I’m super excited that Homicide: Life on The Streets is coming to Peacock on August 19.
I was obsessed with this show when it first aired and again when it was in syndication after it ended. I was also bummed by how much the DVD set cost for all eight seasons of the best police procedural ever to air.
Homicide: Life On The Streets fans who didn’t want to pay a few hundred dollars had few options until now, and with stars like Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, and Andre Braugher passing away, it felt like this show was one that had been forgotten forever… until now.
Homicide: Life On The Streets Is Old, But Not Outdated
This Gritty Series Aired In The Pre-Smartphone Era
Homicide: Life On The Streets took place in the late 1990s and was based on a book by David Simon about real-life Baltimore homicide detectives.
Related: The Age of Nostalgia: Why Young Audiences Are Seeking Out Old TV
I get a kick out of the pre-cell phone era whenever I catch clips on YouTube.
The detectives sometimes have to find a payphone to call into the precinct, which demonstrates how rapidly technology has changed in the last 30 years.
If You Loved Raymond Holt, You’ll Be Thrilled With Andre Braugher
Braugher’s Frank Pembleton Made Homicide Special
Homicide: Life On The Streets coming on Peacock means a generation of viewers who know Andre Braugher as Raymond Holt from Brooklyn 99 will get to discover how amazing he was as Frank Pembleton.
Pembleton could have been Holt’s cousin. He took life and his job super seriously and put up with having to be partnered with a rookie cop who was a bit too eager to be his friend.
Pembleton and Bayliss’ partnership is one of the things I’m most looking forward to revisiting. Braugher left after the sixth season, and Season 7 was not nearly as good because of his absence.
But the best Pembleton story took place during Season 3, when he had a stroke during an intense interrogation.
Rather than giving in to the tired TV trope of the miraculous cure, Pembleton struggled for several episodes after the stroke, mixing up words and not being able to function as well as he wanted.
The storyline didn’t go on for long enough — eventually, the writers decided that the audience needed action hero Pembleton back — but it featured some of Braugher’s best work and depicted stroke recovery realistically.
As a bonus, Homicide: Life On The Street is the first show to feature Richard Belzer’s Detective John Munch.
Related: The Ultimate List of TV’s Conspiracy Buffs
Munch is at his most conspiratorial and unhinged here, yet he never sacrifices his sense of empathy despite the horrible things he sees every day.
If you loved Munch on SVU or The Wire, think of Homicide: Life On The Streets as a prequel. Now that Richard Belzer has passed away, the more Munch archives we get, the better.
Homicide: Life on The Streets coming to Peacock means another seven years’ worth of Munch!
Incidentally, Chicago PD‘s Jon Seda also played a cop on this show in the later years, making it even more of a great find for fans of Dick Wolf’s shows.
There Are Too Many Great Storylines To Count
My Favorite Was Bayliss’ Coming Out Story
I remember so many awesome stories from years later, but the one that affected me most as a young adult was Bayliss’s coming-out story.
Yes, Tim Bayliss came out as a bisexual man toward the end of Homicide’s run. In the late 1990s, when TV was first experimenting with gay kisses.
One of the big issues with LGBTQ+ representation on TV to this day is that there are too few bisexual men on TV, but Homicide was an exception, and I’m forever grateful.
Tim Bayliss felt awkward and different and tried to be something he wasn’t before deciding to embrace who he was, and as a transgender viewer who didn’t know how to explain what I was, that was invaluable.
Bayliss’s series-long storyline about a case he couldn’t solve, the Luther Mahoney shooting and coverup storyline that went on for several seasons, and the show’s determination to choose actors who fit their parts rather than just supermodels…
There are so many reasons I’m excited that Homicide: Life On The Streets is coming to Peacock.
What about you, TV Fanatics? Did you love Homicide: Life On The Streets, too? Do you plan to watch it once it becomes available?
Hit the comments and let us know!
Homicide: Life On The Streets will begin streaming on Peacock on August 19, 2024.
