HILL STREET BLUES BEGAN JAN 15 1981 BEST COP SHOW EVER

Hill Street Blues still stands the test of time. I just streamed the entire series on HULU during the holidays. No cell phones or computers to be found but they weren't needed. They used payphones a lot! Great show from the 1980s and older folks remember and young folks will dig it too...Check it out.. and Let's Be Careful Out There

On this day in 1981, Hill Street Blues, television’s landmark cops-and-robbers drama, debuts on NBC. When the series first appeared, the police show had largely been given up for dead.

Critics savaged stodgy and moralistic melodramas and scoffed at lighter fare like Starsky and Hutch. Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues invigorated television, paving the way for more realistic and gritty fare.

Hill Street Blues was set in an anonymous northern city (the exteriors were actually filmed in Chicago) and was the first real attempt by television to portray police officers as fallible human beings. Each episode began with the 7 a.m. roll call led by Sergeant Esterhaus. He closed the roll call with his trademark refrain, “Let’s be careful out there.”

Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad)

The series not only changed the way that Americans viewed police officers, but it also revolutionized the television drama itself. The show resisted formula and introduced the ensemble cast.

Whereas early cop shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 were centered around a couple of officers who always got their man by the end of the hour, the full squad house of regulars on Hill Street Blues rarely resolved cases in one episode.

Hill Street Blues was acclaimed through its entire run. When it ended in May 1987, it had set the records for most Emmys won in a single season and most nominations in one year.

Hill Street Blues: The Complete Series

TV LEGEND STEVEN BOCHO DIED APRIL 1 AT 74

RIP to my favorite tv producer of all time Steven Bochco

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Steven Bochco, Creative Force Behind 'Hill Street Blues,' 'L.A. Law' and 'NYPD Blue,' Dies at 74

The unwavering TV writer-producer, winner of 10 Emmys, butted heads with networks and almost always won.

Steven Bochco, the strong-willed writer and producer who brought gritty realism and sprawling ensemble casts to the small screen with such iconic series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, died Sunday morning, a family spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 74.

Suffering with leukemia, Bochco received a stem cell transplant from an anonymous 23-year-old in late 2014.

"Steven fought cancer with strength, courage, grace and his unsurpassed sense of humor," spokesman Phillip Arnold said. "He died peacefully in his sleep [at home] with his family close by."

In a 2002 interview for the Archive of American Television, Bochco explained how he and Michael Kozoll, both working for MTM Enterprises, came to Hill Street Blues, which debuted on last-place NBC in January 1981 and amassed 98 Emmy Awards during its remarkable 146-episode run.

“We agreed that we would do it, on one condition, which we assumed would kill the deal right there,” he said. “I said to [NBC entertainment exec] Brandon [Tartikoff], ‘We’ll do this pilot for you on the condition that you leave us completely alone to do whatever we want.’ And he said OK.

“I began to hear words about myself: He’s arrogant, he’s this, he’s that. My attitude was, call me what you will, but I know I have a great project here. I don’t know how many great projects there are going to be in my life, and I’m not going to screw this one up. I’d rather not do it. And they folded. They virtually folded on everything.”

In 1987, CBS legend William S. Paley offered Bochco, then 44, the job of president of the network’s entertainment division. He turned that down to sign an unprecedented six-year, 10-series deal worth in the neighborhood of $10 million at ABC, which had just ended its contract with another legendary producer, Aaron Spelling. The pact gave Bochco ownership of the series he developed.

As Hill Street was winding down without him after he was fired at MTM, Bochco jumped into the legal world with a new deal at 20th Century Fox and created (with Terry Louise Fisher) the stylish NBC smash L.A. Law, which ran from 1986-94.

And with fellow Hill Street scribe David Milch, he came up with ABC’s controversial NYPD Blue, which aimed to compete with the risque kind of shows that were siphoning audiences from broadcast to cable. That series, the longest-running one-hour drama in ABC history until surpassed by Grey's Anatony, aired from 1993-2005.  READ MORE