Homicide
Inside the acclaimed television police drama—the intelligent writing, intense characters, dark sense of humor, innovative editing, and complex plots.
Homicide: Life on the Street was addictive television, portraying a gritty reality that made this show the best police drama to ever grace the small screen. There weren’t any car chases, rarely any shootouts, and sometimes the cases didn’t get solved. Instead, these detectives kept their clothes on, had a relentlessly morbid sense of humor, and caught the criminals because they had brains, not necessarily brawn. In other words, they were real.
Homicide: Life on the Street, The Unofficial Companion by David P. Kalat—the first and only full-length guide to this Emmy Award-winning and three-time Peabody Award-winning television series—brilliantly captures the essence of this groundbreaking show.
You’ll learn about:
Famed filmmaker Barry Levinson’s decision to bring
Homicide to television instead of making a film of David Simon’s novel
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets The behind-the-scenes anecdotes about cast regulars, including the onscreen clutches that led to offscreen romances
The producers’ many battles with the network suits over poor placement in the schedule, and the series’ repeated trips to the land known as hiatus
Cast casualties—why they left or were let go
The esteemed cast—including Andre Braugher, Ned Beatty, Daniel Baldwin, and Yaphet Kotto, among others—the characters they’ve created, and their beyond-
Homicide careers
Season-by-season critiques of each episode
Revealing, resourceful, and thoughtful, Homicide: Life on the Street, the Unofficial Companion is a must-have for any fan!
David P. Kalat
David P. Kalat is the author of A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series, a study of the forty-year history of Japan's most famous film exports. He is also the founder of All Day Entertainment, a producer that releases classic and obscure motion pictures in high-quality collector's editions.
As a member of the Washington-Baltimore film production community where Homicide: Life on the Street is shot, Kalat has had many contacts with the television series. He previously worked at the motion-picture lab where Homicide processed each episode's film, and was involved in the very first season's production. As operations manager of D.C. Post, one of the region's most esteemed film and video postproduction houses, Kalat worked closely with Emmy-winning editor Tony Black, who edited Homicide's pilot installment.
Kalat taught screenwriting at the John Waldron Arts Center in Bloomington, Indiana, and was on the Board of Directors for the Bloomington Playwrights Project, one of Indiana's most acclaimed theater companies. Kalat also sports credentials as a freelance cinematographer and animator, and has directed several award-winning short films.
Kalat was born in Philadelphia on 1970 and grew up in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. He earned his bachelor of arts at the University of Michigan in 1988, graduating with highest honors from the Film and Video Studies program. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife Julie and daughter Ann.
