As a gritty, downbeat cop drama filmed against a backdrop of urban decay, the program has been seen as a return to form for Bochco, who had cocreated the groundbreaking Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. Attempts to repeat the success of his law-and-order shows faltered (Bay City Blues, Cop Rock, Civil Wars) until Hill Street writer-producer David Milch teamed with Bochco to revitalize the genre. Arguing that the networks had to compete with cable TV for the adult audience, the producers persuaded ABC to approve content previously forbidden. The pilot episode concludes with a dimly-lit lovemaking scene. While mild by motion-picture standards, its partial male and female nudity stirred controversy.

Three months before the debut of such “blue” material, ABC screened the pilot for affiliates and advertisers. Although Bochco agreed to trim 15 seconds from the sex scene, adverse reactions threatened the show’s broadcast run. Conservative watchdog Reverend Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association (AFA) led a national campaign against NYPD Blue, calling on affiliates not to air the program and on citizens to boycott products advertised during the show. A quarter of ABC’s 225 member stations preempted the first episode.

Despite the unprecedented number of defections, Blue scored well in the ratings. Most blackouts had been in small markets (representing only 10 to 15 percent of potential viewers); Wildmon’s campaign provided extra publicity in larger ones. Furthermore, NYPD Blue maintained its large audience, leading most advertisers and affiliates to cease their opposition. By the end of its first season, ABC’s new hit drama survived a second round of AFA attacks and won endorsements from Viewers for Quality Television, the Emmy Awards (27 nominations), and most reviewers.

After all the hype about sex, violence, and profanity, what viewers discovered was a compelling series that was “adult” in the best, rather than the worst, sense. NYPD Blue is mature and sophisticated, not libertine. Instead of inserting racy language and showy sex for the sake of sensation, this story of career cops features complicated human characters. Charges of excessive violence also proved unfounded. As a new round of protests against TV violence circulated in the U.S. in 1993, detractors tagged this latest bête noire of television as a prime offender. Yet, particularly for a realistic police show, NYPD Blue seldom depicts violent acts. When it does, it tends to dramatize the terrible consequences of such actions. (Eventually, ABC responded to public and congressional pressures by airing a content advisory warning with each episode, although that warning did not mention violence: “This police drama contains adult language and scenes with partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.”)

Again like Hill Street, NYPD Blue excelled with a potent combination of writing, acting, and directing. The look of the show is both realistic and stylized. New York City location shooting make the show’s feel for big-city street life palpable, while the jagged editing and nervous, hand-held camera movement (already a convention of the genre) heighten the dramatic tension of scenes in the precinct offices, the place where an ensemble of characters’ lives intertwined. Unlike the innovative police drama to which it is often compared—Homicide: Life in the Streets—NYPD Blue keeps its stylistic flourishes in check, letting actors control scenes. In fact, performers familiar from past Bochco productions—Charles Haid, Eric Laneauville, Dennis Dugan, Jesus S. Treviño—have directed many episodes.

However, it was another set of alumni from the Bochco stock company who stood out above the ensemble cast. Franz emerged as the scenery-chewing mainstay of the show, reinventing his seedy, sharp- tongued Norman Buntz character from Hill Street Blues as Sipowicz. The lesser-known David Caruso quickly became a star and sex symbol playing Sipowicz’s partner, John Kelly, a throwback, red-headed Irish cop. Early in the show’s run, Caruso received more publicity than Franz, largely because Caruso was the first of the male leads to do a nude scene. However, he departed at the start of the second season. Three other detectives have since been partnered with Sipowicz. L.A. Law star Jimmy Smits played Bobby Simone, who wed fellow detective Dianne Russell (Kim Delaney) before dying of heart failure. Young, taciturn Danny Sorenson (played with surprising astuteness by former child star Rick Schroeder) took Simone’s place but became a murder victim, and was replaced by second-generation cop John Clark (portrayed by another former child actor, Mark-Paul Gosselaar). The series’ smooth transitions through major character changes testifies to the storytelling skills of Milch, Bochco, and their collaborators.

Individual episodes introduce new cases for the detectives of New York’s 15th Precinct and blend them with ongoing melodramatic storylines about personal relationships. Entanglements of professional and personal affairs are always imminent as every detective in the precinct has become romantically involved with a co-worker: Kelly with Officer Janice Licalsi; Gregory Medavoy with office secretary Donna Abandando; detectives James Martinez and Adrianne Lesniak with each other, Baldwin Jones with Assistant District Attorney Valerie Haywood. Sipowicz marries District Attorney Sylvia Costas, who is later murdered. After her death, Sipowicz becomes a devoted, sensitive father to their young son Theo, thus countering his own often ugly, violent, struggling alcoholic, on-the-job personality, and again engages in a workplace romance, this time with Detective Connie McDowell.

Even with so many couples, male characters dominate NYPD Blue. Their tough-guy machismo, however, is always tempered by a caring side. Rather than playing to good cop/bad cop stereotypes, Sipowicz, Kelly, Simone, and their fraternal colleagues exemplify that emerging archetype of 1990s television: the sensitive man. Like TV cops of the past, they are moral, yet hard enough to crack down on criminals. To this “guy” image, the men of NYPD Blue add a dimension of sensitivity. These are sentient cops. The replacement of the Cagneyesque John Kelly with empathetic widower Simone heightened this aspect. The NYPD Blue men are working men concerned with emotion. The boys in Blue have feelings and discuss them, with both their professional and romantic partners. Women’s roles, even nominally feminist ones, have tended only to support men’s and lacked depth in early seasons. However, the development of Delaney’s character enriched the series. Detective Russell, like Sipowicz, was a complex, edgy, melancholic, recovering alcoholic, who showed the stress of loyalty to “the job.” Delaney’s portrayal proved strong enough for Bochco to create the law series Philly (2001–02) as a star vehicle for her. ABC even moved Blue to an earlier hour to serve as a lead-in for the new show; however, Philly lasted only one season.

As with other Bochco productions, NYPD Blue leavens its mixture of police drama and soap opera with comic relief, often interjecting moments of irreverent, even scatological, humor. The show’s uses of nudity and profanity often play at this level. Naked bodies appear in awkward, comic scenes as well as erotic ones. Writers self-consciously invent colorful, funny curse words for Sipowicz to spew at criminals.

Whatever the length of its run, NYPD Blue made history with its breakthrough first season. While not a model for commercial imitation, the series proved that risky, adult material could be successfully integrated into network television.