Homicide – Life On The
Street (Season Seven)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B- Episodes: B
Homicide – Life on the Street is not
only one of the most enduring TV series in recent memory, but for lasting seven
seasons with limited commercial success; it is a great survivor in its own
right. The Complete Seventh Season
is the last and the show lost many of its key stars, but the departure of Andre
Braugher was the straw that broke the critics and loyal viewers back. Unlike Law & Order, the interchangeability
of the cities and detectives did matter.
That’s a shame, because the writers did not give up.
The show had reinvented itself one more time and new
characters were being developed while the few survivors like Richard Belzer,
Giancarlo Esposito, Clark Johnson, and Yaphet Kotto saw the show to the
end. Jon Seda was the most notable
later addition. This DVD boxed set
takes six more DVDs, 22 more shows in all, to contain the final season. It ended as if it could have continued, but
all good things come to an end.
That the show continued to be as smart as it was at this
point easily makes it one of the best police dramas in TV history, a point made
clearer when watch many such British shows of late. You would think they might be better than there American
counterparts, but doing this kind of storytelling is more complex than one
would think for how commonplace such shows are. The show did not sell out or “jump the shark” in the end,
including another good crossover episode with Law & Order. Too bad it never got the ratings that series
received very belatedly.
The 1.33 X 1 full screen image and Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo remain just above average to the end.
The image looks slightly better than the fair-but-problematic and has
limited digititis and pixelization despite color consistency. The show always had a slightly gritty look,
if pushing the visual grit only so far.
The refined credits will always seem like an anachronism. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound is not
perfect, still with Pro Logic playback like the previous sets, but surrounds
sound limited, as dialogue is a bit too much in the center channel. There is ambient sound and non-spillover
sound in the surrounds when the dialogue plays back, and it is does not have
Box One’s troubles. Extras are all on
DVD 6 and include head writers James Yoshimura, Tom Fontana and Julie Martin on
the final episode “Forgive Us Our Trespasses” which wraps up things
further, cast/crew biographies, live panel discussion with Yoshimura, Fontana,
producer Barry Levinson & David Simon, and Levinson’s acceptance speech for
the 2004 Video Software Association Career Achievement Award.
A final thought, with all the “reality TV” going on, no
show like this of this high quality and realism has surfaced on network
television since. Ironically, this show
seems more real than virtually any such series. Does Homicide mark the end of an era in quality commercial
network TV? That’s a case that has yet
to be solved, but if it were true, that really would be a killing.
- Nicholas Sheffo
