Homicide: Life on the Street The Complete Season 7
September 2005 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Spearheaded by director Barry Levinson, Homicide first aired on NBC in 1993. Because Levinson was originally from Baltimore, the show was set there. Most of the cast and crew lived in Baltimore while the shows were being shot. This created a tremendous rapport among the actors. It is no stretch to say that Homicide: Life on the Street had the best ensemble work of any dramatic show ever shown on television. It was to be the first cop show firmly rooted in the real world. There were no car chases and few shootouts. The show was more about the everyday life of Baltimore’s homicide detectives. The murders would already have been committed before the show started. The viewer’s first introduction to the case would be the detectives arriving at a crime scene and discovering the body of the victim. The rest of the show would be about the intense police work involved in putting the criminal behind bars. Often two or three cases would take place during an episode. These were tied together with skillful cross-cutting and editing so the different story lines remained clear.

The look of Homicide was trend setting. Borrowing camera techniques from Godard and other experimental filmmakers, Homicide was shot with hand-held cameras. The editing used many jump cuts (sudden shifts within a scene) and repeated frames for emphasis of important points. These techniques almost scuttled the show; viewers, used to smooth crane shots and stationary cameras, often complained of feeling seasick as they watched the show. But the camera work underscored the gritty subject of the show and gave it a quasi-documentary look that made it all appear very real. Over the years, the producers slowed the moving camera down until they got just the right mix. There was no composed music score, but rather the most skillful use of source music ever achieved in a weekly television drama.

The 7th, and last, season isn’t quite up to the glory of seasons 3, 4, 5, and 6 because Andre Braugher, the best actor of the entire cast, departed at the end of the Season 6. Season 7 adds Michael Michele and develops the characters played by Callie Thorne and Jon Seda, who were added during the previous season. But Season 7 continues to address tough issues. Racism is explored in a searing episode about a riot that results when a bus hits a woman in a predominately black neighborhood. The white bus driver is beaten to death. In another controversial episode, the subject is bounty hunters. Keeping up with the times, "Homicide.com" is an episode about a killer who slays his female victims online so many can watch. Women’s roles as police officers are a theme throughout the season.

The picture and sound are excellent once you remember that the handheld camera look is what the producers were after. There are some good extras on the sixth disc, including commentary on the final episode "Forgive Us Our Trespasses," a live panel discussion with the creators and producers, Barry Levinson’s acceptance speech at the 2004 Video Software Dealers Association Convention, and cast biographies.

If you have not seen this show, start with Season 1 and proceed from there. If you do, you will see the evolution of what I consider the best weekly dramatic show in television history. Homicide consistently presented literate scripts, consummate acting, and sure direction. There is not a dud episode in their seven years. What other show can say that? Yet, NBC canceled it. Some years later, a network feature-length movie tied up some of the loose ends of the seventh season. That is available on Vidmark/Trimark DVD.

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