Hill Street Blues - Season 1 (DVD)

...classic American police drama series Hill Street Blues to be afforded the same treatment, as least as far as the UK market is concerned. The show was first aired back in 1981, and amidst the deluge of police and crime series which have followed in its wake, it would be all too easy to dismiss the programme as just another American cop show, full of the usual car-chases, shoot-outs and general law and disorder. Hill Street Blues was much more than ...
...and Dixon of Dock Green, Hill Street Blues came as quite a shock to the system. True, we'd had our moments during the Seventies, watching Jack Regan and George Carter nicking villains and pulling birds in equal numbers in The Sweeney, but never before had a fictional television programme taken us right to the very heart of life in a tough, inner-city police station, nor portrayed both police and criminals as real human beings rather than stereotyped ... more

In an age when almost every TV series ever made is released on DVD the moment it finishes its run on mainstream television, it seems remarkable that it took twenty five years for the classic American police drama series Hill Street Blues to be afforded the same treatment, as least as far as the UK market is concerned. The show was first aired back in 1981, and amidst the deluge of police and crime series which have followed in its wake, it would be all too easy to dismiss the programme as just another American cop show, full of the usual car-chases, shoot-outs and general law and disorder. Hill Street Blues was much more than that, however, and it's probably fair to say to say that many of the excellent drama series produced during the intervening years owe their success, and possibly their very existence to the show's courageously innovative creator, Stephen Bochco.

For those of us who had grown up with the cosy home-grown police dramas (and I use the word loosely), of Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green, Hill Street Blues came as quite a shock to the system. True, we'd had our moments during the Seventies, watching Jack Regan and George Carter nicking villains and pulling birds in equal numbers in The Sweeney, but never before had a fictional television programme taken us right to the very heart of life in a tough, inner-city police station, nor portrayed both police and criminals as real human beings rather than stereotyped caricatures from a script. That is, until Hill Street Blues came along, introduced by Mike Post's disarming and deceptively laid-back piano-led theme tune, and featuring a motley collection of characters - some relatively normal, others mildly eccentric, with one or two decidedly alarming - and then of course, there was the criminal fraternity.

Hill Street Blues, set in a fictional district of Chicago (and not, as I had always assumed, in New York), was quite unlike anything we'd seen on television before, in many ways. Most famously, perhaps, it was the first programme to make extensive use of hand-held cameras, in both the scenes inside the station-house and those in the surrounding streets. The effect this had was to make you feel closer to the action, as though you were actually in the same room (or vehicle, or street), as opposed to simply watching the proceedings on a TV screen, and it made for a far greater sense of realism. The show also pioneered the concept of multiple storylines, which meant that each episode would contain not one, but several plot threads running concurrently, just as in real life, in fact; likewise, a storyline wasn't necessarily confined to one fifty-minute programme slot, moreover, it would often stretch across four or five episodes, before reaching a conclusion. Again, this was a more realistic approach than featuring just one case which would be conveniently solved within the time frame of one episode.

Season One consists of seventeen episodes spread over five discs, and Episode One begins, as did each subsequent episode, with early-morning roll-call, presided over by Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, played by the charismatic Michael Conrad. Sadly, Conrad died during the filming of the third series, but the part he played during his time on the Hill is memorable for the verbose, but beautifully eloquent rhetoric with which he rallied the squad each morning. His parting instruction to "Let's be careful out there" at the end of each day's pep-talk became a catchphrase, one which was undoubtedly repeated in many a staff meeting up and down the land throughout the show's run on television.

If roll-call was chaotic, with Esterhaus often struggling to make himself heard above the banter in the squad-room, then the rest of the programme was nothing short of absolute mayhem. This was where the hand-held camera work came into its own, as police officers would talk across each other, while in the background somebody could be seen kicking a temperamental vending machine, or manhandling an uncooperative suspect; a far cry from anything we'd seen in any of our own home-grown detective series, where a police officer might sip quietly at a cup of tea whilst typing out an arrest report. At Hill Street, all manner of unsavoury individuals were paraded through the station-house at regular intervals, including prostitutes and their pimps, transvestites, drug-dealers, gun-toting youths and mentally-unhinged hostage-takers; each of them a part of everyday life on the Hill.

There's no doubt that Hill Street Blues has moments of intense violence, but what tempers that violence is the humour which is present even during some of the darker episodes. The mood can switch effortlessly from one of utter despair at say, the killing of a child, to that of almost slapstick comedy at the sight of two plain-clothes officers rigging up an elaborate hoax involving planting an alligator in the city's sewers, and it's these comedic moments that prevent this show from being just another run-of-the-mill crime drama. It has both gritty action and unashamed pathos in equal measures, but never could it be described as being dull and boring.

