Homicide: Life on the Street may be on the verge of abdicating the title of the Best TV Show You Can’t Stream. On Monday night, David Simon — whose nonfiction book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets , inspired the Emmy-winning NBC cop drama, and eventually launched Simon’s own acclaimed career in television with shows like The Wire and The Deuce — revealed that the biggest hurdle had been cleared to put the series on a streaming platform: Homicide has long held an unfortunate position at the top of the list of classic series that aren’t available to stream for one reason or another. But from the moment it debuted after the 1993 Super Bowl , it was an obvious masterpiece: a cerebral, talky, hilarious, frequently devastating ensemble drama about a group of men and women who spoke on behalf of Baltimore’s many murder victims.
It launched Andre Braugher’s career as one of TV’s all-time greatest dramatic actors , in the iconic role of master interrogator Frank Pembleton. It introduced Detective John Munch, a philosophical oddball whom Richard Belzer would play on 10 different series over 20 years, including a long stint on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit . It built one episode (the first season’s “Three Men and Adena”) entirely around a single interrogation, and another (Season Six’s “The Subway”) around guest star Vincent D’Onofrio as a man crushed between a train car and the station platform, having the final conversation of his life with Pe.
