Hill Street Blues TV Show Season 1 DVD, the classic 1980's American serial police drama!
All 17 episodes from the first season of the groundbreaking and influential television police drama created by Steven Bochco. Set in an anonymous American city, the show follows the routine work of an under-staffed and overworked police precinct, led by Captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti). In this series, tensions are high as the city prepares for a presidential visit; the beat cops are getting edgy as a TV reporter rides with them while he researches a story; and Furillo helps a racist detective clear his name for shooting an unarmed black man.
The episodes are: ‘Hill Street Station’, ‘Presidential Fever’, ‘Politics As Usual’, ‘Can World War III Be an Attitude?’, ‘Double Jeopardy’, ‘Film at Eleven’, ‘Choice Cut’, ‘Up in Arms’, ‘Your Kind, My Kind, Humankind’, ‘Gatorbait’, ‘Life, Death, Eternity’, ‘I Never Promised You a Rose, Marvin’, ‘Fecund Hand Rose’, ‘Rites of Spring: Part One’, ‘Rites of Spring: Part Two’, ‘Jungle Madness: Part One’ and ‘Jungle Madness: Part Two’.
Over 13 hours of content!
Special Features
- Featurette “Roll Call” including cast reunion
- Episode commentaries
Hill Street Blues Season 1 Reviews
“It's one thing to say how gritty and realistic Hill Street Blues is but it's also worth stressing how funny it is with there being more than a few good laughs per episode. This is particularly noticeable when an episode concerns Howard Hunter, who takes to his task with the kind of zeal only seen on those with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later-and-whilst-you're-at-check-do-a-check-on-that-gentlemen's-immigration-status… it's a beautifully paced series that does everything extremely well. It's an undoubted classic of police television” film.thedigitalfix.com
“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 statuette, “Fecund Hand
Rose”).
There were no big stars on Hill Street Blues…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
“Hill Street Blues fundamentally altered television, and is largely responsible for the grittier, more intelligent fare that you watch today. It isn't always enjoyable, but Hill Street Blues summons powerful emotions and navigates complicated situations over the course of this season. Its technical and stylistic innovations seem fresher and more organic here at the source than they do in most of the imitators. Strong writing, acting, and direction give it dramatic potency. If you like density and grit in your TV diet and you can put up with some hokey holdovers from the '80s, Hill Street Blues will reward you.” DVD Verdict