Polizeirevier Hill Street

Each episode of the critically acclaimed series begins with another morning at the office at the Chicago Police Department's Hill Street precinct.

Overworked, underpaid, understaffed and under equipped the boys and girls in blue do their best to put on a decent show of fighting crime whilst under continual threat of violence from many of the craziest criminals on earth.

The guy in charge of this circus is less of a ringmaster and more of a lion-tamer. His name is Captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J.Travanti). Soft-spoken and diplomatic he, at first, doesn't strike the viewer as having the intestinal fortitude to be a cop let alone one in charge of a precinct.

Brow-beaten by public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) then by his crazy ex-wife Fay (Barbara Bosson) Furillo looks even less formidable and his very manhood is called into question by his psycho SWAT team commander Lt. Howard Hunter (James B.Sikking).

After seeing him stare down the barrel of a gun during a hostage crisis then shield a couple of kids with his body so they don't get hit by machine gun fire we are able to formulate a more balanced assessment of Furillo. This is the most genuine kind of hero. He exemplifies the best qualities of the men and women who serve under his command and leads by example.

It is evident that both cops and criminals coming through Hill Street precinct are there due to varying degrees of insanity. Furillo's own psychosis is perhaps the same as that of the public defender - he thinks that he is making a difference for the better. After what we have seen him do it is difficult to argue that he is wrong.

This was a cop show unlike any other that people had seen before. Part comedy and part soap opera set against the back-drop of an environment viewers were used to seeing simplistic good vs evil narratives and dispassionate procedurals got something of greater complexity.

With sombre strokes of piano keys the understated yet resilient tone of the title theme better matches the continuing narratives of this series than that of most other shows though the mixture of mellotron and orchestra may seem a tad pretentious.

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.

Hill Street Blues was an unconventional cop show for the '80s, and even today. Why? Because it was real. Well as real as you can get with a TV show, without taking some liberties ofcourse. Unlike Miami Vice, T.J. Hooker or Hunter, HSB had a lot of detail and accuracy.

Sure Miami Vice was an entertaining show, but only for being stylish and hip for it's time. HSB didn't try to be cool, it tried to be accurate. Miami Vice and all the other cop shows and cop movies of the '80s, '90s and today are extremely fake in the way they present themselves, going more for a target demographic then bothering to portray how things operate in our world. In the real world, cops in America aren't wearing Armani suits and constantly trying to bust Columbian drug dealers and their shipment of cocaine while spitting out mile a minute obscure metaphors and similies that take us a few seconds to figure out. If you want to see the way REAL COPS in America speak, act and carry themselves through real crime cases, then watch HSB. You won't be dissapointed.

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.

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.