The first season of Homicide: Life on the Street, an American police procedural drama television series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between January 31 and March 31, 1993. The show was created by Paul Attanasio, with film director Barry Levinson and television writer and producer Tom Fontana serving as executive producers. Adapted from David Simon's 1991 non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the season followed the fictional detectives of Baltimore Police Department homicide unit and the murder cases they investigate. The show was broadcast on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST, with the exception of the series premiere, which aired immediately after Super Bowl XXVII.

The season introduced regular cast members Daniel Baldwin, Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Jon Polito and Kyle Secor. Most of the primary characters were based on real-life Baltimore detectives from Simon's book, including Gary D'Addario, Terrence McLarney, Harry Edgerton, Donald Worden and Jay Landsman. Many of the first season story arcs were also adapted from the book, most notably the 1988 Baltimore slaying of 11-year-old Latonya Kim Wallace, which was the basis for the murder case of Adena Watson in Homicide. Another multi-episode arc included Lee Tergesen as an officer who is friends with the homicide squad and later gets shot. "Night of the Dead Living," originally written as the third episode, was moved to become the season finale at the insistence of NBC executives, which led to several notable continuity errors.

The first season received consistently positive reviews, with several commentators declaring it one of the best shows on television at the time. The episode "Three Men and Adena", which consists almost entirely of one police interrogation with three actors, received particularly positive reviews and was declared one of the 100 greatest television moments by Entertainment Weekly. The series premiere, "Gone for Goode", opened to a season-high viewership of 18.2 million households due to a lead-in from the Super Bowl. The Nielsen ratings declined throughout the season, which Homicide producers attributed to a poor time-slot and heavy competition from the ABC comedies Home Improvement and Coach. The ratings led NBC executives to demand changes to the show before renewing Homicide for a second season.

Homicide: Life on the Street received four Emmy Award nominations during its first season and won two, and also received a Writers Guild of America award and a Directors Guild of America Award. The first and second seasons of Homicide were released together in a four-DVD box-set on May 27, 2003.

Episodes When first shown on network television, "Night of the Dead Living" aired out of the order that it was produced in as the season's finale. The DVD of this season presents the episodes in their correct chronological order, restoring all storylines and character developments.

Development

Conception

Film director Barry Levinson sought to create a police drama television series based on Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, a 1991 non-fiction book by David Simon based on one year he spent with Baltimore Police Department homicide detectives. In addition to the book's being set in Levinson's home city of Baltimore, the director was attracted to the realistic way Simon portrayed police work and the detectives. The book contradicted many popular myths that had been built into past police dramas: it portrayed the detectives as not always getting along with each other and told stories of criminals who were not always caught or punished. It also portrayed detectives as solving cases primarily through physical evidence, witnesses and confessions, not by investigating motives like on many other police shows.Kalat, pp. 102–103 Simon also sought to dispel the popular television perception that all detectives take their cases very personally and identify with their victims: in Simon's experience, homicide cases were primarily a job to the detectives, not personal. Levinson and Tom Fontana, who had past television experience as executive producer on the drama series St. Elsewhere, hired screenwriter Paul Attanasio to adapt elements of the book into the teleplay for the first episode. It was the first television script Attanasio ever wrote.

Attanasio based the characters in Homicide on the detectives featured in Simon's book. Frank Pembleton was based on Detective Harry Edgerton, although the two were so different that both the producers and detectives agreed their only true similarity was that they were black. Meldrick Lewis was only loosely based on Detective Donald Waltemeyer, and Levinson admitted Lewis did not start to become strongly developed until season three because, "I thought it'd be great to have a character who was totally unwilling to share with the people he worked with."Kalat, p. 57 Tim Bayliss was based on the real-life Baltimore detective Tom Pellegrini, the primary detective who investigated the 1988 slaying of 11-year-old Latonya Kim Wallace. The extremely personal approach Bayliss took in attempting to solve Adena Watson's murder, and his strong disappointment over failing to solve it, was based on the emotions Pellegrini went through in the Wallace case. Pellegrini provided advice to actor Kyle Secor about how to play the Bayliss role.

The part of John Munch was based on Jay Landsman, a practical joker who was known in his homicide unit for his morbid wit. Both Belzer and the character Munch he portrays are cynical, caustic former hippies who are so similar that Belzer declared the character "exactly as I would be if I were a cop". Stanley Bolander was inspired by Detective Donald Worden who, like his on-screen counterpart, was nicknamed "The Big Man". Ned Beatty only met Worden once before taking on the role, and he said the detective had "an uncluttered mind and a near-photographic memory". Beau Felton was based on Detective Donald Kincaid, and Felton's clashes with Pembleton were based on Kincaid's real-life strong dislike for Harry Edgerton. Kay Howard was based in part on the female Detective Bert Silver, and in part on the male Detective Rich Garvey, who experienced a real-life string of good luck in solving consecutive cases, just as Howard did in the first season.

