I don’t often disagree with television critic David Bianculli, but it does happen.

One of his all time favorite TV shows seems to be Homicide: Life on the Street, and I find that show utterly resistible.

When it first aired in the 90s, I had an on again, off again relationship with it. Sometimes I thought it was pretty good, and other times I just couldn’t stand it.

When André Braugher died a few months ago, I ordered the DVD set, because, once again David Bianculli was on NPR praising it to the skies. Maybe it improved with age.

No, if anything, I think my opinion of it has declined.

Before I go on, I will say that the show isn’t a total waste; it does have some good episodes. It’s just that overall I find it dull and pretentious.

I don’t like any of its original cast except Clark Johnson’s Meldrick Lewis, as he’s the only one without a massive stick up his ego. Kyle Secor’s Tim Bayliss has got to be the biggest crybaby character ever, and how he ever made it on any police force is beyond me. He does settle down a bit after the first few seasons.

Then there’s André Braugher’s Frank Pembleton. Braugher was a great actor, and everyone, alas, including him, knew it. So the scripts were tailored to give him something to emote about. When he ran out of different ways to emote and threatened to quit, the writers gave him a stroke, and man, you’ve never seen anyone chew the scenery for all it’s worth in the most unrealistic acting out of a stroke as André Braugher. He’s up, he’s down, he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere. He’s dancing around the interrogation room like someone dropped an ice cube in his pants, except he’s holding his head. Bah! Humbug!

In the first season one of the characters goes on and on about how the Lincoln assassination was a great conspiracy. I assume this was supposed to be a satire on the lunatic conspiracy nonsense about the JFK assassination, but it just gets real old, real fast, especially for anyone who knows anything about the Lincoln assassination.

Then there’s that episode that Bianculli keeps pointing to as the Greatest Episode of Television Ever: “Three Men and Adina”.

It’s an episode that is mainly built around the interrogation of a suspect in the murder of a young girl.

And it does start out well enough as Pembleton throws rapid fire innocuous questions at the suspect to throw him off guard, and it proceeds from there.

But about halfway through, crybaby Bayliss jumps up, beats his fists against the wall and from that point it’s just standard bad TV writing and acting at its worst. I’m surprised that Bianculli fell for it.

One of the things that “distinguishes” the show from other cop shows is that the detectives are constantly talking about philosophy. Of course, it’s not realistic, real cops don’t talk about those things, but it’s the thing that fans of the show seem to love. When David Simon, who wrote the non-fiction book on which the show was based, came on board as a writer, he said he didn’t recognize any of the characters. That’s because the show’s creators tried to make a cop show that wasn’t a cop show. Years later, David Simon actually succeeded in doing that the right way and created the all time best TV show ever in The Wire. 

On a few occasions the show did two parters where the first part began on Law & Order and the second part concluded on Homicide. There are some extra features included on the DVD. In one of them the creators talk about those episodes, and one of the writers, I think it’s James Yoshimura, comes right out and says that Law & Order sucks and he hated to associate with it because Homicide is a much better show.

How very ungracious of him. And I beg to disagree.