'Hill Street Blues': The most influential TV show ever

CNN ^ | Tue April 29, 2014 | Todd Leopold

[mkleesma]

Loved this show! Might even pick up the DVD collection.

[kidd]

I’m a big fan of Hill Street Blues. Innovative. Creative. Great acting.

But most influential? Hardly, it didn’t have the ratings. St. Elsewhere launched more careers, if that’s the measure.

The most influential would have to be The Honeymooners or All in the Family.

[corkoman]

While we are at it... I nominate BARNEY MILLER as a great cop show.. That was hilarious. And a great theme song!

[petitfour]

Never watched it.

[Vinnie]

Veronica Hamel was gorgeous back then...reminds me of Brigit Moniyan on "Blue Bloods. Loved the way she'd call Furillo.... "Pizza Man"...

You and I have the same tastes. Veronica and now Brigitte.

[oh8eleven]

Seinfeld came after Hill Street.
So what? The headline claimed HSB was, "The most influential TV show ever."

All In the Family was not a serialized story.
Surely you jest.

[xp38]

“I Love Lucy” pretty much created the television universe as we know it. Now it may be dated but it doesn’t get much more influential than that. The same could be said for Birth of a Nation for the motion picture industry. Very dated now but there is no denying it laid the foundation for the major Hollywood studios.

[Kartographer]

Amazing the number of far leftwing shows that appear to be among FReepers favorites? All in the Family? M*A*S*H? and so on.....

[cyclotic]

Vic Hitler, the Narcoleptic comic. Awesome. I particularly liked the drug dealer Belker would arrest every few weeks. He once “got lost at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk.”

Remember when the EAT (Emergency Action Team) Team was in the sewers looking for alligators? LaRue and Washington got a stuffed alligator on wheels and sent it down the sewer. A few seconds later all you heard was machine gun fire.

[atc23]

Brilliant descent into madness. Character development beyond anything ever seen. Writing writing writing

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

"Hill Street Blues" was the best cop show ever.

Until "Homicide: Life On The Street" took the genre and turned it up to eleven.

[hoagy62]

My favorite characters were Sgt. Belker (Bruce Weitz) and Lt. Hunter, the SWAT team commander (James B. Sikking).

Belker always seemed to have his ‘mad’ on and referred to law-breakers in very descriptive terms (dog breath, dog puke, meatsack, etc.).

Hunter was so self-assured, convinced that he was more important than anyone at the station.

One of my favorites (and saddest) episodes was when Michael Conrad passed away. Remember how they wrote out his character? He died while having sex with his girlfriend, Grace (Barbara Babcock).

[Kartographer]

I love Lucy was the first multi-camera sitcom to be filmed before a live studio audience. CBS wouldn’t pay for the extra cameras so Desi made a deal and paid for the cameras and CBS signed over the rerun rights. Desi was a good businessman!

[oh8eleven]

Amazing the number of far leftwing shows that appear to be among FReepers favorites? All in the Family? M*A*S*H? and so on.....
You couldn't be more wrong.
All In The Family was supposed to make Archie out as racist and Meathead the hero.
In fact, it turned out that George Jefferson was the real racist and Meathead a pinko-commie.
MASH was anti-war, not anti-soldier, not anti-draft. That's who/what the leftwing, scumbags protested.
As VN combat vet, I appreciated MASH's anti-war comments more than you'll ever know.

[discostu]

Seinfeld wasn’t that influential. Not on the Hill Street level. Almost every hour drama on TV now is serialized, even half hour sitcoms lean towards serialization now. Non-soap opera style serialization in prime time started will Hill Street, the entire prime time line up of every network doing scripted shows is influenced by Hill Street.

Not jesting at all, AITF was episodic not serialized. Cast changes and short arcs do not make for serialized story telling. If 99% of the episodes leave the characters in the same situation they started it’s episodic.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“A few seconds later all you heard was machine gun fire.”

Bwaaaa! I’d forgotten that one! Hilarious!

[Buckeye McFrog]

'Hill Street Blues': The most influential TV show ever

Based on Pittsburgh's most notorious Amish neighborhood. (though one that is starting to gentrify)

[Kartographer]

OH I could be more wrong.

I surprised Maude and West Wing isn't among the favorites. What did the Author H. Richard Hornberger think?

Dr. Hornberger modeled the character of Capt. Benjamin Franklin (Hawkeye) Pierce after himself, his son said. Partly for that reason, he disliked the television series and almost never watched it.

''He liked the movie because he thought it followed his original intent very closely,'' William Hornberger said. ''But my father was a political conservative, and he did not like the liberal tendencies that Alan Alda portrayed Hawkeye Pierce as having.''

''My father didn't write an anti-war book,'' he added. ''It was a humorous account of his work, with serious parts thrown in about the awful kind of work it was, and how difficult and challenging it was.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/07/arts/h-richard-hornberger-73-surgeon-behind-m-a-s-h.html

[ken5050]

Well, we’re both members of the GReat FReeper class of 1998...