PODCAST 45 – HILL STREET BLUES

Somehow I managed to stagger through reading this in the latest “Round The Archives" podcast from Lisa and Andrew (available at https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta045-episode-45-here-come-the-double-deckers-terry-jones-medieval-lives) - this is the text for anyone who couldn't understand my burbled nonsense...

PODCAST 45 – HILL STREET BLUES

Unlike with significant music albums that can sometimes make the dubious claim to have changed the way pop music was manufactured, there are very few television programmes that can genuinely claim to have changed television as we knew it forever.

You could argue that certain significant new movements like rolling news, or Breakfast TV certainly changed British television, even if they were based upon the existing American model, and not necessarily for the better, but very few dramas or comedies can honestly be held up as pivotal and signifying a moment where everything before seems different to everything afterwards.

Perhaps MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS is a good example of a comedy influencing everything that followed, but it was in itself inspired by the work of Spike Milligan, and its antecedents were already visible on screen in shows like DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET and AT LAST THE 1948 SHOW.

One drama series, I think, that can genuinely stake a claim for having influenced just about everything that followed was HILL STREET BLUES which was created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll and debuted in January 1981 before running for seven troubled seasons in which producers were regularly fired and replaced, and the series sometimes struggled to find an audience and be saved from cancellation due to ratings and budgetary concerns.

Thankfully, HILL STREET BLUES did survive, become multiple-award winning and much-loved, and ultimately ran for those seven magnificent  seasons before disappearing off to TV heaven - and peculiar spin-off territory - with a mostly unfamiliar cast.

The pilot episode directed by Robert Butler, and written by Kozoll and Bochco, is an astonishing and breathtakingly fast piece of television even now, nearly four decades later.

An otherwise blank screen quietly bears the caption “Roll Call, 6:53am” and we fade up to a scene of utter chaos which is the briefing room of Hill Street station where Sergeant Esterhaus (played by Michael Conrad who often played villains in shows like THE ROCKFORD FILES) is briefing and updating the day shift before they go on duty.

This is not the familiar polished view of ordinary police officers that would have been familiar to viewers of cop dramas in those days. This disparate and surprisingly diverse bunch look almost exactly the same as the villains and hoodlums they would later be arresting.

Immediately we see that these are not your average TV cops as their sergeant runs through the stories of the day which cleverly fills us in on a lot of what we are going to see later if you’re listening carefully above the overlapping dialogue, endless interruptions, and various cuts to extraordinary pieces of the action.

There are references to a cross-dressing purse-snatcher that receive the predictable responses in such a high-testosterone environment, and warnings of the expected retaliations to recent gang homicides as if these are everyday occurrences and a directive that all officers are to hand over their illicit and illegal weapons which leads to the sight gag of a table rapidly filling with an astonishing arsenal of weaponry, which is just as rapidly retrieved once this daily morning meeting has been adjourned.

The first faces we see are JD LaRue and Neal Washington (played by Kiel Martin and Taurean Blacque), later revealed to be undercover detectives, and one of the great pairings that this series offers up for dramatic effect. They are also, in comparison to the rest of the shift, fairly ordinary looking. This is not Central Casting’s idea of what a Police Station might look like. This is as room full of characters as diverse and individual and hairy as real life sometimes is, probably drawn from the very best character actors the like of which you might seldom have seen – or had your eyes drawn to - on television before.

And whilst JD flirtatiously retrieves another weapon from one of his female admirers, Sergeant Esterhaus pauses for that magic moment to get his officers to listen as he delivers that immortal talismanic line of “Hey… Let’s be careful out there…!” which is respected enough to silence even this bunch just for a second, bringing a touch of the genuine fears and hopes of the average “we don’t know what the hell’s going to happen” morning of these officers of the law into stark, sharp focus in one magical line.

Let’s pause and think about that scene again. As an introduction, we meet several characters, get filled in on the story so far in a world already built before this pilot even starts, and we are already aware that the forces of chaos are working on both sides of the struggle.

This is a real and complete world full of living breathing characters, none of whom we have met yet. The chaotic storytelling and  soundtrack must have bewildered anyone tuning in for the first time back in 1981 and whilst we are going to get to know some of these new faces fairly quickly, I imagine it all felt pretty scary if you were looking for the new COLUMBO, KOJAK or IRONSIDE series.

