Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police drama television series broadcast on NBC from 1993 to 1999, based on David Simon's nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and following homicide detectives in Baltimore through cases presented with a deliberately unglamorous, naturalistic style. The series favored extended dialogue driven interrogation scenes and unresolved or ambiguous case outcomes over the tidy procedural structure common to earlier police dramas, and it was shot with handheld cameras and jump cut editing unusual for network television at the time. It is widely regarded by television historians as an important precursor to later prestige crime dramas, including The Wire, which David Simon created after the series ended.