Date: 01/04/2023 Shift: 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Q. No: 119

When the first episode of ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ aired on US network NBC on 31st January 1993, the crime drama looked like very little on TV at the time. The series was based on David Simon’s book ‘Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets’, which documented his time spent with the homicide unit of Baltimore Police Department; Simon would go on to create The Wire, still regarded as one of the best TV dramas ever made, but having started his career as a reporter, he made his name with this vividly written account of his time shadowing a shift of homicide detectives in 1988 as they investigated murders. As with his book, the show captured the day-to-day reality and often grim humour of a group of people whose job puts them in regular proximity with death.
Homicide strove to be authentic. It was shot on location in Baltimore and the city, its harbour, rowhouses and corners would become an integral part of the show. The detectives in Simon’s book were on-hand to provide advice. “We learned a lot from those fellows,” says Melissa Leo, who played detective Kay Howard, and would later win an Oscar for her role in David O’Russell’s The Fighter. Early on Simon took the cast to visit various drug hangouts around the city, recalls Kyle Secor, who played rookie detective Tim Bayliss. Even the filing cabinets in the squad room were filled with old police reports. The police department was being computerized, so the set designer was able to acquire them.