Next, we are introduced to Officers Hill and Renko, just after Renko has completed one of his morning sit-downs, and already featured in the morning melee, who are another of the show’s great pairings. Bobby Hill is played by Michael Warren and he has a love/hate relationship with his redneck Texan partner Andy Renko, as played by Charles Haid.

As they discuss Renko’s brand new tall-man-making cowboy boots, and Renko demands some  respect from the wolf-whistling hookers who have just been delivered by the astonishingly scruffy and diminutive firebrand Detective Mick Belker, played by Bruce Weitz, bellowing his first “HAIRBAG!” of the series to their pimp, the Khaki Officer Leo Schnitz (played by Robert Hirschfeld) offers the women a choice of “smoking or non-smoking” cells as we cut to the opening titles and can pause a moment to breathe.

What an introduction, and this crazy whirlwind of an episode has barely started.

There’s hardly a moment to appreciate that iconic theme music by Mike Post or those iconic titles with occasional broad smiles and scenes from the series that burned into my brain when the series was first shown on Channel Four in the UK, so much so that seeing the later series titles with different scenes can seem bizarre to me now, before we’re back into the organized chaos again.

Two rival gangs fall out through the glass in a divided waiting area, and as everyone who is anyone pitches in to keep the peace we meet Lieutenant Ray Calletano (Rene Enriquez), the well-meaning Hispanic liaison officer.

It’s interesting to note how wonderfully shabby the astonishingly well designed Hill street Station set is, so much so that it has been mimicked  time and again and its most obvious current successor is that of the station in the much loved comedy BROOKLYN NINE-NINE, although its grubby life-worn look was itself possibly influenced by John Carpenter’s seminal ASSAULT ON PRECINCT THIRTEEN.

All of this occurs as we are on our way into Captain Frank Furillo’s office where he and Esterhaus are on the phones trying to sort out another little complaint involving wrong arrest warrants and trying to get rid of the arrested perpetrator as quietly as possible with Esterhaus wittily lamenting the loss of the days when such paperwork was written in pencil as a sharp aside, and, as he also discusses police “Interfacing” with another bureaucrat on the other line, this is our introduction to series star Daniel J Travanti, portraying the police captain responsible for trying to keep a lid on the urban pot boiler that is Hill Street Precinct.

Then Joyce Davenport arrives, played with effortless coolness by Veronica Hamel, and for the predominantly male members of the precinct, time seems to stop as they drool, Ray and Phil included – although Ray wishes she was 20 pounds heavier - whilst Officer Lucy Bates (Betty Thomas) looks on with slightly less admiration in a world-weary, seen-it-all-before kind of a way.

Lucy Bates would feature more prominently in the series later on, but she doesn’t get much to do in this action-packed pilot, to be honest.

Joyce is a character seemingly much feared amongst the great and the good of Hill Street as she represents the legal profession and seems insistent on the police officers respecting the letter of the law when dealing with the offenders she represents in her job at the Public Defender’s Office.

Much to her chagrin, Frank forces her to wait as he sorts out the current mess, leading with an encounter with JD LaRue who foolishly tries to chat her up and gets a silent but deadly response. After that, Joyce adds to Frank’s perpetual headaches as they discuss a misplaced witness, alleged pervert, who the Hill Street boys don’t want to quite call “missing” and threatens to charge Frank with contempt, a bridge that he is not yet quite ready to be driven off.

Crisis momentarily averted, there is a sudden outbreak of chaos in the holding area as a detainee suddenly explodes in fury and a growling Belker leaps into the fray, only to be deeply hurt by Furillo’s bellow of “No biting!” – In an astounding piece of character building, Belker is deeply hurt by this as he only ever bit off one nose and it was three years ago, but nobody ever lets him forget it.

Meanwhile Lucy is soothing the man who lost control as he lies in a heap of police officers in her only other major scene in this episode.

This is all witnessed with a heartfelt sigh by Joyce, and JD moves in to “rescue” her before leading her away from the “War Zone” and asking her what she does to let her hair down.

Her hair is already down, as she points out to him, brusquely.

We cut to Hill and Renko on patrol in their ve-hicle, having a discussion about their contrasting personal relationships, which is interrupted as they put on the sirens as they spot a crime in progress at a liquor store, and as they pull up their unit and pull out their weapons, they are shot at with a mighty shotgun, and lose their first police ve-hicle of the day.

This incident escalates into a hostage situation via the phones as Hill Street Station scrambles, and we see the terrified hostages being held at gunpoint as we are introduced to the kindly, soft-spoken liberal Sergeant Henry Goldblum, the hostage negotiator wearing a bow tie, as played by Joe Spano, trying to get a phone line into the liquor store by – despite the chaos all about him - being very polite to the operator from the phone company who still makes him put ten cents into the payphone to connect him. Searching his pockets, he produces a baby’s dummy – a pacifier – from his two-year old, which is as neat an introduction to a character’s backstory as you are ever likely to see.

Meanwhile, Hill and Renko are helping with crowd control as the onlookers gather, causing “undercover detectives” JD and Washington to decide to hide their faces in case they’re recognized by anyone.

A pickpocket is working the crowds and Belker notices this and begins to stalk him, prowling like the beast he appears to be. This pickpocket – played by Nick Savage – is destined to be regularly arrested by Mick Belker throughout the first four seasons, almost always giving a false name, but we’ll come to that.

On the phone it turns out that the liquor store robbers are a couple of Hispanic juveniles, one of whom is called Hector, who are trying to call the media to tell their story. Henry breaks into their connection and they demand to speak to the “War Lord” of the “Los Diablos” Gang – Jesus Martinez – and hang up on Henry as he laments the difficulties of creating a calm ambience under such circumstances.

On the Furillo end of the connection, Lt Howard Hunter, the ultra-right-wing head of their special weapons and tactics unit or, for legal purposes no doubt,  “Emergency Action Team” (played with just enough comedic aplomb to make him likeable by James B Sikking – later – briefly – a starship captain) overhears Frank speaking and, in another astonishing introduction using words like “types”, “neutralize” and “example” persuades Frank to send his team over to the scene, as Frank has to remind him that they are not allowed to shoot anything without a “direct order” from himself.

Frank’s day is about to take another turn for the worse as his ex-wife Fay – played by the then wife of series co-creator Steven Bochco, Barbara Bosson – turns up in a whirlwind flurry of fury talking about bounced cheques, and Frank Jnr’s fever, and hate, and Harvey the child psychiatrist, and Frank Jnr’s “Gender identity thing”, and just how lousy Frank is.

After this tour de force moment, whilst Frank laments just how much he misses his son, it falls to Phil Esterhaus to have a calming cup of coffee with Fay in which we find out that his 23 year marriage broke up and, after ten bleak months in which he seriously considered ending it all, that he’s now dating a high-school senior called Cindy.

Meanwhile, Belker and his Pickpocket share what was to become one of the defining routines for their characters as his one-fingered processing at the typewriter, Richard T Wilson - this week’s false name - included, is interrupted by a call from “Hi, Mom!” which tickle “Mr Wilson” until Belker notices his mocking smile and shuts him up. Belker’s 83-year old father wants to go to Florida and his mother worries that he will want to have an affair.

All this and we’re still not even half way through this astonishing pilot episode.

Frank and Fay manage to have a calmer discussion about their finances and their son and, whilst Frank is still concerned about the nature of her relationship with the boy’s “shrink”, his eleven o’clock appointment arrives, barging through the precinct doors with two bodyguards.

It’s Trinidad Silva as the diminutive Jesus (“Hay-soos”) Martinez, leader of Los Diablos, who certainly makes an impression although Fay is less than impressed at who Frank’s having a meeting with and, as the screen fades for the mid-episode break, implies that he’s hardly living the big time.

We return as two police officers reluctantly deliver lunch for their “guests” and Sergeant Esterhaus savours the word “détente” that they teach him. The scene that follows is one of the quietest in the general mad frenzy of this episode and gives us a little more breathing space as the two sides negotiate whilst certain individuals are barely concealing their mutual contempt. Jesus demands weapons, and Furillo counters with T-shirts, although they finally agree – “can we live with that?” – on a police car transporting Jesus’s mum for her weekly doctor’s appointment.

Sadly, none of this works out very well.

