Cox: "Don't you even wonder why?"
Munch: "Why what?"
Cox: "Why he lied."
Munch: "I'm a homicide detective. The only time I wonder why is when they tell me the truth."

"Homicide: Life on the Street" was the best-written and best-acted drama on television. Set in Baltimore, the program focused on the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Division. It included a bunch of great actors, like Andre Braugher, Yaphet Kotto, Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, Kyle Secor, Clark Johnson, Daniel Baldwin, Reed Diamond, Giancarlo Esposito, Michelle Forbes, Peter Gerety, Isabella Hoffman, Melissa Leo, Toni Lewis, Michael Michele, Max Perlich, Jon Polito, Jon Seda, Callie Thorne, and many others.

Bayliss: "You never say please. You never say thank you."
Pembleton: "Please don't be an idiot. Thank you."

The show was produced and created by director Barry Levinson and based on David Simon's book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets". The executive producers (and frequent scriptwriters) were Eric Overmeyer and Tom Fontana. The dialogue in the show crackled, sparked, and popped beautifully; the characterizations were thoroughly brilliant; the jittery, documentary-style camera work was fun to watch. Unfortunately, NBC cancelled the show a few years back, so if you want to see it, you'll need to look for the show on DVD or try to find a station that carries it in syndicated reruns.

Bayliss: "So does the violence make them stupid or does the stupidity lead to violence?"
Munch: "Well, that's chicken and egg semantics. The important point is that we win some cases because our brains are repositories for intelligence and their brains are day-old banana pudding."

Favorite tidbit of weirdness about the show: A real criminal, on the run from the real Baltimore PD, once ran into some of the "Homicide" cast and crew filming a scene. Thinking he'd been cornered by real cops, he surrendered immediately.

Lewis: "Baltimore, home of the misdemeanor homicide!"

Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), but most of it from being a raging "Homicide" fanatic.