Trivia / Hill Street Blues

• Acclaimed Flop: While critically acclaimed and today considered one of the best and most influential cop shows ever, it pulled in terrible ratings during its first season—87th out of 96 shows—and was, at that point in time, the lowest rated show ever renewed for a second season. After winning six Emmys that year (including its first of four total wins for Outstanding Drama Series), it surged to 27th in its second season, and peaked at 21st in its third season.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Edward James Olmos turned down the role of Lt. Ray Calletano. He did, however, make three guest appearances.
• The Character Died with Him: When Michael Conrad died, his character of Sgt. Esterhaus was written as having died of a heart attack during sex. Despite the circumstances, the moment when Captain Furillo walks into morning roll-call to break the news to the day shift is a major Tear Jerker.
• Channel Hop: It went from ITV to Channel 4 in Britain.
• Creative Differences: Steven Bochco disliked the creative shift that occurred during the middle of the show's run, when it started delving more into how destructive police work can be to personal lives. After clashing with others of the perceived soap-operafication of the series, he departed.
• Executive Meddling:
  • A positive example. The series was famous for stretching multiple intertwining plotlines over several episodes. (For example, the shooting of Officers Hill and Renko in the pilot wasn't resolved until the end of the first season.) One of NBC's conditions for renewing the show for a second season was a requirement that at least one storyline had to be wrapped up in each episode^note Ironically, this wasn't just a rare example of positive executive meddling at NBC, it was a rare example of executive meddling at NBC overall, as it occurred during Grant Tinker's tenure as chairman and CEO. With rare exceptions, Tinker generally hated executive meddling as he felt that it stifles creativity and that TV writers and producers do their best work without interference..
  • Hill and Renko were originally killed off, but network executives asked they be kept so both recovered and stayed with the show until the end.
  • Coffey was supposed to die at the end of the first season, but executives liked the chemistry Ed Marinaro had with Betty Thomas so the character came back to life without any explanation^note Hill and Renko's recovery and PTSD were at least addressed.
• Follow-Up Failure: Immediately after the show ended in 1987, it had a spin-off in Beverly Hills Buntz. It followed Det. Norman Buntz and Sid the Snitch as private investigators in Beverly Hills, California. Despite a push by NBC, the show only lasted one season.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Steven Bochco was fired from the show due to low ratings combined with frequent clashes with the network and differences with his staff. This also resulted in Barbara Bosson dropping out of the show as she was married to Bochco at the time.
  • Michael Conrad was difficult to work with and prone to loud outbursts. This was made worse by Kiel Martin, who took pleasure in irritating Conrad to get as dramatic a reaction as possible.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Partially averted as of 2014 - the first two seasons are available on DVD, while later seasons seem to have gone out of stock.
• Network to the Rescue: The ratings weren't stellar but NBC kept renewing it because of the critical acclaim.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: LaRue was written out for a stretch because Kiel Martin struggled with alcoholism and was kicked off set and told to get help and dry out or get fired.
• Recast as a Regular: Dennis Franz comes in as a very memorable several-episode character in Season 3 (the corrupt Detective Sal Benedetto), then is cast as Lt. Norman Buntz in Season 6.
• Throw It In!: Each episode has at least one Unusual Euphemism for masturbation as castmembers wanted to see just how far they could push the innuendo.
• Troubled Production: The set was apparently a tense place, according to Steven Bochco. Drug use was rampant and it took several years to effectively ban it from set. The writers clashed with producers who, in turn, clashed with the network. The cast, meanwhile, was full of dramatic and clashing personalities. Michael Conrad was reportedly extremely difficult to work with early on and his mood was made worse by Kiel Martin (whose alcoholism and cocaine addiction caused their own problems) needling him to see how dramatically he'd explode. Fortunately, Bochco was fueled by this trouble and it drove him to work even harder to make his project a success. The cast, meanwhile, gradually started gelling and became close friends who still regularly reunite years after the show wrapped.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The series was originally going to be shot with hand-held 16mm cameras only and in black and white.
  • Hill and Renko were supposed to have been killed in the pilot episode to establish that Anyone Can Die, but their chemistry was so good they were brought back to life and stayed for the whole series.
  • Speaking of Hill and Renko, there were talks to give them their own spin-off due to their popularity, but given how crucial they were to the show, this never happened. However, executives still liked the idea enough to create two expies of them for another show that the network eventually developed. The name of the show? Miami Vice.
• Working Title: Hill Street Station.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Steven Bochco described the production process this way: "We didn't know what the hell we were doing. We were figuring it out on the fly."
• Written-In Infirmity: When Michael Conrad—the beloved Sgt. Phil Esterhaus—was suffering from the final stages of cancer, he agreed to continue as long as his health allowed. As such, Esterhaus only appeared in the opening scenes (at "roll call") and very sporadically otherwise. After Conrad completed his last episode, shows that were filmed prior to his death depicted Sgt. Esterhaus as "away" (or sometimes, tending to other business). Only after Conrad's death was Esterhaus' death written in.

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