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Homicide: Life on the Street, Starring Law & Order's Richard Belzer and Andre Braugher, Comes to Peacock
The unconventional cop drama ran for a total of 122 episodes and connected deeply to the world of Law & Order.
All seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street, the Emmy Award-winning police procedural that ran on NBC from 1993 to 1999 for a total of 122 episodes (and a TV movie finale), is officially coming to Peacock, the NBCUniversal streaming service announced today. Based on the non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (best-known as creator of The Wire), the series was developed by Paul Attanasio, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind Donnie Brasco.
Starring two late, great actors — Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Richard Belzer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) — the show "portrays the brutal detective work of a homicide department in Baltimore," reads the synopsis. "With an electrifying cast of characters, this hour-long drama intrigues viewers with the reality of 'life on the street.'"
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Daniel Baldwin, Ned Beatty, Reed Diamond, Giancarlo Esposito, Michelle Forbes, Peter Gerety, Isabella Hofmann, Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Toni Lewis, Michael Michele, Max Perlich, Jon Polito, Kyle Secor, Jon Seda, and Callie Thorne co-star.
In addition to winning four Primetime Emmys throughout its run, Homicide: Life on the Street also received critical acclaim from the Television Critics Association, Directors Guild of America, NAACP, and Writers Guild of America.
Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Henry Bromell, and Jim Finnerty served as executive producers on the series. David Simon was a producer alongside Gail Mutrux, Julie Martin, James Yoshimura, Jorge Zamacona, and Anya Epstein.
Where to Stream Homicide: Life on the Street
All seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street will make their first-time debut on Peacock Monday, August 19.
How Homicide: Life on the Street Broke the Classic Cop Show Formula
Speaking with the Television Academy in 2009, Attanasio recalled how he initially didn't want to be a part of the project, thinking that he couldn't improve upon the formula of Hill Street Blues. Nevertheless, he was encouraged to at least meet with Levinson by his agent.
"[Barry] said, 'I want to do a cop show with no car chases and no gun battles. And I said, 'That's impossible! I'm yours. I'm there.' Because it seemed like such a crazy, foolhardy idea ... How do you take all of the cliches that make a cop show interesting to watch, pick them out — and what do you put in their place? He had an incredible vision of what the show would look like. The whole jump-cutting and it was all handheld camera and the color was very faded. So, it was dirty and it was rough and it was raw. Because it was handheld, we would light the stage and the actors never knew who was gonna be on camera. We would block it, but then the camera would go [in all directions], so they always had to be on their game. They always had to be acting all the way.
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He continued: "It allowed us to play with the form and the show was very un-formulaic. Every week, we just said, 'Let's tell the story from whatever point-of-view we want to tell it. Maybe the murder happens at the beginning, maybe it doesn't happen until the end. Maybe there's no murder, maybe there's 10 murders.' Whatever it was, we decided we'd let the story dictate the rhythm of the writing. And so, it was enormous fun for the writers because we could do anything we wanted."
Is Homicide: Life on the Street Connected to Law & Order?
Yes. Both Braugher and Belzer guest-starred as their Homicide characters — Detectives Frank Pembleton and John Munch — in the sixth season of Law & Order (another NBC property).
Following the conclusion of Life on the Street in 1999 (the series finale movie aired the following year), Detective Munch moved to New York City, where he became a regular fixture of the Special Victims Unit. Braugher, on the other hand, would appear in several episodes of SVU years later via a brand-new role: defense attorney, Bayard Ellis.
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