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Hill Street Blues - Season 1

starring: Barbara Bosson, Lisa Sutton, Lindsay Crouse
directed by: Edwin Sherin, Don Weis, Ben Bolt (II), Mark Frost, John D. Hancock

: Hill Street Blues - Season 1
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: HILL STREET BLUES
EAN: 0024543223450
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 31, 2006
Running Time: 850 minutes
Sales Rank: 6733
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: January 15, 1981



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Product Description:
Drama that explores the lives and careers of a group of people who work at an inner city police precinct.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: HILL STREET BLUES
Title: SEASON 1
Street Release Date: 02/06/2007
Domestic
Genre: TELEVISION

Amazon.com essential video:
Created by Steven Bochco and one of television's most influential series, Hill Street Blues was not your father's cop show. The Emmy-winning pilot episode, 'Hill Street Station,' immediately established the series as less a police procedural than an up-close and personal 'interface with the police experience.' To establish gritty, documentary-like realism, the show featured sequences, such as the pre-credit roll call, that were filmed with a hand-held camera. There was chaotic, overlapping dialogue. There were sudden, shocking bursts of violence that claimed popular characters. Story lines were not wrapped up at the end of the hour, but instead, unfolded serially throughout the season. It's no wonder that Hill Street, while championed by most critics, was initially not embraced by viewers. It was, in the beginning, one of television's lowest rated shows, its case not helped by NBC's criminal practice of juggling it in its primetime schedule). But there is justice in Hollywood. Hill Street Blues won the Emmy for best drama in its first season. Also honored were several members of the ensemble, including Daniel J. Travanti as the compassionate and incorruptible Precinct Capt. Frank Furillo, Michael Conrad as the avuncular Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (whose cautionary, 'Let's be careful out there,' became the show's pop culture signature), and Barbara Babcock as the wildly sexual Grace Gardner, who rocks Esterhaus's world (particularly in the episode that earned her her statuette, 'Fecund Hand Rose').

There were no big stars on Hill Street Blues (or, for that matter, no little stars, as one of the cast members jokes during a near-hour-long reunion featurette included as a bonus feature on this three double-sided disc set). Each was an indelible character, among them Charles Haid as cowboy cop Andy Renko, Veronica Hammel as sexy public defender Joyce Davenport, Bruce Weitz as the untamed, animalistic Belker, Keil Martin as LaRue, whose descent into alcoholism is one of the season's most compelling dramatic arcs, and James Sikking as the gung-ho Howard Hunter. Once daring, Hill Street Blues seems almost quaint today, with none of the graphic sex or language that scandalized NYPD Blue (in one episode, a captured cat burglar, portrayed by a pre-L.A. Law Michael Tucker, makes a reference to 'wolf pee-pee'). The ethnic portrayals, too, are not exactly nuanced. But the human dramas at the heart of Hill Street still make for arresting television. --Donald Liebenson



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - The best show of its era
There was a time in the 1980s when the best hour of television was on Thursdays at 10:00 when Hill ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Hill Stree Blues DVD
Product was received quickly and it was just as described. I'm very pleased. Thank you!


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Great Show; by awesomep
This show was terrific during its time. I really enjoyed watching them then and I will equally enjoy ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Classic TV
Excellent packaging for a ground-breaking, insightful TV program. Most of the content is timeless, although ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - What happened to shows like this?
Although I was born in 1980 and therefore never able to watch Hill Street Blues when it originally aired, I ... Read More

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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.