YMMV / Crime Story

• Awesome Music: Del Shannon's updated version of "Runaway" used as the credits music, which went so far as giving him a Career Resurrection.
• Director Displacement: As with Miami Vice, Michael Mann was a producer and main creative force, but didn't create the series, though he did direct at least one episode.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In one episode, Kevin Spacey played a Senator in danger of becoming embroiled in a sex scandal. In 2017, Spacey's career started becoming derailed by accusations of sexual misconduct.
  • Former Chicago jewel thief John Santucci, who played Ray Luca's dumb-but-lovable flunky Pauli Taglia and whose acting career started in Michael Mann's Thief along with Dennis Farina (his former Chicago PD arresting officer), fell back into his previous criminal life and was arrested in Chicago in 1994.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • David Caruso appeared as Johnny O'Donnel, a friend of Ray Luca, in the pilot (episodes 1 and 2). He appeared in flashback scenes in episode 12, and in episode 19 of the second season.
  • Julia Roberts appeared as a juvenile rape victim in the Season 1 episode "The Survivor". It was her first TV appearance.
  • Kevin Spacey appeared in second-season premiere as a crusading, Kennedy-esque Senator. This was his first major television appearance.
  • Ving Rhames appeared in the season 1 episode "Abrams For The Defense" as Hector Lincoln, a husband and father accused of assaulting his landlord. This was his second television appearance.
  • Christian Slater played a teenager who discovered a body in "Old Friends, Dead Ends".
  • Michael Rooker appeared as a uniformed police officer in the pilot's opening.
  • Lorraine Bracco appeared as a woman held hostage by a gunman in a season 1 episode.
  • Laura San Giacomo as the wife of a protected witness in "Protective Witness".
  • Gary Sinise as a member of a gang of thieves in "For Love or Money". He also directed the episodes "Fatal Crossroads" and "Torello On Trial".
  • Elias Koteas as a fugitive that Torello is chasing through the desert in "Sidewinder".

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