NBC ordered a full season of Homicide: Life on the Street before a pilot episode was even produced.Levinson, 0:12–0:16 Planned as a mid-season replacement, the network ordered six episodes for their 1993 winter season, and then ordered another three after watching the completed pilot episode. The network had been consistently placing third behind their competitor networks ABC and CBS, and was suffering due to the loss of several successful shows in 1992, including The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls and Matlock, as well as the upcoming end of Cheers in 1993. NBC had tried appealing to audiences in their 20s through several comedies, but those efforts proved unsuccessful and the network decided to focus on high-quality dramas like Homicide. NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield considered it the most promising new series of the season.Kalat, p. 108

Crew

Paul Attanasio was billed as the creator of Homicide: Life on the Street, with Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana serving as executive producers. The show was produced by Levinson's company Baltimore Pictures, which partnered with Reeves Entertainment.Kalat, p. 126 Wayne Ewing, who was cinematographer for Levinson's film Toys (1992),Kalat, p. 104 was director of photography during the first season and also directed the episode "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".Kalat, p. 120

Stan Warnow started out working as editor on the season premiere "Gone for Goode", but he departed before the process was done due to creative differences with Levinson. Tony Black finished the editing for that episode,Kalat, p. 107 but did not return for the rest of the season. Jay Rabinowitz worked as editor for the remaining episodes, along with editors Cindy Mollo and Richard Harkness. Van Smith designed the costumes for "Gone for Goode", but he did not return to work on subsequent episodes, where the costumes were handled by Rolande Berman.Kalat, p. 110

The real-life detectives portrayed in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets signed waivers allowing themselves to be portrayed in the show, and some became consultants for the series. Gary D'Addario, the homicide lieutenant with the Baltimore Police Department and inspiration for the Al "Gee" Giardello character, worked as a consultant and approved the teleplays for accuracy. Fontana said of the real-life detectives' contributions: "They have great stories, and the rhythms of their different personalities are so special that it's great to have them around."

Cast

Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana took the unusual step of basing the ethnicity and gender of the characters on the actors they cast, even though the roles were based on real-life detectives.Kalat, p. 73 For example, the role of Frank Pembleton, although based on the African-American Detective Harry Edgerton, was not race-specific until Andre Braugher auditioned and was cast. This impressed Braugher, who believed fully developed roles were often written for white characters and black roles were generally two-dimensional and stereotypical. This belief developed in part from Braugher's poor experience playing Detective Winston Blake on the television series Kojak, where he objected to the show's treatment of race.Kalat, pp. 40–42 Ned Beatty, the best-known member of cast when the series debuted, was personally approached by Levinson and Fontana to play Stanley Bolander. Although Beatty respected the two men and liked the show, he was reluctant to take the role because he believed NBC would corrupt the series and change it to a typical police show.Kalat, p. 34 Beatty claimed his agents and managers "pushed, dragged and hauled" him into meeting with Levinson, but Beatty ultimately accepted the role. Kyle Secor was cast as Tim Bayliss by Fontana, who remembered the actor from his role as gay AIDS patient Bret Johnson in Fontana's previous show, St. Elsewhere.Kalat, p. 79

In casting Al "Gee" Giardello, Levinson decided not to make the character Italian-American like the real-life counterpart Gary D'Addario, but rather cast Yaphet Kotto and made the character a Sicilian-African American.Kalat, p. 62 Kotto, who turned down two feature film offers to accept the Homicide role, was extremely impressed with Levinson's choices for the character, saying, "They had the daring to make the artistic choice without prejudice of any kind. I don't think there's another network show on the air with this sort of cast composition." Kotto struggled at first with the show's production style and constantly moving camera style, which flustered him and made him forget his lines. Levinson had to personally reassure him that he could handle the part. Clark Johnson was cast as Meldrick Lewis, and Jon Polito as his partner, Steve Crosetti. When Polito first auditioned, he read the role of a Polish cop, then did a second reading for an Irish role based on Detective Sergeant Terrence McLarney. He was cast in the McLarney role, but it was rewritten to an Italian character for Polito. The actor found working on Homicide intense and demanding, claiming, "Everybody's working so hard. This is much more of a theater atmosphere."