Hill Street Blues

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. 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. Background MTM Enterprises developed the series on behalf of NBC, appointing Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll as series writers. The writers were allowed the 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. Television author John Javna described it as "a cop show for the Big Chill generation, discovering that it takes all of their energy to keep even a few of their ideals alive while they struggle to succeed." 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. Author Steven Johnson wrote of the importance to viewers of each episode's roll calls, saying that they "performed a crucial function, introducing some of the primary threads and providing helpful contextual explanations for them." Also, 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.