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The edgy, intense
Homicide: Life on the Street earned its reputation as the best show on TV from the very beginning. In the pilot episode, "Gone for Goode," rookie detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) walks into the squad room of Baltimore's elite and smack into his first case, the murder of 11-year-old girl Adina Watson, a crime that will haunt Bayliss throughout the series. Oscar-winning director and series executive producer Barry Levinson helms this episode himself, establishing the nervous, energetic camera work, the bickering camaraderie of the homicide squad, and the meticulous attention to police detail that defined the series. He won an Emmy for his efforts. The third season episode "Every Mother's Son" guest stars Sean Nelson (
Fresh) as a cold juvenile killer who couldn't care less that he murdered an innocent boy, while the mothers of victim and killer unknowingly meet in the station waiting room. The final episode in the set, "A Doll's Eye" from the fourth season, is a quiet, introspective look at the parents of a boy left brain-dead by a stray bullet who are dealing with their grief while under pressure to make a decision that could save another child through the organ donor program. Mandy Patinkin make an uncredited cameo as his
Chicago Hope doctor. This set lacks the coherent thread that pulled the episodes together on a weekly basis, but it displays the series' range like a candy sampler, and the uniformly excellent episodes are worth seeing under any circumstance.
--Sean Axmaker