I agree. I remember when it first hit TV being impressed that this was indeed something qualitatively and conceptually different. And it begat NYPD Blue. (And Dennis Franz, who was a bad cop cornered in a bathroom by a robot droid in HSB) Good stuff.

>Here is another of my toasts to bygone entertainment acts.
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>I have the first two seasons on DVD and on an impulse popped the first disc into the player two nights ago. The first episode remains sensational. There are at least two explosive scenes. It served notice that this show was not messing around.
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>Viewed for the first time today it might not seem as epic. The formula of a serious dramatic show with an ensemble cast was not known at the time and has been repeated many times. If you think of ensemble shows in the time since, they all stole shamelessly from Hill Street. It's like the lady who is taken to her first Shakespearean play. Afterwards she is asked how she liked it. It was OK, she says, but so full of cliches.
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>The characters are meticulously drawn. Frank Furillo, the captain, a recovering alcoholic who never loses his unflappability. Phil Esterhaus, the sergeant who briefs the troops every morning and always concludes it by saying "Be careful out there." The offbeat partners Bobby Hill and Andy Renko, a black ex-basketball star (which he was in real life, a starting guard for the Walton Gang at UCLA) and a white redneck. JD Martin, the self-styled lounge lizard. Joyce Davenport, the bombshell defense attorney who fights the police with her core and has a soft spot for police lieutenants. Bruce Weitz as Belker, a man who likes to bite. "Name!" In one memorable scene he corrals a suspect in a public bathroom and sticks his head in a basin where someone has just shaved. "Suck bilgewater, dogbreath!"
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>UPDATE: My mistake. Warren did not play on the Walton Gang championship teams, he played on the Lew Alcindor championship teams. Later better known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.