NYPD Blue

[Uncle Ethan]

I've just started binge watching from Series 1.

One of the finest TV shows ever. Magnificent theme tune, depth to the cast, good writing and some great acting.

I don't think anyone has owned a show as much as Dennis Franz. Even in the early episodes when it was meant to be a David Caruso vehicle Franz just takes it over.

[ursus arctos]

NYPD Blue

A great, great show.

And very true to life, according to people who should know.

[WOM]

NYPD Blue

Yet it seems to have disappeared from the tv landscape almost completely.

[Uncle Ethan]

NYPD Blue

Yes, very hard to find, even online. I relied on my son, who has more knowledge of these things than I do.

I used to have to chase it all over the TV schedules for years. It took me two years after broadcast in the US to eventually see the final series.

[Janik]

NYPD Blue

See also Homicide: Life on the Streets, which has got completely overshadowed by The Wire. And NYPD Blue to some extent.
This article overstates things, it isn't supieror to what followed, because its focus is only on one side of the problem. Its criminals are bascially ciphers, the drug kingpin portrayed, Luther Mahoney, being just plain evil rather than having a backstory that explains him like Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell. But Shelley does have some good points about Homicide's many strengths.

[E10 Rifle]

NYPD Blue

Yeah similarly, I think NYPD Blue suffers in comparison to what followed for the same reason. It's fairly unequivocally on the side of the police, even when it shows its rough diamonds, in a way that subsequent shows were not.

I enjoyed it at the time but remember thinking that it was fading in later series. Wonderfully made though.

[ursus arctos]

NYPD Blue

It's really only The Wire and its progeny that treat(s) the "other side" as full blown characters, though. As ian notes, even Homicide, which was developed by the same people who did The Wire and based on Simon's book of the same name, focused very much on the cops. For the other side, you needed to read Simon's The Corner and it was only when he brought the two together in The Wire that you had a complete view.

NYPD Blue, I think, is best compared to Hill Street Blues, and earlier detective based shows like Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco and even Dragnet. When you do that, you see just how revolutionary it was at its time (including its portrayal of women and people of colour, who are either absent or window dressing in the earlier shows).