The first season of Homicide: Life on the Street aired on NBC between January 31 and March 31, 1993. Adapted from David Simon’s 1991 non-fiction book, the season followed the fictional detectives of Baltimore Police Department homicide unit. The show received consistently positive reviews, with several commentators declaring it one of the best shows on television at the time. Homicide received four Emmy Award nominations during its first season and won two. The first and second seasons were released together in a four-DVD box-set on May 27, 2003.
About Homicide: Life on the Street (season 1) in brief
The first season of Homicide: Life on the Street aired on NBC between January 31 and March 31, 1993. Adapted from David Simon’s 1991 non-fiction book, the season followed the fictional detectives of Baltimore Police Department homicide unit and the murder cases they investigate. The show received consistently positive reviews, with several commentators declaring it one of the best shows on television at the time. Homicide received four Emmy Award nominations during its first season and won two, and also received a Writers Guild of America award. The first and second seasons were released together in a four-DVD box-set on May 27, 2003. The series premiere opened to a season-high viewership of 18. 2 million households due to a lead-in from the Super Bowl. The Nielsen ratings declined throughout the season, which Homicide producers attributed to a poor time-slot and heavy competition from the ABC comedies Home Improvement and Coach. The ratings led NBC executives to demand changes to the show before renewing Homicide for a second season. The episode “Three Men and Adena”, which consists almost entirely of one police interrogation with three actors, received particularly positive reviews and was declared one of the 100 greatest television moments by Entertainment Weekly. The season introduced regular cast members Daniel Baldwin, Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Jon Polito and Kyle Secor. Most of the primary characters were based on real-life Baltimore detectives from Simon’s book, including Gary D’Addario, Terrence McLarney, Harry Edgerton, Donald Worden and Jay Landsman.
Many of the first season story arcs were also adapted from the book, most notably the 1988 Baltimore slaying of 11-year-old Latonya Kim Wallace, which was the basis for the murder case of Adena Watson in Homicide. In addition to the book’s being set in Levinson’s home city of Baltimore, the director was attracted to the realistic way Simon portrayed police work and the detectives. The director hired screenwriter Paul Attanasio to adapt elements of the book into the teleplay for the first episode. It was the first television script AttanasIO ever wrote. The second season was the last to be produced by NBC, and it was the only one to be broadcast on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST, with the exception of the series premiere, which aired immediately after Super Bowl XXVII. The third season was produced by ABC, and the final season was broadcast on March 31 and April 1, 1994, with a final episode of the second season of the third season on April 1 and April 2, 1994. The last season was aired on May 1, 1995, with an episode that aired on the same time slot as the season premiere, and a season finale that aired the day after the fourth season of St. Elsewhere. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show were both produced by CBS, and were the first to be aired on Sundays.
You want to know more about Homicide: Life on the Street (season 1)?
This page is based on the article Homicide: Life on the Street (season 1) published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
