It tied Miami Vice to something that was then considered hip and hot. It’s easy to see why both the media and NBC brass liked that story: It provided a simple, punchy explanation for the show’s style and success. When commercials for the new show first aired in the summer of 1984, unspooling a reel of eerie, kinetic imagery set to Phil Collins warbling “In The Air Tonight,” jaded viewers spilled their diet sodas all over their “Frankie Say” T-shirts in surprise and turned to stare at one other: What the hell was that?Īs entertainment journalists rushed to explain after the series had hit it big, it was “MTV Cops.” That was the totemic phrase that NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff was rumored to have scribbled down on a note he then passed to Anthony Yerkovich, a writer-producer at Hill Street Blues who was credited as creator of the new show. Even Hill Street Blues, with its crowded frames and early-morning-hangover look-inspired by Alan and Susan Raymond’s video-verité documentary The Police Tapes-that had been so shocking to network executives four years earlier still communicated narrative information and achieved most of its effects by having a bunch of actors stand around and talk at each other. Certainly they didn’t expect to see filmmaking with any snap or flair to it. People didn’t turn on the TV hoping for visual beauty and style they assumed that such things were simply impossible to achieve in something made for television.
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