Video: Show us a TV series you own or watched on DVD.
I miss McNulty, Bubbs, Stringer, Greggs and the rest of the fine folks of the fictional Baltimore that exists in the minds of Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, and David Simon. Thankfully, Homicide: Life On The Street is on DVD.
I didn't get to spend time in this Baltimore the first time around. I was in high school or college or something and spent my friday nights out cavorting rather than watching quality television. Probably the best network television I've seen.
The cast and guest stars reads like a roster of contemporary television's best dramatic actors: Edie Falco, Lee Tergeson, N'Bushe Wright (beautiful and powerful, as always, in her one-shot), Yaphet Kotto, Richard Belzer, etc. etc.
And leading the pack, Andre Braugher. Braugher's Frank Pembleton is probably still the strongest character on tv to ever feature a black face. Full bodied, three-dimensional, dark as night, dressed sharply, smart as a whip, chip on his shoulder like you wouldn't believe, Detective Pembleton is a capital B capital M Black Man.
Why Levinson, Fontana and Simon are able to create such compelling characters in a brown town like Baltimore being aware of the racial makeup, aware of the social problems and curiosities, and not sugar coating any of it when so few others, black, white, or otherwise, aren't able to do so is a mystery to me.
I just know I'm riveted by the conversations on their shows and by the Baltimore they create.
Homicide is a welcome alternative while I wait for another season with the Barksdales and The Greeks and 'McNuttie.'
Highly recommended.