That record stood until 2000 when another critically acclaim NBC drama "The West Wing" surpassed it.

"Hill Street Blues" premiered in prime time on January 15,1981 as the mid-season replacement for two canceled NBC shows("A Man Called Sloane" and "Good Time Harry")and from the first episode became one of the biggest hits in the history of NBC that was nominated for an impressive 98 Prime Time Emmys and was victorious in winning 8 Prime Time Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series,Outstanding Writing and Direction,Outstanding Actor, Outstanding Actress,Outstanding Supporting Actor,Outstanding Supporting Actress and was nominated for 4 Golden Globes winning 3 Golden Globes in 1982,1983 and 1984 for Best Outstanding Drama Series. For the seven seasons and 146 episodes it produced the show became part of NBC's "Must See Thursday Line-Up" of prime time shows that included "Cheers","Family Ties","Night Court" and "The Cosby Show" for all of Seasons 1 thru 6. The seventh and final season saw the series moved from Thursday nights to Tuesday nights in mid-season until May 12,1987. The show was produced by MTM Productions(Mary Tyler Moore's production company and her ex-husband Grant Tinker) the company that not only produced "The Mary Tyler Moore Show",but also produced "The White Shadow", "St. Elsewhere", "Newhart","Remington Steele", "WKRP In Cincinnati",and also "Rhoda" just to name a few.

"Hill Street Blues" was the brainchild of creators Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoil and was set somewhere in the fictional police headquarters of a large metro city(taking place on the mean streets of Chicago)and it dealt with the men and women of the police department taking on the baddies,but it was way more than that and took it's characters to even more dealt than any show like it. The characters are real,candid and rather than just stereotypes that had real problems and realistic situations. The writers who were behind this series consisted of Anthony Yerkovich, David Mamet,Steven Bochco, Micheal Kozoli, Dick Wolf, Walon Green, Jeffrey Lewis, David Milch and top notch directors from Gregory Hoblit, Christian Nyby, Rick Wallace, Thomas Carter, Gabrielle Beaumont, John Patterson, Stan Lathan, George Stanford-Brown, Corey Allen, Don Weis, Oz Scott, Bill Duke, Randa Haines, Arnold Laven and Alexander Singer.

Big time guest stars ranged from David Caruso, Talia Balsam, Meg Tilly, Anne-Marie Johnson, Howard Rollins, Frances McDormand, Lindsay Crouse, Alfre Woodard, Morgan Woodward, Jennifer Tilly, Linda Hamliton, Danny Glover, Michael Lerner, Chris Noth, Dolph Sweet, James Remar, Ally Sheedy, Cuba Gooding Jr., Michael Biehn, CCH Pounder, Ron O'Neal, Lynn Whitfeld, James Avery, Meshach Taylor, Alan Autry, Steven Bauer, Hector Elizondo, Yaphet Kotto, Joanna Kerns, Don Cheadle, Clarence Williams III, Laurence Fishburne, Ralph Manza, Lauren Holly, to Renny Roker, Lynne Moody, Lee Weaver, Jane Kaczmarek, and Mykelti Williamson just to name a few of the great actors who were guest stars on this series. When NBC abruptly canceled "Hill Street Blues" after seven seasons and 146 episodes,it didn't them executives in charge of prime-time programming long to find its replacement that was also under Steven Bochco that was also critically acclaim...."L.A. Law" that premiered in the fall of 1987.

I was Ten when this gem of a cop show was aired in 1981.

Chicago in the eighties.

This is probably the best series ever made about a police precinct. Very realistic and you bonded with every character, although I loved Mick especially, great actor and character.

They dont make them like this anymore.

Thank you to everyone involved in the making of Hill Street Blues, I'm slowly walking down memory lane and it feels good.

Thought this was a good program back in the day. Seeing it now, it's dated, cliched, unrealistic with liitle redeeming qualities in most of the main characters. An example of the right show at the right time - I doubt it would've been successful in any other decade.

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.