This innovative series was the brainchild of screenwriter Paul Attanasio ("Quiz Show"), executive producer Barry Levinson ("Diner") and then-Baltimore Sun crime reporter turned writer-producer David Simon, who adapted his own nonfiction book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets." Saying that the first episode followed the homicide cops' investigation into a possible murder-for-insurance-money scam is like saying "The Iceman Cometh" is a play about a bunch of drunks in a bar. As is the case with so many great pilots, it's not what happens that matters; it's the look, the feel, the acting, the worldview. "Homicide" intriguingly split the difference between down-and-dirty, daily newspaper-style details (the cops smoke constantly, make unbearably grim jokes and never fire their guns) and highly stylized writing and performance that owed more to 1950s kitchen sink theater than to almost anything being made for TV in the early '90s.

The pilot's director, Levinson, worked with the show's director of photography, Jean de Segonzac, to develop a loose, free-flowing visual style that built on the documentary-style affectations of "Hill Street Blues." NBC executives found the whole package rather off-putting, and subsequently pressured the producers to tone down the hand-held camerawork, the chain smoking and the squad room philosophizing, and crank up the "jeopardy" (which meant showing the cops drawing and firing their weapons, busting down doors -- all the stuff Levinson and company specifically wanted to avoid).

"Homicide" purists complain that while the series remained watchable and produced many classic episodes, its necessary compromises with NBC management ensured that it never quite lived up to the rawness, vitality and intelligence of its first few episodes -- the pilot especially. And they might be right. If "Homicide" had appeared 10 years later, it probably would have aired on HBO, and it might have been even grander, tougher and more eloquent. Come to think of it, that's pretty much what did happen: Simon went on to make the superb limited-run series "The Corner" for HBO (concentrating on Baltimore neighborhood residents rather than cops, and likewise based on his reporting). And his first ongoing series for HBO, "The Wire," played like "Homicide" 2.0. The pilot for that one wasn't too shabby, either.