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Hill Street Blues - Season 1
Product Group: DVD
Studio: 20th Century Fox
ISBN: B000BOH8YG
UPC: 024543223450
Binding/Media: DVD
Running Time: 850 minutes
Release Date: 2006-01-31
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
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Editorial Reviews
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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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Amazon.com
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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Customer Reviews
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Highly recommended
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-07-05
This is an excellent TV show you won't regret to bought. Great memories that makes you understand by a glimpse the "real" work of the police deptmt besides it is the precedent of series like "Law and Order". Great TV serie no doubt about it.
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Hill Street Blues
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-06-24
Excellent series - Sorry I missed it when it was first presented on TV - Wonderful casting - Original stories - Just very entertaining -
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Best series of all time!!
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-05-02
Hill Street Blues was always my favorite, but I missed most of the episodes. Consequently, when I found the first two seasons at Amazon.com, I was ecstatic. I ordered them immediately. It is very disappointing that nothing is being done about getting us the other five seasons. When I got the DVDs, I didn't realize that there were episodes on the back side of the disk, so I thought they were missing. Regardless, I was glad to have what I had. In my search for more episodes, I found Season Three and the episodes I thought I was missing at a website. That gave me everything I was missing or thought I was missing through the first three years. I decided to relay this information to you because I just read a blog from someone who had visited Amazon.com's web page for Season Four. That person apparently didn't realize that there are episodes on the back of the disks. If you haven't ordered the first two seasons, you won't be disappointed, so order them right away, while they are still available. Meanwhile, let's all put pressure on Amazon.com to release the other five seasons.
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Let's be careful out there
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-02-25
"Hill Street Blues" (HSB) was a successful American TV series during the 1980's. It seems only three seasons have been released on DVD. This is the first one. The series is set in an anonymous American city, where a group of police officers fight a never ending battle with street gangs, common criminals and corruption in their own ranks. Above all, they fight with themselves and their personal problems. Characters include police chief Frank Furillo, his rival and lover Joyce Davenport, officers Goldblume, Renko and Washington, and the undercover agent Belker. The series became an international success, but seems to be almost forgotten today.
HSB was aired on Swedish television during my high school years. I only remember bits and pieces of it, mostly the weird parts (remember the transvestite who becomes a judge?). Most of all, I remember the reactions of other people to the series.
My grandmother considered it a comic show, and laughed at all episodes, including the serious ones. She even called the series "The Comedy". My father nicknamed Goldblume "Daniel Ortega" after the then-president of Nicaragua. I mean, the similarity is striking. My buddies at school loved and often imitated Belker, and there was even a kind of hat known as "the Belker hat". And, of course, many people have used the expression "Hey, hey, let's be careful out there", used by one of the characters in the show.
Personally, I hated HSB until I took a clue from my grandma, learning to watch it as a comedy. Indeed, it *does* contain a lot of funny situations and twists: the tough and perfect Frank Furillo turns out to be member of the AA, Belker goes undercover as a chicken, Captain Freedom does a parody of Rambo, and the gang leader Jesus Martinez becomes a lawyer. Did I mention the transvestite judge? There are also characters that are involuntarily comic, such as the SWAT commander Hunter (who reminds me of Donald Duck). Overall, however, I think HSB is pretty depressive and claustrophobic. You do get the feeling that crime, corruption and personal problems will never cease. Don't watch this if you're into positive thinking!
Once again, this DVD only contains the first season. Many of the situations I described above are probably from later seasons. I just couldn't help myself reviewing the whole series. It's very difficult to rate "Hill Street Blues", but for old times sake, I'll give it five stars...
And hey, let's be careful out there! ;-)
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Start of a great series.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2009-12-27
Made me think of the better Ed McBain's.
Schould have been honored by it.
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Retail Price: $19.98
Amazon.com's Price:$8.23
That's 59% Off!
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