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Rating:  -
What can be said about "Homicide: LOTS" that hasn't already been said? Gritty, tense, loaded with action, characters that compel you to watch, plots that draw you in like bees to honey; and the amazing duo of Yaphet Kotto and Andre Braugher. This show influenced crime drama on TV for years.
The DVDs are sparsely populated with extras. Every now and then, you'll see a bonus track about the music used or an audio commentary. Later seasons include a "previously on" segment.
After being engrossed through six full seasons, I was a bit shocked to discover that the last disc in Season 6 was bad. After playing it on multiple DVD players, I managed to slug through it. Could be an isolated incident. Could be an issue. If your Season 6, Volume 6 DVD starts acting up, watch out.
Also, the DVDs are dual-layer? They show up as 7.6GB discs when viewed on a computer.
A brilliant series.
Rating:  -
After years of debating whether to take the plunge and buy the entire series I did. While it doesn't come in the cute little box that the special edition came in, I still love it. Having all the of the episodes is wonderful. Yes, I wish they had done more special features and the DVDs aren't the easiest to use (hello - I'd like to watch them back to back without having to nav the menu as much). The show is so great that it really doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles. Just sit back and enjoy the excellent writing, camera work, and amazing acting that made this one of the best series in TV history. Doesn't include the movie - but that was a disappointing end anyways. I've got hours of watching before I start debating whether to get that.
Rating: -
I almost ordered this collection, but then noticed another set (also through Amazon, linked below) that had a bonus disk. Disk 35 includes the three "Law & Order" crossover episodes, and "Homicide: The Movie", which ties up many loose ends.
Without the bonus disk, this collection isn't truly complete, and thus rated only 4 stars. The Homicide 35-disk megaset is worth the extra bucks, and an extra star.
(PS: A special thanks to Mr. Bey (Riverside, CT United States), whose review of this set tipped me off about the missing crossover episodes and led me to search out the megaset I now own and enjoy)
EDIT: I purcahsed the Megaset in July 2007 for $112.42. Now the price has jumped to $340 +. It's a good show, but I doubt that I would have paid anything over $200.00.
Rating:  -
I agree with others that this was a great TV series, but, it's been gone a long time, and charging $350 for 7 seasons in todays market is just gouging, I've seen it all and loved it but would never buy at this price. $30 per season after 5 years of being off the air (and, it's been 7) is all I will ever pay. Good show, bad price.
Rating: -
From the very beginning, Homicide - Life On The Street was just flat out better than 97% of what's available on TV, including cable. The impetus, of course, was Barry Levinson, a truly brilliant director with numerous great films to his credit. (His overriding love of Baltimore's gritty reality contributed enormously.) Levinson's approach set the tone for everything that happened later, a sensibility grounded in film, not TV, and ensemble acting, not formulaic story development. Where Law & Order, as good as it is, is almost mechanistic in its style, with Homicide one always has the wonderful sense that anything might happen, indeed, that stories might be unresolved, or resolved in an unsatisfactory manner, as is the case in real life.
Unusual camera work, and especially the choppy editing - which frequently featured multiple takes of the same scene - gave the show a hard-edged, urban appeal totally in keeping with Baltimore - the show's non-credited star. (A welcome and refreshing change from the slick, smooth, and empty style of typical Hollywood pap.) The writing was always excellent, terrific dialogue, fresh plot twists, well-drawn characters that evolved right before your eyes. Homicide also featured a long parade of wonderful actors moving in and out of the ensemble, and terrific cameos as well; most notably Lily Tomlin whose performance in the episode called "The Hat" is perfection itself.
Melissa Leo, Clark Johnson, and Max Perlich deserve special note for great work developing marvelously quirky characters, but the weight of the show rests squarely on the shoulders of Andre Braugher as Frank Pembleton and Yaphet Koto as Al Giardello. Both men created such fully realized characters that everything they did, however improbable, was believable. Braugher's Pembleton is as complex and interesting as any fictional figure you might ever find, and Koto as Giardello exudes male dignity, power, and decency in a way that is almost unknown in the wasteland of television, a landscape populated by imbecilic male role models. About Belzer's Munch, what can one say except that Belzer may be the only person in show business history to spend an entire career playing one role, no matter which show he appears in. But then, Belzer is Munch, so does it really qualify as acting at all?
I've acquired these in bits and pieces, now that the complete collection is available, I wish I'd waited; I would have saved a lot of money. Highly recommended, this is TV at its very best, when it's so good that it's indistinguishable from film.
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