Hill Street Blues

Hill Street Blues captivated audiences and critics during its run, but as television evolved, it was gradually overshadowed by the very shows it inspired. Co-creator Steven Bochco carried its DNA into his later work, including NYPD Blue, another groundbreaking procedural that built on Hill Street Blues’ foundation.Bochco’s series helped reshape not only the police procedural but the DNA of television itself. Even George R.R. Martin, whose work couldn’t be more different tonally, has credited Hill Street Blues with “raising the general level of television drama considerably.”

Hill Street Blues opens into a muster room in which the audience sees the familiar faces of officers engaged in horseplay, flirtations, and ban- ter. Officers are dressed as street people, in black leather jackets, in police blues, in disheveled two-piece suits, and in three-piece business