Video: Hill Street, Hail and Farewell

If TV programmers were always predictable, Hill Street Blues would have had a short life as one of the medium’s more notable flops. Despite critical praise, the unorthodox police show settled near the bottom of the ratings after its January 1981 debut. But NBC renewed it anyway and then watched a remarkable success story take shape. First came a passel of Emmys (eight after its first season, a record-breaking number for one series; 26 all together), then a growing corps of dedicated viewers. People who claimed to watch little else on TV would tune in faithfully for the intricate and often explosive drama that swirled around a bustling inner-city police station. Last week, however, a closing notice went up at the station house as Hill Street Blues, after seven seasons, was canceled.

The move was expected. Hill Street’s ratings have been on a downward slide, and last December the series was unceremoniously evicted from its longtime Thursday-night time slot. Several cast members, including Daniel J. Travanti (Captain Frank Furillo), had said they would leave after this season. The show’s producer, MTM Enterprises, was reluctant to continue churning out the expensive hourlong episodes (average cost: $1.5 million). “There was no financial reason to go on,” says Executive Producer David Milch, “and aesthetically nothing left to prove.”

Few shows have proved so much. From the start, Hill Street’s gritty, teeming visual style (created in part by shooting with hand-held cameras) set ) it apart from anything else on TV. Its cops were not macho superheroes but flawed men and women with interesting lives both on and off the beat. The show’s dramatic structure (copied by such successors as St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law) was unusually complex, interweaving a dozen or so major characters and several ongoing plots each week. If the comic interludes were often heavy- handed and the drama sometimes soapy, Hill Street nevertheless defined “quality television” for much of the ’80s and was a key building block in NBC’s climb from last place to first in the ratings.

The series survived many traumas and changes, from the death of Co-Star Michael Conrad (who as Sergeant Phil Esterhaus opened each episode with its trademark roll call) to the 1985 departure of Steven Bochco, the show’s co- creator, fired after reported disputes over cost overruns. Yet new characters (like Dennis Franz’s choleric Lieut. Buntz) and continued good scripts (including one this season by Playwright David Mamet) injected fresh life. “This one never went downhill,” says NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff. “It’s like a ballplayer: you want to see someone go out a winner, like Sandy Koufax, instead of dropping fly balls in left field.”

Hill Street’s last episode, airing on May 12, will offer no farewells but a couple of noteworthy plot twists: a fire nearly destroys the station house, and Buntz loses his job for punching the police chief. Franz’s character may be back on NBC next year in a spinoff series called Beverly Hills Buntz, and several other cast members have series pilots and TV movies in the works. Meanwhile, viewers will be able to start reliving the glory days next fall when Hill Street reruns begin on local stations. Says Grant Tinker, former head of MTM and former chairman of NBC: “The program proved that you could do something artistically worthwhile and commercially viable at the same time, something both good and popular.” The graceful end of such a show is no reason to sing the blues.