Sunday, March 4, 2012

John Munch and I agreed...

Words of wisdom from the early '90s cop show "Homicide," which I've been re-watching recently. A crucial evolutionary step from some of the guys who went on to create "The Wire."

5 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

Any idea who wrote this? When? Or are we in the no-context world others also predicted?

David Chute said...

"Homicide: Life on the Street," episode 3.1, "Nearer My God to Thee," teleplay by Jorge Zamacona, story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona, directed by Tim Hunter. Aired 10/14/94.

Christian Lindke said...

I really think that you cannot understate the impact of "Starsky and Hutch" in the evolution of the crime drama.

Look at the directors and screenwriters on that show.

Michael Mann -- His episodes are the best ones.

Robert Swanson

Ron Friedman -- Sledgehammer!

Anthony Yerkovich -- Miami Vice and Hill Street Blues.

Miami Vice = Dick Wolf, Robert Crais, Joel Surnow

Hill Street Blues = Steven Bochco, David Milch, Dick Wolf,

And they keep working together.

LUCK's pilot was directed by... Michael Mann.

David Chute said...

don't think I ever watched an episode of that show. But the lineage you're tracing makes a lot of sense.

What are your thoughts on the issue of the domestication of long form, he evolution from the collection of short stories format to the novelistic?

Christian Lindke said...

I think that people realized that television is the perfect medium for novels. A season is 22-23 chapters. It's a much better match for a novel storyline than a 2-hour movie. The best movies are novellas and short stories.

I'll have a look at some older shows to see where we begin to see novel like stories -- and season long arcs -- but I know by Miami Vice it was already a trend.

What TV hasn't decided -- except for British TV in some cases -- is how to let series end. To be fair, we haven't really learned that with novel series either. Game of Thrones and Moorcock's Elric stories are proof of that.