The regular cast is extensive in number, and with the possible exception of Daniel J Travanti as Captain Frank Furillo, no one person comes across as the leading player; indeed, it would be unfair to single out any of the actors for special mention. Due in no small part to the excellent quality of the scriptwriting, Hill Street Blues is a fine example of a team project, in which each cast member brings his or her character to life, and which is probably the key to the show's great success. The acting is superb throughout, indeed, it's almost as though this is a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than a scripted drama, such is the quality of each performance, and many of the cast must surely have weaved a number of their own traits into their characters' personalities, resulting in some flawlessly natural portrayals.

Season One sees the calm but forceful Furillo struggling to keep his relationship with the equally cool and sophisticated Public Defender, Joyce Davenport, a secret, while attempting to appease his neurotic ex-wife Fay who's convinced she has a stalker. Meanwhile Frank has the added headache of keeping the bigwigs of local government at bay, at the same time attempting to prevent a war breaking out between the city's rival gangs (watch out for a very youthful-looking David Caruso, from CSI Miami, as the Shamrocks' leader). Frank's calm and level-headed approach to everything thrown at him is the very antithesis of the frenetic chaos which surrounds him on a daily basis.

Ably assisting Furillo is the aforementioned Sergeant Esterhaus, a middle-aged avuncular figure, permanently exhausted from the rigours of juggling his private life between eighteen-year-old fiancée Cindy and the sexually voracious and recently widowed Grace Gardner; along with Lieutenant Ray Calletano, a fussy but well meaning man whose Hispanic origin proves invaluable in dealing with that section of the community, and the quietly-spoken Detective Henry Goldblume, whose negotiating skills during hostage situations are frequently hampered by the gung-ho tactics of SWAT Team leader Lieutenant Howard Hunter, quite happy to shoot every suspect on sight and ask questions later.

Womanising plain-clothes detective John 'JD' LaRue, already battling alcohol and gambling addictions, finds himself accused of corruption, while his partner Neal Washington's patience is becoming increasingly stretched at having to cover for his friend's errors and absences from duty. Meanwhile, snarling undercover officer Mick Belker, capable of reducing the most hardened criminal to a quivering wreck, and who notoriously once bit off a suspect's finger, faces a constant battle to resist the efforts of his domineering mother to fix him up with a 'nice Jewish girl'.

Uniformed officers Bobby Hill and Andy Renko, both shot in the first episode, find their close, almost brotherly relationship coming under intolerable pressure in the aftermath of that traumatic experience, while tough female officer Lucy Bates gets a new partner, the unnervingly handsome Joe Coffey, who makes it known that he'd like their relationship to extend beyond its professional status.

Watching this series after a gap of over twenty years, it struck me just how little the programme has dated. Leaving aside the fashion styles and one or two dodgy haircuts, many of the issues covered in the series are as relevant today as they were twenty five years ago, with storylines of police corruption, sleazy government officials, racial tension and drug-related crime dominating the proceedings. Take a trawl through a selection of national daily newspapers for period of two or three weeks, and I'm willing to bet that you'll come across each of those subjects at least once.

The 15 certificate attached to this box-set is, I think, justified, and while the language isn't particularly offensive (you might argue that expressions such as 'dirtbag', 'dog's breath' and 'sleazeball' are offensive to those to whom they're addressed), the series contains sufficient violence and references to sexual and drug-related crimes to dissuade any responsible parent from allowing their child to watch it.

The box-set concludes with a nostalgic and engaging reunion of eight of the show's original cast members, including an extremely well-preserved Veronica Hamel (Joyce Davenport), and a remarkably suave and growl-free Bruce Weitz (Mick Belker). Joe Spano (Henry Goldlume) is there too, along with Michael Warren and Charles Haid (Hill and Renko), James B. Sikking (Howard Hunter), Barbara Bosson (Fay Furillo) and Ed Marinaro (Joe Coffey). They talk fondly of their time on Hill Street, recalling how they came to be chosen for the parts and paying tribute to colleagues, some of whom have since passed away, and their conversations reinforce the impression you get from watching the show, that it was a hugely enjoyable experience for all those involved.

There's an optional running commentary available with the first eleven episodes, in which Joe Spano, James B. Sikking and Stephen Bochco pick through the scenes with a fine-tooth comb, throwing in snippets of trivia about various events and personalities every now and then. I listened to a small section of commentary during one episode, and while it's both fascinating and entertaining, it's perhaps something which you might want to catch up on after watching the whole series, as inevitably, it can be somewhat distracting otherwise. Fans of television and film trivia will be in their element, however.

I've enjoyed reliving the memories of Hill Street Blues immensely, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the set to anybody interested in this genre of television, including those too young to have caught its original showing. If you're a fan of the kind of American drama series currently being shown on Channel Five, then Hill Street Blues will most certainly appeal to you.
 

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