Hill Street Blues TV Show - Hill Street Blues Television Show - Yahoo! TV

Hill Street needs to be the most ground breaking show of all-time. Being that I revolved my life around the Sopranos, Hill Street was the first show of this kind that pressed the envelope and set the bar higher which has lead to shows such as The Sopranos.

Hill Street had great acting, very touchy story lines that were criticsized, that was the first show that introduced the roving camera anlges that we see all to common now.

NYPD Blue was the baby-brother of Hill Street and in itself was one of the best shows ever but should have ended 4 years earlier. They got away from their original premise and forgot it wasn't about all that personal stuff the it later was engulfed with.

The Sopranos on the other hand, ended at the right time and didn't fall into the that trap; for that I am grateful for.

What made the Sopranos seem more effective was that it was on cable(HBO) and therefore had much more flexibility than you do on network T.V. If you had to edit out to fit on network T.V. it would not have the same impact. A perfect example is try watching the Sopranos on A&E, even though it's still cable but a soft cable channel, the language is changed and dubbed, and scenes are either blackened out or edited completely.

Hill Street tested the market and set the tone for what we have now today.