LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Groundbreaking 1990s police drama "Homicide: Life On The Street" is now available to stream. It debuts on Peacock today, featuring 122 remastered episodes, plus a TV movie. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans spoke with its former showrunner on why this show still matters to fans decades later.
(SOUNDBITE OF LYNN F KOWAL'S "HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET THEME")
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Viewers who weren't around when "Homicide: Life On The Street" rewrote the rules for cop dramas on network TV might look at the seven seasons of episodes now streaming on Peacock and wonder what all the fuss was about. But that's because many of the storytelling choices they helped pioneer occur much more frequently in today's world of high-quality television. "Homicide" had a cast filled with nonwhite characters, an unvarnished look at police work with no car chases or gun battles and stories where the killers sometimes were never caught. Consider the gritty, no-nonsense feel of this scene. Italian and African American Lieutenant Al Giardello, played by Yaphet Kotto, shows a rookie detective around the homicide squad, including their interrogation room, which he calls...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET")
YAPHET KOTTO: (As Lieutenant Al Giardello) The Box, where we match wits against the city's master criminals. The board - open cases are in red. Closed cases are in black. You look up there - you know exactly where you stand. About how many things in life can you say that?
DEGGANS: That scene could stand as a mission statement for the show, which focused on cops who argued with each other and wrung confessions out of suspects in The Box to get more black ink under their names. Tom Fontana, who served as an executive producer and showrunner for "Homicide," said he and fellow producers Barry Levinson and Gail Mutrux have been trying for years to convince NBC to put the episodes up on a streaming service, only to get the run-around.
TOM FONTANA: And we could never understand why, and we kept getting different reasons from different NBC executives.
DEGGANS: In a statement email to NPR, NBCUniversal noted it took, quote, "many years" to secure the rights and clearances it needed and to remaster the series for HD and 4K. The episodes on streaming will include most of the original music, which features songs from artists like Miles Davis. NBCUniversal also said fan reaction to the deaths last year of "Homicide" stars Richard Belzer and Andre Braugher was another indicator that they should continue working to bring the show to streaming. Fontana says he's glad new audiences will discover work by actors on the show who have since died, including Kotto, Belzer and Braugher.
FONTANA: On one side, it's great, because Andre deserves - his work on the show, I should say, deserves to be seen again. That's why it's exciting that the series will be seen and hopefully by a whole new generation.
DEGGANS: Andre Braugher shone as Detective Frank Pembleton. He was a savvy hotshot with a talent for getting confessions in The Box, as he explains to that rookie detective just before starting an interrogation.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET")
ANDRE BRAUGHER: (As Detective Frank Pembleton) Then what you will be privileged to witness will not be an interrogation but an act of salesmanship as silver-tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, Florida swampland or Bibles. But what I am selling is a long prison term to a client who has no genuine use for the product.
DEGGANS: Fontana says the show tried to portray authentic characters in a way that resisted some of the cliches of typical police dramas.
FONTANA: Ultimately, why I think the show feels real - because we were talking about a community of detectives, and we didn't want them all to sound like Dick Tracy or whatever.
DEGGANS: And now, thanks to Peacock, a new generation of viewers gets to see a pivotal, high-quality police drama that seemed built for streaming before streaming services even existed. I'm Eric Deggans. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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