Homicide: Life on the Street - The Complete Series

This was a gift for a person who I knew loved this TV show. He was so pleased and said “this was the best show ever”.

David Simon, the creator of HBO's "The Wire" and one of the brains behind "Homicide: Life on the Street", was asked recently why the "The Wire" has never had high ratings in the USA, despite getting mad love from the critics. His response was blunt. He put the show's poor ratings down to the fact that "The Wire" has a predominantly black cast, the unglamorous Baltimore setting and the fact that The Wire "requires thought and commitment to watch and absorb complex plotlines and subtleties. Television in America is by and large a vegetative medium."I believe "Homicide: Life on the Street" was similarly affected. With all due respect to its citizens, the Fells Point district of Baltimore where this series is shot is not a particularly pretty part of the city and, with a sizable black population, it's inevitable that the vast majority of people the Baltimore murder police are likely to come across are going to be African American. I find it sad but can totally understand why that might not be what most people want to tune in on an evening to see - or indeed, later pay money to see on DVD. When you look at "CSI: Miami" for instance, (reportedly the most popular TV series in the world at the moment), you can immediately see the vast disparity between the two. Everything about that show is about glamour: the city settings, the big houses and big fast cars and everyone totally buff and beautiful. It's escapism at its best in that it bears little or no resemblance to reality. But in this age of superficiality and celebrity mania, I'm guessing this is what most folks are up for.But I believe such folks are missing out. If "Homicide" is anything, it's realistic. This season was the first to have a full 22 episodes. The storylines are tense, gripping and real. The hand-held camerawork gives it the feel of a documentary. Even though the producers dropped Daniel Baldwin and Ned Beatty, brought in Reed Diamond and had Isabelle Hoffman's character demoted back to detective to, presumably, up the 'babe' factor of the cast, this is still by and large a collection of very ordinary looking but incredibly talented actors. I think that's one of the main reasons why it works for me. It's a completely rewarding experience and, after watching an entire season, I can very easily start again from the first episode and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it.I don't wish to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet but we have fires, snipers, a wife who kills her husband (and the woman he was cheating on her with), drug wars, a "thrill killer" working his way up the I-95, a homophobic hate crime gone wrong, a child killed by a paedophile and any manner of murder mayhem. There are star appearances from people like Lily Tomlin, Chris Rock, Jay Leno, Marcia Gay Harden and Gary Basaraba. And in a slick crossover with Season 6 of "Law & Order", we get an appearance from members of the cast, including Jerry Orbach, Benjamin Bratt, S. Epatha Merkerson, Sam Waterston and Jill Hennesy. The brilliant Max Perlich also guest stars as the squads new video man, Brodie.Andre Braugher's wife Abi Brabson (who plays detective Pembleton's wife Mary in the show) gives birth to their baby towards the end of the season and to give Braugher time to spend with his newborn child, the producers cleverly decide to give him a stroke. It works in another way: Pembleton is easily the most accomplished detective on the squad, (a fact he makes sure everyone around him is acutely aware of), and it will be interesting in the coming season/s to see him have to work his way back up to any practical level of competency.DVD extras include commentary on "The Hat", the episode starring Lily Tomlin, scene selection, interactive menus, song listings (a tool I've found very useful indeed) and a short documentary, "Homicide: Life in Season 4" narrated by Isabella Hoffman and featuring interviews with Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, Henry Bromwell, David Simon and James Yoshimura.The only thing I would've really liked that wasn't included was subtitles. Some of the terminologies go right over my head and it sometimes helps to see them in writing.Still, I've bought Seasons 1 - 4 so far and am looking to getting Season 5 soon. I can barely wait.

This is one of the best police drama series ever! I am so glad it has been made available again as a complete series set at an affordable price. My only disappointment is the shoddy packaging Amazon continues to use for video disc and music disc shipments. This set arrived in the "environmentally friendly" plastic bag Amazon is so keen to use. The set container was crinkled and torn and three of the disc holders are broken. The discs appear to be okay but I have grown weary of replacing video disc cases and CD jewel cases because Amazon packages them so poorly for shipment. I am willing to pay a bit extra for Amazon to ship these and similar products in a protective container or box.

