Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC

5 min readDec 2, 2021

Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes.[1] The show chronicles the lives of the staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city. The “blues” are the police officers in their blue uniforms. The show received critical acclaim and its production innovations influenced many subsequent dramatic television series produced in the United States and Canada. In its debut season, the series won eight Emmy Awards, a debut season record later surpassed only by The West Wing. The show won a total of 26 Emmy Awards (out of 98 Emmy Award nominations) during its run, including four consecutive wins for Outstanding Drama Series.

1Background
2Production
3Music
4Seasons
4.1Broadcast history and Nielsen ratings
5Setting
6Title
7Cast
7.1Main characters
7.2Other characters
7.3Guest actors
8Critical reception
8.1Awards
9Home media
10Spinoff
10.1Beverly Hills Buntz
11In popular culture
11.1Computer game
12References
13External links

Background[edit]

MTM Enterprises developed the series on behalf of NBC, appointing Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll as series writers. The writers were allowed freedom to create a series that brought together a number of fresh ideas in TV drama. Each episode featured intertwined storylines, some of which were resolved within the episode, with others developing throughout a season. The conflicts between the work lives and private lives of the characters were also significant.

The series featured a strong focus on the workplace struggle between what is right and what works. Almost every episode began with a pre-credit sequence (or teaser) consisting of (mission) briefing and roll call to start the day shift. From season three on, a “Previously on…” montage of clips of up to six episodes preceded the roll call.

Almost all episodes took place over the course of a single day, many concluding with Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) in a domestic situation, often in bed, discussing how their respective days went. The series dealt with real-life issues and employed professional jargon and slang to a greater extent than had been seen before on television.[2]

Each week after roll call, from Season 1 until Michael Conrad’s death, partway through Season 4, Sgt. Phil Esterhaus would say, “Let’s be careful out there.”[3] Sgt. Lucille Bates continued the tradition through the end of Season 4, as a tribute to Michael Conrad. From Season 5 until most of Season 6, Sgt. Stan Jablonski concluded his roll calls with, “Let’s go out there and do it to them before they do it to us.” From then on, the show changed directions and conclusions (and even roll calls) were dropped.

Production[edit]

Hill Street Blues employed what was, at that time, a unique style of camera usage for weeknight television productions, such as filming close in with action cuts rapidly between stories. Rather than studio (floor) cameras, handhelds were used to enhance this style.[4] Overheard, off-screen dialogue aurally-augmented the “documentary” feel with respect to the filmed action of a scene.[citation needed]

Although filmed in Los Angeles (both on location and at CBS Studio Center in Studio City), the series is set in a generic unnamed inner-city location with a feel of a U.S. urban center in the Midwest or Northeast. Bochco reportedly intended this fictional city to be a hybrid of Chicago, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.[5]

The program’s focus on failure and those at the bottom of the social scale is pronounced, in contrast to Bochco’s later project L.A. Law. Inspired by police procedural detective novels such as Ed McBain’s 1956 Cop Hater, the show has been described as Barney Miller out of doors. The focus on the bitter realities of 1980s urban living was revolutionary for its time.

Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC

Contents

Background[edit]

Production[edit]

Written by Caxec