San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Largely overlooked ‘Homicide’ didn’t shy from painful truths
Early in season two of the forgotten ’90s cop drama “Homicide: Life on the Street,” a Black police detective extracts a false confession from an innocent Black man to show his Black lieutenant what it truly means to look the other way when cops kill.
Over the course of eight spellbinding minutes, Detective Frank Pembleton (played by the extraordinary Andre Braugher) unleashes himself on the dead man’s running buddy (Isaiah Washington), until the friend admits to a murder he didn’t commit.
His perspiring face contorted by selfdisgust, Pembleton returns to the observation room and stabs the folded confession into his boss’ suit jacket to underline their betrayal. “He would’ve stood a better chance in the back of a paddy wagon, with jack boots and clubs,” Pembleton snarls. “He would’ve gotten a fairer shake.”
It’s a bruising scene, one I’ve revisited on YouTube in between recent video clips of riot cops shoving, clubbing and teargassing people who had the audacity to march against murder. It reminds me of the quiet siege that institutions have long inflicted on marginalized people and how oppressively these systems resort to selfpreservation when challenged.
It also reminded me how much “Homicide” rattled me to my core.
Based on a nonfiction book by exBaltimore Sun reporter
David Simon (who went on to create “The Wire”), developed by Oscarwinning director Barry Levinson (“Rain Man,” “Wag the Dog”) and showrunner Tom Fontana (“St. Elsewhere,” “Oz”), “Homicide” turned the tropeheavy police procedural into a haunting interrogation of the wages of grief.
Shot in Baltimore and featuring Black protagonists at a time when network diversity meant hiring people of color as walkons (cough, “Friends”), the critically acclaimed drama quietly ran through much of the ’90s without ever garnering mainstream success.
While “Homicide” was the first television drama to win three Peabody awards, it was already fading from audiences’ collective consciousness when it concluded with a disappointing seventh season in 1999. Except for a soso TV movie and a brief syndicated run on Lifetime (of all networks), “Homicide” vanished from the airwaves as a new Golden Age of Television emerged from cable.
Today, you can only watch it if you buy the DVD collection or settle for bootlegged episodes on YouTube. The reason “Homicide” never made the jump to streaming is as dull as it is complicated: Six different production companies, some of which have dissolved and/ or folded into other companies, have a piece of the show. Which is why, every few years, an impassioned apostle will clamber onto their online pulpit and beg the powers that be to resurrect “Homicide” through a streaming deal. But now may not be the time for that.
This is a fraught moment for TV cops, and deservedly so. As calls to defund law enforcement agencies find broadening support since the May 25 killing of Floyd, we’ve seen an abashed Hollywood cancel reality TV embarrassments like “Cops” and “Live PD,” distance itself from the President Trump’s “law and order” baiting and promise a good, hard think about its fawning portrayals of cops as tortured heroes who care. So. Damn. Much.
Hell, even police comedy “Brooklyn NineNine” is scrambling to reinvent itself for a postGeorge Floyd audience.
And while astute cultural critics are dead right that Hollywood has long glamorized, heroized and simplified cops doing righteous cop things, “Homicide” was different. There’s no ducking that it was a detective show or that it told its 44minute teleplays from the perspective of people with the power to take our lives and freedom. And that matters, as Vulture writer Kathryn VanArendonk eloquently argued in June.
But unlike 99% of cop shows, which celebrate their paperthin leads for breaking the rules, “Homicide” didn’t forgive its detectives for their trespasses. And it never forgot. See the sevenseasonandamovie tragic fall of Detective Tim Bayliss, who never recovered from the murder of Adena Watson in the pilot episode.
I was 15 when I stumbled onto the series one Friday night, in the middle of a season three arc that gueststarred Steve Buscemi as a white supremacist suspected of shooting three detectives. I remember being hypnotized by the interrogation scene, in which Buscemi’s smug Gordon Pratt rails about the evils of affirmative action while Pembleton indulged his bluster and set his trap.
I held my breath at how their dialogue turned and felt a cathartic surge when Pratt revealed the powerlessness that stoked his racist anger. But then Pembleton overplays his hand and Pratt gets away. He later ends up murdered, and it’s presumed but never proved that one of the detectives did the deed. That was “Homicide,” a blistering morality play about death, race, unresolved crimes and cold coffee.
It never got the audience it deserved when it was on the air more than two decades ago. Because of its complex ownership rights and the complicated moment we’re in, that may never happen. I personally think that would be a shame.
“Homicide” wrung gallows truths from stories about civil servants standing over a corpse outlined in chalk. It showed audiences what the job of speaking for the dead looks like inside of a bureaucracy that turns bodies into red and black names on a whiteboard.
It certainly did not make me want me to be a cop. It made me feel for everyone who comes into contact with them.
Raheem Hosseini is a Northern California freelance writer.
Unlike 99% of cop shows, which celebrate their paperthin leads for breaking the rules, “Homicide” didn’t forgive its detectives for their trespasses. And it never forgot.
ie about SWAT some years ago (2003’s “S.W.A.T.”), and like two of the five SWAT team members were bad to the point that they turned around and became criminals. It’s funny, because the character of people who actually move to that level — you never see that level of person accused of misconduct or crimes to that extent. There’s a whole vetting process and a psychological (evaluation) you have to go through if you go to that level. That’s an example of something that’s unrealistic.”
Paul D. Schad, a former New York police officer turned technical adviser for movies and TV shows, cites one familiar movie cliche: “How many times have you seen films with cops going to an apartment? They stop outside, unholster the gun and pull back the slide (loading a bullet into the chamber). It’s total bull, because a cop can’t be out there without his gun set to go.”
Sgt. Juan Valencia, public information officer of the Sonoma County Police Department, cites 2001’s “Training Day” — in which Denzel Washington plays a corrupt cop, earning him an Oscar and making him only the second Black man to win in the best actor category — as a movie that gets it wrong.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 18 years, and I’ve never seen a cop do anything like that, going rogue,” Valencia said.
Among the films that get it right, Valencia and Miyamoto both name David Ayer’s “End of Watch” (2012), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña. Shot in almost a documentary style, Miyamoto calls it “very realistic, with regard to how they depicted the job.”
“They got the minutiae right: the interactions in the patrol vehicle, the daytoday stuff, the writing reports, the interactions, how you treat experienced officers, how you treat rookies, how you approach the job in dangerous environments,” Miyamoto says. “It’s about talking to people and interacting; it’s not about being stubborn. It’s about being able to talk to people.”
Miyamoto also mentions shows that influenced him as a kid, such as “Hill Street Blues,” a primetime TV show that ran from 1981 to 1987, that he said presented “a realistic depiction of working in a station.” “The Choirboys,” a 1977 film, “another one which I think hit it on the mark.”
“It felt like a realistic depiction of how things were, the camaraderie of people being together and protecting other people and doing good work,” he says of the comedydrama starring Louis Gossett Jr. and Randy Quaid. “I didn’t want to see something cartoonish. I wanted to see something realistic.”
But how will police be portrayed onscreen in the coming years?
“I don’t think we need movies or TV to romanticize policing,” Casal says. “I think we need movies and TV to show us the ways that the system of policing is inherently racist. Propolice movies that ignore the outcry of Black America are inherently antiBlack.”
As for Sheriff Miyamoto, he’ll take whatever comes.
“You do your job, and you don’t think about what’s depicted in the media, but obviously you have an interest in what’s coming up,” Miyamoto says. “That’s a part of what we accept as the profession.”
Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s film critic. Email: mlasalle@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle