Sabin wrote:
Anyway, a bit of a shame but at the very least, I'm back on the drama horse. After reading your post I'm reminded that I've never finished Mad Men, The Sopranos, or The Wire and perhaps I should get on that. I hear Homicide is excellent.
It's a shame that
Homicide is so gone from any cultural conversation about TV Dramas, because it is excellent. But in the streaming era, since it's never streamed anywhere (probably due to music issues), it basically doesn't exist. The complete series is on DVD, I think with the music intact. I know the A&E releases from the mid-00's, which I bought, had all of the music intact. Not sure if the re-release from Shout has it, but I believe it does. The listing on Shout's website doesn't mention music alterations, which they usually do. (
Northern Exposure, which I'm enjoying, is not available in the US with intact music but has a complete series BluRay release overseas with all of its music.)
Homicide is hindered a little by the limitations of being on a major network, but seasons 1-5 are up there with the best drama series ever. Season 6 is good and has the famous subway episode, and Season 7 has its moments but is the weakest by far; it's not that the creators and original writers had left--Fonatana, Overmyer, Yoshimura, Simon had all been there from the beginning. But something was missing, more than just Andre Braugher, and some things had been added that didn't really fit. But even then, it was unlike anything on TV visually, it was still using directors from film, and not just the rotating array of TV hired guns that almost every other show used. (Just in season seven, Kathryn Bigelow, Brad Anderson, Barbara Kopple, Lisa Cholodenko and Joe Berlinger directed episodes; earlier seasons used everyone from Whit Stillman to Peter Medak to Michael Radford.)
"Three Men and Adena" is probably its best episode (and it could probably play okay out of context if it's out there on YouTube or anything), one of the all-time great TV episodes, but it's all very much worth a look. Network drama hasn't ever been much better than
Homicide was in its third, fourth, and fifth seasons where it was putting out great episodes week after week after week.
The Wire is one I loved back in its original airing, even though my take on it was slightly off-center: I thought season two, which lots of people considered the clear worst season, was its best. (Season five was the worst, and I would not trust anyone who says otherwise.) I started rewatching a few years ago and didn't get too far; possibly just because I was busy and had other distractions, but I also think it's possible that its matter-of-fact pessimism doesn't resonate with me now the way it did in 2007, when I was much more pessimistic in general. Need to rewatch it in full, but
Homicide, which was set in the same city and made with many of the same writers and producers, and which never took itself quite as seriously as
The Wire, never tried to be some kind of Grand Statement about America, is the one I feel more excitement about rewatching.