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Hill Street Blues - Season 1

Actors: Barbara Bosson, Lindsay Crouse, Lisa Sutton, Daniel J. Travanti, Michael Conrad
ASIN : B000BOH8YG
Sales Rank : 2092
Director : Arnold Laven, Ben Bolt, Corey Allen, Dale White, Don Weis
Brand : HILL STREET BLUES
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543223450
UPC : 024543223450
Release Date : December 31, 2006
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 850

Description

"LET’S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE." So ends each roll call session at the Hill Street station house. As the cops and detectives head out to the streets, Captain Frank Furillo begins the delicate balancing act of providing enough protection for the law-abiding citizens without inciting the neighborhood gangs and local criminal elements who are openly hostile towards any police presence. Yet as dangerous as his inner city precinct can be, Furillo's biggest battles often involve protecting his own cops from the Public Defender's office, self-serving bureaucrats, and even each other.

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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 her statuette, "Fecund Hand Rose").

There were no big stars on Hill Street Blues (or, for that matter, no little stars, as one of the cast members jokes during a near-hour-long reunion featurette included as a bonus feature on this three double-sided disc set). 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

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Hill Street Blues - Season 2

Actors: Daniel J. Travanti, Michael Conrad, Michael Warren, Bruce Weitz, James Sikking
ASIN : B000EHSVC8
Sales Rank : 2694
Director : Jeff Bleckner, Thomas Carter (II), Georg Stanford Brown
Brand : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543242192
UPC : 024543242192
Release Date : December 16, 2006
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 850

Description

Created by Steven Bochco (?Murder One,? ?NYPD Blue?) and Michael Kozoll, and featuring an ensemble cast including Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, Bruce Weitz, Charles Haid, Betty Thomas and James Sikking, each episode chronicled a day-in-the-life of the cops on the beat, starting with the infamous morning roll call and ending with a recap of the day?s events. The first hard-hitting series of its kind, ?Hill Street Blues? garnered 26 Emmy® Awards ? including four for Outstanding Drama ? won two Golden Globes®, and is credited with inspiring beloved dramas such as ?St. Elsewhere,? ?Law & Order? and ?NYPD Blue.?

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Despite critical acclaim, Hill Street Blues could not get arrested ratings-wise its first season. Far from being careful out there, the superb second season did nothing to tinker with the integrity of this groundbreaking series to make it more audience friendly. Multiple storylines, overlapping dialogue, gritty language, and a pseudo-documentary style capture the palpable chaos and tension of what one character calls "the rat-infested, poverty-stricken urban reality." From the precinct-house shooting rampage that opens the season to a hijacked hearse in the season-ending episode, Hill Street Blues deftly walks the line between police procedural and personal drama, further fleshing out its gallery of compelling and colorful characters. Belker (Bruce Weitz) is still a growling mad dog who takes bites out of perps. But in one of the series' most memorable story arcs, he forms a surprising bond with the delusional costumed citizen Captain Freedom (Dennis Dugan), Public defender Joyce (Victoria Hamel)'s steamroller persona breaks down when a colleague is murdered and the case is thrown out because of a technicality.

Other dramatic developments: LaRue (Keil Martin) falls off the wagon and endangers his partner, Washington (Taurean Blacque), during a drug bust ("Zen and the Art of Law Enforcement"); Goldblume (Joe Spano) gets personally involved in the case of an abusive slumlord ("Of Mouse and Man," featuring future Miami Vice star Edward James Olmos as a threatened tenant); Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) is still bedeviled by sexual siren Grace Gardner (Barbara Babcock); and Precinct Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti, who earned his second Emmy for Best Actor) and Joyce bring their clandestine affair out into the open. Other ongoing storylines involve realistic depictions of police corruption and inter-partner race relations. Hill Street's second season fulfilled the promise of its auspicious first, and repeated as TV's Outstanding Drama Series at the Emmy Awards. No roll call of classic, trendsetting TV series would be complete without it. --Donald Liebenson

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Hill Street Blues

Actors: Barbara Bosson, Lindsay Crouse, Lisa Sutton
ASIN : B000BR6QB4
Sales Rank : 141095
Director : Ben Bolt, Dale White, Don Weis, Edwin Sherin, John D. Hancock
Region Code : 1
Format : NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543223481
UPC : 024543223481

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Inside Television's Greatest - Hill Street Blues & LA Law

Actor: James Reeves
ASIN : B000065U2N
Sales Rank : 224359
Studio : Goldhil Home Media
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0743457169325
UPC : 743457169325
Release Date : December 04, 2002
Publisher : Goldhil Home Media
Manufacturer : Goldhil Home Media
Label : Goldhil Home Media
Running Time : 47

Description

The stars, the writers, the producers and those who almost made it big... Inside Television's Greatest reveals the answers to all the questions you've been dying to ask, and tells the secrets you wouldn't imagine to be true. Explore the creative process that brings an idea, and the characters of a new world, to life. Crawl inside the actors' heads and experience life in television from both sides of the camera. Understand the complex decisions and strange chain of events that bring the relative nameless to unequaled fame...and how one word can force them into obscurity. With Inside Television's Greatest, you'll never get closer to the shows that have brought so much joy, sadness and laughter into our lives. It was the brilliance of producer Steven Bochco that resurrected a troubled network that lagged behind the others by $220 million in revenue. Being offered the opportunity to create a new police-themed show based on old-school formula seemed rather disagreeable to Steven, who initially turned down the offer from NBC. Realizing that he was the only man for the job, NBC countered with the option for complete creative control, which led to the birth of "the most important fictional television program to date"... Hill Street Blues. This set the stage for his development of yet another hit television show that would take risks, cross boundaries and entertain us all for nearly a decade... LA Law. Find the answers to these fascinating questions and many more in Inside Television's Greatest: • What on screen romance moved off screen and resulted in a marriage that flourished like no other in Hollywood? • Who was able to get their friends and relatives to work on the shows? What made the background noise seem so realistic in Hill Street Blues? • Which show was ranked a disappointing 87 out of 96 during its first year but was nominated for 21 Emmys?

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Hill Street Blues - Season 1

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Hill Street Blues - Season 2

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Hill Street Blues

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Hill Street Blues: Season 4

Hill Street Blues: Season 6

Hill Street Blues - Season 3

Hill Street Blues: Season 5

Hill Street Blues: Season 7

Inside Television's Greatest - Hill Street Blues & LA Law

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