After an impressive aerial shot of the chaos in the street outside the liquor store, Jesus negotiates with the boy Hector over a 4-way party line and, when it is suggested that Hector and his pal might get away with being charged as juveniles, Howard Hunter interjects with some of his right-wing rhetoric with Hector still listening in and the situation predictably escalates, not only in the liquor store, but also back at the precinct house where the various face-offs lead to Frank trying to calm everything down and deciding to head out in person to the scene, whilst Ray impresses no one with his middle-aged man attempt at Spanish street lingo.

JD and Washington are on the phones when we hear a fateful request to pull Hill and Renko off crowd duty at the liquor store to go and deal with a domestic disturbance. JD is practicing his technique for how he plans to seduce Joyce Davenport once he’s lured her back to the precinct with a false claim of having found her missing witness.  Washington thinks he’s crazy, but their play-acting amuses the gathered crowd of Hill Street supporting artists anyway.

Arriving at an apartment door, Renko puts the boot in to find a complicated family situation with a father sleeping with his stepdaughter because his wife isn’t giving him the attention he thinks that he deserves.

Bobby Hill negotiates a truce for this family and nobody is arrested which seems most dodgy under the circumstances, but Bobby lays down what he explains is now THE LAW for this house and, whilst it does seem EXTREMELY dodgy now, especially in its portrayal of the particular ethnic lifestyle in question, the male/female interactions in these families, and the quasi-incestuous relationship that is being largely ignored, it does at least put a lid on a situation that was threatening to escalate out of control, and that, we learn here, is what policing has to be like in a district like Hill Street.

As they leave, Renko’s racism in that “he’ll never understand these people…” is overtaken by a far greater problem as their police car has been stolen from outside the apartment block, and whilst Renko rants and rails about losing his SECOND unit of the day, and how Esterhaus is going to kill him, it is Bobby who can see the bigger picture that they are suddenly vulnerable and out of contact in a particularly hostile neighbourhood.

Urging him to “be cool” as he discovers all of the payphones to be vandalized, they head off to find a telephone and enter a building only to interrupt another crime in progress and guns are drawn and shots ring out as we fade to black.

Well, my DVD does, anyway. It being the Channel Four release of Hill Street Blues series one which uses the television edits that they broadcast. The original cut has them shot down in slow motion, which was deemed far too violent for viewers eyes a couple of decades later.

“Fair enough” I might be tempted to cry, if at least part of those same cut scenes hadn’t been included in the “Previously on Hill Street Blues” recap montage at the beginning of the next episode.

Sometimes the logic behind these decisions is breathtaking.

As Renko and Hill lie bleeding out in an abandoned building with nobody knowing they are there, Furillo arrives at the crowded street outside the liquor store with the levels of tension not being helped by the news helicopters hovering just above their heads.

He has arrived at a scene of utter chaos and, as he grabs a megaphone and orders his people to holster their weapons, the only reply he gets to prove he can be heard is the symbolic throwing of a roll of toilet paper, and his fellow peace officers are not impressed at that.

This really isn’t Frank’s day.

But, let’s be honest… Is it ever?

The noise from the helicopters and the swirling dust and air they are causing really is not helping, and as Frank removes first his jacket, and then his shoulder holster, inside the shop, both the captors and the captives are starting to panic, and the vibrations are causing the entire shop to shake.

Hector and his pal smash the door glass and point their shotgun towards Frank as he approaches the shop with his hands raised above his head, whilst the police raise their own weapons again.

This is gripping stuff, people, and so effectively done.

Finally the vibrations cause bottles to fall off the shelves and smash, which causes the Howard’s Emergency Action Team to barge in and the subsequent eruption of firepower pretty much destroys the liquor store.

Happily, the hostages have thrown themselves to the floor and Frank has managed to wrestle the two delinquents to the ground so that nobody is killed in the barrage of gunfire this time, and whilst in the aftermath Frank is furious about pretty much everything, his mood is not helped by Henry suggesting that he take a Valium.

With Frank’s job basically to try and keep control and order in a state of pure bedlam, it might take more than that.

Meanwhile, in a beautifully played scene, Howard Hunter suggests to one of his team that they might want to look into t he immigration status of the shop’s owners as well, and as he taps out his pipe on what remains of the shop window frame, that collapses too.