Never a ratings-beater, "Homicide" was still, for six and a half years, the best thing on network TV. Credit NBC for carrying the show as long as it did, a rare recent instance of a network getting behind a critically-lauded show. (If "Homicide" premiered today, it would be gone in a season, or less.) "Homicide" boasted one of the finest ensemble casts ever assembled for a series: Richard Belzer (who carries his role forward on "Law and Order: SVU"), the great Yaphet Kotto, Kyle Secor, Clark Johnson, Melissa Leo, Reed Diamond, Jon Seda, Callie Thorne, Isabella Hofmann, Zeljko Ivanek, Ned Beatty, Daniel Baldwin, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Polito and the man who just might be the best actor in America, Andre Braugher.The show, executive produced by Baltimorean Barry Levinson, took off from David Simon's superb book chronicling a year in the lives of the city's homicide squad, and seldom has an author been better served by another medium. (Simon also worked as a story editor.) The characters are not based on their real-life counterparts so much as suggested by them, but some of their investigations were replicated, most especially the inquiry into the murder of a young girl, which kicked off the show's first episode. The unsolved mystery surrounding "Adena Watson" carried through the show as a kind of thematic mantra, haunting Detective Tim Bayliss right up to the final two-hour series finale movie. "Three Men and Adena," the episode-long interrogation of the prime suspect, played in a scorching, indelible turn by the late Moses Gunn, was the first great episode of the series, the one that grabbed you by the lapels and said, in essence, keep watching, kiddo -- this is not your father's cop show.What set "Homicide" off from such enjoyable but rather schematic shows as "Law and Order" was its accent, not on arrest and trial, but on the process of detection -- the way these men and women approached a murder and worried its elements like dogs on a particularly knotty bone. That, and the relationships between the detectives, added to the gritty, hand-held, jump-cut look and feel of it, helped made "Homicide" the wonder it was at its best... which was most of the time. Its writers (which included Paul Attanasio, Tom Fontana, James Yoshimura, the splendid playwright Eric Overmyer, Simon, and even Kotto) were never content to set up whodunits; their writing probed beneath the skin, and was often staggeringly effective. It caught (within the limits of network censorship) the realities of police speech, the dark and resigned gallows humor that attended the investigation, and the neuroses of the characters so perfectly that much of the show's dialogue would not have been out of place in a great work of theatre.The "guest star" list is enormously impressive, and ultimately included Lily Tomlin, a very young Jake Gyllenhall, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, Austin Pendleton, Edie Falco, Pamela Payton-Wright, Hazelle Goodman, Al Freeman Jr., Dana Ivey, Tony Lo Bianco, Mekhi Phifer, James Earl Jones, the great Lynne Thigpen, Jeffrey Wright, Baltimore native John Waters (twice, in different roles), Joe Morton, Carolyn McCormick, Anne Meara, Vincent D'Onofrio, and a pre-"SVU" Christopher Meloni. And while "Homicide" was most definitely an ensemble piece, in some curious way it followed two, not always parallel, arcs, becoming in effect the stories of Secor's Bayliss and Braugher's Frank Pembleton. Indeed, beginning as it did with Tim's arrival and ending with his ultimate leave-taking, both of which are inextricably bound up in the life and death of Adena Watson, the series is almost the Bayliss' story, and he is arguably the one character who alters the most, mentally, spiritually, philosophically and even sexually.If there is a single problematic casting element in "Homicide," it's the implausibility of a man as dark-skinned as Yaphet Kotto as Giadello, the squad's black/Italian lieutenant -- when Giancarlo Esposito joined the cast as Giadello's son, you realized he looked the way Giadello should. Yet Kotto's is such a commanding, affecting presence it almost doesn't matter. (The "real" Giadello, Gary D'Addario, served as a technical advisor to the series and played in a dozen episodes.) I doubt Barry Levinson will ever write and direct a movie as good as this show. But then, neither will anyone else.

This product arrived promptly as promised. Packaged very nicely with individual cases for each season and the DVDs positioned in a binder like platform with easy access. The picture is quite good. A welcome presentation for any fan of the show.

This is a series that did well to have as many episodes and seasons as it did in the face of adversity from the US viewers. Bottom line... this show was way too deep for the majority of US viewers and is underappreciated as a result. It broadcasted in the UK on a satellite channel back in the Ninties, and I remember being extremely fascinated by this humble show. If you want a complete lowdown on this series, better than I can provide here, please look it up on wikipedia.org. Everything you could possibly want to know is there. This show was both groundbreaking and award winning. It still outclasses many of the shows on TV today. The one thing about this show that failed to grip mainstream viewers was the fact that it adopted a very real and paced outlook on homicide detectives behind their desks, at crime scenes, interviewing, and going home for a beer or two. Its lack of gratuituous shooting, fast car chases, sex, and a polished, glossy feel makes the show what it is. And that's a very real feeling show about Baltimore PD's finest. The characters grow on you. More than one of them falls foul of a vice or two at various times, and occasionaly this will grate on you as it would their fellow colleagues. As a result, you tend to sympathise when the characters in question get hauled up by colleagues for slacking or not pulling their weight on cases. This series has one of the strongest cast ensembles ever to grace Television. Please don't pass this series up due to its lack of attention. Read about it's awards and credentials. Not many shows out there have achieved the recognition this has received behind the scenes.As for the presentation of this File Cabinet style boxed set... it's a LOVELY touch, and will look great wherever you place it. It is well constructed, and sturdy. It also comes with these pleasant little "file seperators" that you place between each season's DVD case. Even though the NTSC American format standard does not look as clear and crisp on UK TVs as our UK PAL format DVD releases of this series, it's entirely forgivable as, in this boxed set, we are getting the COMPLETE Homicide treatment (including the feature length movie and cross-over episodes that we'll probably never see released in the UK).And as the previous reviewer has mentioned... it may say this collection is Region 1, but all discs play fine on a UK Region 2 player. BONUS! :)

all good

Homicide: Life on the Street is a gritty, no-holds-barred take on the day-to-day interactions of members of the Baltimore Police Homicide Unit. The officers involved in the unit (for the first 4 seasons at the very least) are generally not the typical "beautiful people" that too often populate most TV dramas. The strength of the series is that the characters are real people. They have good days and bad, they make mistakes and have triumphs, and they live, breathe, and sometimes die. The series strikes a good balance between focusing on the character interaction and focusing on the plot the players are moving through. The intensity of being in "the Box" (the interrogation room) is phenomenal. You feel like you are right there sometimes, trying to break the criminal sitting across from the detectives.The first 4 seasons are the strongest, by far. The final three seasons are good, but they began to feel a bit more overproduced due to meddling by the studio in order to try to find a wider audience. I like the fact that while there is not necessarily an over-reaching story arc to the series, there are small arcs and things that happend in previous episodes and seasons have relevance for future episodes.To summarize: Great characters. Great acting. Great storytelling. Compelling series.

This was such a treat. I never got to watch the series when it aired (we didn't get the channel at the time) and when the series came up on Amazon at such a great price I had to get it! I knew the series was popular when it first aired, and was critically acclaimed, and I can see why. The characters and story lines were really well presented, and it was totally engrossing. Loved it. Barely noticed that it was "dated" other than lack of cell phones etc. If you like good acting, and great crime drama, this is a good bet for you! Highly recommend it...