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Pop the champagne, ring the bells, dance the jigs, cancel all other plans: A time of great rejoicing is here. “Homicide: Life on the Street,” one of the greatest shows in TV history, is finally streaming (on Peacock). So long we wandered in darkness, begging for its return. How we lamented its absence while the years rolled by, our cries growing louder and more sorrowful. But now at last we feast.
“Homicide” debuted in 1993 with a tense, inventive nine-episode first season. Executive produced by Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and Paul Attanasio, and based on the book by David Simon, the show often has a jangly, jumpy feel. Its instantly recognizable bloopy phones ring-ring in the background, and quick and distinctive edits keep the rhythm unpredictable — as if scenes were following the cadence of thoughts, not the cadence of shows. The series blends gallows humor and cynicism with operatic emotion and soaring monologues, and the signature interrogation scenes play out like seductions, like battles, like debates, like dances.
The show is set in Baltimore and feels true to time and space in a way network cop shows no longer do. Everything is kind of grimy, yellowing before our eyes from the omnipresent cigarette smoke and general neglect, and you can hear how deflated the cushions on the chairs are at the precinct house.
Characters remark often on the heat or the cold or the way a place smells, and the costuming is both naturalistic and specific, as if the characters really picked out their outfits themselves. This rewatch in particular, I was struck by how much touching there is on the show — how often the characters touch one another but also how often they interact physically with the set or props, knocking on tables and thumbing folders. That sense of contact anchors us, giving us a sense of solid-wood realism.
The term “cop show” is frequently synonymous with “formulaic,” but “Homicide” is anything but. Some crimes stay with the show for its entire run, others for only an episode, and the depth and detail of all the one-off characters is unflagging, even when the show meanders a bit in later seasons. Andre Braugher’s performance as Frank Pembleton, the brilliant detective wrestling with his faith and purpose, is often the highlight, but all the acting here is top-notch. A symphony requires many instruments.
If you want to watch one episode to get a taste for the show, watch Season 1, Episode 6, “Three Men and Adena,” in which Pembleton and his partner, Bayliss (Kyle Secor, also fantastic), interrogate a suspect (Moses Gunn, superb) for hours on end. If you want to watch five episodes and don’t care as much about self-spoiling, watch the first block of Season 3: “Nearer My God to Thee,” “Fits Like a Glove” and “Extreme Unction” follow the investigation into a serial killer, one who gets under Pembleton’s skin to an unusual degree; then “Crosetti” tells a more searing and intimate story, followed by “The Last of the Waterman,” which sends Melissa Leo’s guarded, thoughtful Kay Howard to her hometown on the Chesapeake Bay.
