Tuesday 30 August 2016

481 Hill Street Blues


First  viewed :  1981

This  was  a  genuinely  groundbreaking  series  with  an  influence  way  beyond  its  genre  and  was  a  real  Marmite  show. You  either  loved  it  or  couldn't  be  bothered  with  it. It  intertwined  professional  and  personal  issues  in  the  lives  of  its   protagonists  to  a  greater  extent  than  any  previous  cop  show. More  revolutionary  than  that  was  the  style, the  use  of  free  roaming  hand  held  cameras  , the  background  noise  and  apparently  careless  editing  so  that  characters  weren't  necessarily  on  screen  when  they  spoke  their  lines . This  combined  with  the  focus  on  urban  poverty  and  difficult  lives  to  give  the  series  a   verite  feel ; you  could  almost  believe   you  were  watching  a  documentary  set  in   a  grimy, chaotic workplace  were  it  not  for  the  obvious  charisma  of  stars  Frank  Furillo  and  Veronica  Hamel. The  series  was  also like  a  soap  in  that  storylines  ran  across  multiple  episodes  demanding  a  commitment  from  its  viewers

I  tuned  in  early  on  , lured  by  the advance  publicity,  and  didn't  like  it.  It  was  originally  on  ITV  in  the  Minder  slot   but  it  was  quickly  obvious  that  it  wasn't  to  going  to  attract  that  sort  of  mass  audience  and  transferred  to  Channel  4, a  more natural  home, as  soon  as the  new  channel  started  broadcasting. I  dipped  in  from  time  to  time  but  never  got  absorbed  enough   to  stay  with  it.

The  series  was  showered  with  awards  throughout  its  lifetime  but  started  to  lose  its  grip  in  its  fourth  season  when  Michael  Conrad, one  of  the  most  popular  actors,  died  and  the  formula  began  to  seem  a  little  stale. It  was  cancelled  after  seven  seasons  in  1987.     

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