Back at the Station House, Joyce has arrived to discover JD’s little prank and scares him by telling him she’s decided not to press charges, and proceeds to pour hot coffee over his groin after he tries one last misplaced effort at flirting with her.

Joyce departs, completely blanking a returning Frank, who then gets told off by Phil Esterhaus for taking that stupid risk he did by walking towards the shotgun earlier. Then, after telling him that he’s had forty calls, twenty-five of them from his ex-wife, and that Hill and Renko are missing, he just says “Go home, Frank…” because he can mind the store tonight as Cindy is out at her marching practice.

And, for a normal TV cop show, that’s where it might end, but HILL STREET BLUES has one last little surprise for us which may come as no surprise to us now of course, but was an astonishing twist when this episode first aired.

We cut to Joyce in an apartment, ranting about her day, and when we discover just who the gentleman in her bed listening to all this, we are gobsmacked.

For despite all of the open hostility on display throughout the day, the chap who keeps Joyce warm at night is none other than Captain Francis Xavier Furillo himself! And, despite the half valium that Joyce herself has taken, they seem to be having a lot of fun together.

Fade to black…

Although, there is one last thread that is still dangling in this forty-four minute masterpiece. Late at night, on the street, Belker and another patrolman finally find what appears to be the bodies of their colleagues in that empty building and, from the lookm on Mick’s face, things do not look too good for Officers Hill and Renko.

Late at night, round at Joyce and Frank’s place, his trousers are beeping. It’s Sergeant Esterhaus on the phone, telling him that they’ve found the missing officers and that they’re both in intensive care and finally, exhausted, we fade to black and the end titles roll, ending with the MTM cat wearing a police cap.

Phew!

That was exhausting, and it was only the pilot.

This is all simply one typical day in the chaotic life of Hill Street Station, and there are going to be many more like it over the next seven years. One hundred and forty-five more episodes would follow after this, and, to be honest, the quality remained astonishingly high.

Granted the network executives didn’t really like the unfolding narrative structure, and would insist after a while that at least one storyline was concluded in every episode, and other production teams would come along and introduce new characters that they themselves preferred writing for, but on the whole, and with several more genuine shocks along the way, HILL STREET BLUES remained quality television throughout its run, and did open the door to lots more series involving ensemble casts and rolling narratives that were almost unheard of before in this kind of series, and yet which are pretty much the norm nowadays, which is why HILL STREET BLUES genuinely seems to have changed the very nature of primetime television drama.

Because, before HILL STREET BLUES, apart from in the soap operas (both daytime and primetime), American cop drama especially was quite static, and the villain of the week tended to be captured before the end of the episode.

Some seeds had already been sown in series like CAGNEY AND LACEY with their minor ongoing story arcs, but essentially they were still dealing with the story of the week with a little bit of continuance of life-changing events like pregnancy and alcoholism and unemployment having a continuing impact. A few years earlier and one of the STARSKY AND HUTCH team could become a heroin addict one week and it could have no impact upon any other episode of the series, because it was believed that cop drama had to be self contained so that the episodes could be run in any order once they made it into syndication.

Apart from those rolling storylines and an ensemble cast, HILL STREET also introduced other techniques to the mainstream  like overlapping dialogue that you couldn’t always hear clearly like in real life, and cinema verite  roving camera work never focusing too long on one particular thing, but darting about much like the eye does. Stylistic touches that mean that the viewer are immediately part of the action.

Right from the moment that the ROLL CALL caption appears at the start of the pilot, television drama was unlikely to ever be quite the same again.

HILL STREET BLUES would spawn many offspring from the pen of Steven Bochco including hits like LA LAW, and NYPD BLUE amongst others, and shows like HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET owe an awful lot to the pathways it opened up, too. NYPD BLUE would itself stretch the primetime comfort bubble a generation later, and may be at least partially responsible for the coming of HBO and, ultimately services like NETFLIX and the darkness, violence, and blatant sexuality on display in shows like THE SOPRANOS and GAME OF THRONES, although the Leeds based OUT OF THE BLUE which attempted to mimic the style of NYPD BLUE but in Leeds was less successful, I feel.

But for me, that opening hour of HILL STREET BLUES really does feel like the moment when everything changed forever.

MARTIN A W HOLMES, JULY 2019