Season 4 brought a few changes to the Homicide: Life On The Streets beat. Beatty’s and Baldwin’s characters would exit. Reed Diamond and Max Perlich would enter the cast to replace them. Diamond’s Kellerman, an arson investigator turned homicide detective, would provide the more interesting character arc for the season. Year 4 also marked a change in style to more of the multi-episode stories. Another Law and Order crossover is a bit confusing because there isn’t the Dick Wolf franchise episode to complete it. I’d li…e to see a cooperative effort to release these annual crossovers as full shows.
Audio
Again you’ll find a pretty typical television Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track on these discs. Dialogue is always clear even if some of the background sounds tend to still come out muddy. The music is usually source material and can vary greatly in quality.
Video
Each Homicide episode is presented in its original television 1.33:1 full frame format. Most of this show is very dark Look to find a good amount of grain. This grain is the result of the low lighting and the use of super 16 film. Darks seem to contain a bit of artifacting at times.
Special Features
There’s only one commentary offered, and it features Clark Johnson. His insights are very much like those he provided in his Shield episode commentaries.
“Homicide: Life In Season 4” is very much like the similarly named feature from Season 3. It’s hosted by Isabella Hoffman. She’s not terribly dynamic.
The rest of the extras are merely stills and cast crew bios. A complete list of the songs used for each episode is a welcome feature continued in this set. The menus are exactly like the previous releases.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t find Season 4 to be as exciting as the previous year. It still has the same tightly written stories that remain quite compelling. Season 3 benefited from the potential series ending needs in the more action-oriented scripts. The new characters blend flawlessly. I didn’t miss Baldwin, but I did miss Beatty. Season 5 is expected in a few months. “Count me in”.
Special Features List
- Commentary by Clark Johnson and writer Anya Epstein on “The Hat”
- “Homicide: Life in Season 4”: an interview with Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, Henry Bromell, David Simon, and James Yoshimura, narrated by Isabella Hoffmann
- Song listing
