Homicide: Life on the Street/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: In "Heartbeat", Dr.Dyer tells Dr.Cox she's done dating homicide detectives after her break-up with Munch, and is now seeing a stand-up comic. She is played by Harlee McBride, Richard Belzer's wife.
  • A possible subtle one. When Pembleton is interrogating Gordon Pratt he mentions Jim Thompson and The Getaway. Talking about the film and its remake, Munch concludes that the remake wasn't worth remembering. The Getaway remake starred Alec Baldwin, brother of Daniel Baldwin who played Beau Felton.
• Big Name Fan: Jason Priestley, a.k.a. Brandon Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210, was a huge fan of the show, and always wanted to direct an episode. When Priestley told the producers this, they offered him the role of Det. Robert Hall in the finale movie.
• Cast the Expert: Gary D'Addario, a retired police commander, inspired the character Al Giardello, and played a recurring role as QRT head Lt. Jasper, in addition to working as a technical adviser.
• Dueling Shows: With NYPD Blue, and Nash Bridges, with which it shared a time slot.
• Executive Meddling: Jon Polito's Det Crosetti was cut to make way for a younger, attractive female character, as was Ned Beatty's Det Bolander. The show also had its scheduling messed around with a lot.
  • Generally speaking the show received a lot of creative freedom and leniency from the network, who always renewed the show despite its low ratings. Beatty and Baldwin left over contract disputes, as opposed to being simply replaced. The additions of Callie Thorne as Laura Ballard and Michael Michelle as Rene Sheppard were obviously executively mandated however. Jon Seda joining the cast out of nowhere and suddenly rivaling Pembleton and Bayliss for screen time is believed to have come from an order to have a younger, hipper (and whiter, though Seda is a darker-skinned Italian American), lead character.
    • However, the executives desire to make Homicide a more action oriented show is partly what drove away Ned Beatty at least.
  • The events leading up to the show's cancellation read almost like a parody: the network agreed to renew the show for an eighth season, but only if the producers moved the setting from Baltimore to Miami, changed it from a homicide unit to a P.I. firm, and fired the entire cast except for Munch, Sheppard, and Ballard. The producers wisely declined.
  • The Pembleton stroke story-arc was concluded somewhat earlier than intended due to letters from fans who wanted to see the old Frank back.
• McLeaned: Jon Polito was cut from the cast to make way for Isabella Hofmann as Lt Russert, but the producers promised to bring him back for the subsequent season. When Polito expressed his disappointment in interviews, the producers decided to get rid of Crosetti for good, resulting in one of the series' most dramatic episodes.
• No Export for You: Try to find a copy of Homicide: The Movie outside of the U.S.
• What Could Have Been: Originally, NBC wanted Jason Priestley to play John Munch, instead of Richard Belzer. Executive producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson stuck to their guns, and Belzer was cast. Of course, NBC conveniently forgot that Priestley was already playing Brandon Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210.