Charles Haid remembers the night that Hill Street Blues ticked off most of the television industry.

It was September 1981 and the Emmys for the previous TV season were being handed out. Hill Street had just finished its first season. Viewership had been appallingly low; Haid, who played officer Andy Renko, says even though NBC had ordered a second season, Hill Street was the network's lowest rated show to be renewed — and even people working in television were not watching it.

Yet, on that night it was named best drama.

Daniel J. Travanti, who played Capt. Frank Furillo on the show, won for best actor in a drama.

Michael Conrad, as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, won best supporting actor in a drama.

Also in the drama category, Barbara Babcock, as Grace Gardner, won best actress. Robert Butler won as best director for his work on the series premiere. Michael Kozoll and Steven Bochco won for writing the premiere.

"Here we were, this little group, the cast and our significant others in the Shrine auditorium, and all of a sudden they kept playing the Hill Street Blues theme over and over," Haid says. "You could see the people around us got tired of it. We would be cheering, but no one else in the Shrine auditorium was cheering because they hadn't seen us."

Those Emmys were no fluke. The series would win more awards in the years ahead, including three more Emmys as best drama.

Haid says the people making the show had no idea at first that greatness loomed. In fact, Renko was meant to die in the premiere – he and partner Bobby Hill (Michael Warren) gunned down when they stumbled into a drug buy. But audience testing for Renko went through the roof, so Renko survived the shoot–ing (and Haid, having quietly heard about the tests, was able to negotiate special billing in the credits).

Work on the show was stalled by an actors' strike in 1980; though work resumed later that summer, Hill Street did not premiere until January 1981, so production steamed along in a vacuum, Haid says. The show took shape "in downtown alleys and soundstages here in Los Angeles. And working in a vacuum for the first bunch of episodes, we were sort of like a little repertory company in rehearsal ...

"And then the Emmys happened," he adds.

Audiences finally came around, and found a show where the diverse characters were complicated — often heroic in their chosen profession, but flawed in the way they went about their work and personal lives. Alcoholism, divorce, sexism, race, corruption — all came into play early on. So did simple personality flaws; Renko, Haid recalled, was an overgrown boy when the show began. The city around Hill Street was in decay — unnamed, but reminiscent of Pittsburgh, old stomping grounds for Bochco (and Haid). And that city was violent and unpredictable. Seemingly simple law-enforcement decisions bumped up against urban politics. Stories were not contained by an hour; they sprawled across episodes, and their eventual resolution could prove grim.

Hill Street's ensemble of troubled characters was set in a documentary-like, messy look (credited to Butler). Dialogue overlapped and a single episode could have numerous storylines bumping against each other,

Haid — now mainly a director — says the seven-seasons of Hill Street were hugely influential on that craft, because Butler and his successors were determined to find the right look and style instead of settling for a one-size-fits-all approach common with some companies. Hill Street also changed the rules for writer-producers as mastermind Bochco proved what a show could accomplish when a network and studio stayed out of the way,

TNS

Sky TV's Jones! Channel will begin airing Hill Street Blues from the very beginning on weekdays at 3.40pm from July 15.