Homicide Finally Hits Streaming: Here’s One Episode to Get You Hooked
After years stuck in streaming jail, one of TV’s best cop dramas ever is free at last — and back on the beat.
All seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street are finally available to stream on Peacock, as of today, so fans who didn’t catch its original 1993-99 run on NBC can now discover why it’s acknowledged as a stone-cold classic. A gritty look at the life of Baltimore homicide detectives, Homicide boasts an impressive pedigree — it’s based on a book by The Wire’s David Simon, with Oz’s Tom Fontana and Oscar winner Barry Levinson as executive producers — and delivers hard-hitting crime stories brimming with moral complexity along with an array of dazzling performances.
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But seven seasons is a lot to absorb at once, we know. So to help you get started on your Homicide journey, we’ve picked out one perfect episode to kick off your binge: Season 1’s “Three Men and Adena.” Sure, there are other standout episodes of Homicide we’d recommend — Robin Williams’ searing Season 2 guest spot as a grieving widower comes to mind, as do the crossover episodes with Law & Order— but as a standalone slice of quality TV drama, “Three Men and Adena” is the ideal introduction to Homicide’s riveting, unforgiving brand of storytelling.
First airing on March 3, 1993, “Three Men and Adena” was actually just Homicide’s fifth episode ever, but Fontana (who penned the episode) wasted no time in finding the show’s unique voice. The story centers on the murder of 11-year-old girl Adena Watson, with detectives Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Frank Bayliss (Kyle Secor) interrogating an old street vendor named Risley Tucker (Moses Gunn) about his possible involvement in Adena’s death. Like a lot of great television episodes, most of “Three Men and Adena” is just people sitting in a room and talking, but Fontana’s crackling script and the three excellent actors combine to generate incredible tension and thought-provoking drama from that single setting.
Pembleton and Bayliss know they only have 12 hours to get a confession from Tucker or they have to let him go, and their tag-team interrogation is a delicate dance in the traditional good cop/bad cop style, with Bayliss thundering furious accusations at Tucker while Pembleton calmly asks about his line of work and his romantic history. At first, it seems like Pembleton is taking it easy on the old guy, but we soon learn he’s subtly probing him for psychological weak spots, searching for a way to unlock the truth. We can practically smell the sweat and feel the exhaustion as the hours tick by, with Tucker insisting he had nothing to do with Adena’s death — although his story keeps changing about when he last saw her.
The episode also serves as a testament to the monumental acting talents of Braugher, who blazed across our TV screens like a soaring comet as Pembleton. For most of us, Homicide served as our introduction to Braugher, and what an introduction it was, with the actor merging a relentless drive for justice with a righteous anger to give us one of the most compelling TV cops we’d ever seen. Braugher went on to become a TV staple, with key roles in Men of a Certain Age and Brooklyn Nine-Nine before his untimely passing last year at the age of 61. But Frank Pembleton will forever be remembered as his greatest creation, and this episode is a prime example as to why. (Yes, he won an Emmy for Homicide, thankfully, but not until 1998.)
Exploring ethical gray areas was Homicide’s bread and butter, and “Three Men and Adena” plays into that beautifully, with Pembleton and Bayliss hammering away at Tucker and pressing psychological buttons in order to get him to ‘fess up. (Knowing that Tucker is a recovering alcoholic, Pembleton pours salt into that wound throughout the interrogation: “You miss drinking? I know I would.”) As viewers, we’re also not sure if Tucker actually did the crime he’s accused of. The closest he comes to confessing is when they’ve completely worn him down and ask him if he’s sure he didn’t kill Adena, and he replies: “Not right now, I’m not.” Pembleton and Bayliss themselves aren’t sure, which just adds more nuance to an already complicated tale.
A masterclass in ruthlessly efficient storytelling, “Three Men and Adena” saves one last surprise for the end — spoilers ahead — with Tucker turning the tables on Pembleton, accusing him of being ashamed of being Black (“You hate who you really are”) and taking control of the conversation. He does admit he had an illicit affection for Adena (“The one great love of my life was an 11-year-old girl”), but he stops short of saying he killed her, and the cops’ time runs out, with them forced to let Tucker walk away a free man. It’s a frustrating conclusion to an intense hour, but that lack of closure feels real, somehow. The good guys don’t always win on Homicide… and they’re not always all that good, either.
Homicide was never a runaway ratings hit for NBC, but it served as an essential precursor to the prestige TV era, stripping away the Hollywood glamour to expose the tough realities of law enforcement. It remains a cop drama touchstone to this day — and finally, viewers can enjoy it in all its glory.
All seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street are now streaming on Peacock.
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