Edition: U.S. / Global  TELEVISION/RADIO; Shakespearean Soaps
For Complicated Times  Published: October 18, 1998  ''HILL
STREET BLUES'' was the first cop show that ever made me cry. If
it had been a film instead of a television series, Hollywood
wouldn't have known whether to call it a crime picture or a
relationship movie.  Like ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' and ''Homicide,''
its best progeny, it was a show about love and work played out
on a ruined landscape of human misbehavior. The love was
provided by Veronica Hamel's elegant, implacable public
defender, Joyce Davenport, and Daniel J. Travanti's quietly
staunch precinct captain, Frank Furillo. This was a smart 80's
show, and their courtship, with its Hepburn-Tracy echoes, had
the requisite feminist tension: Joyce was wary and nervously
combative (her pet name for her lover was Pizza Man, a grade-
school-level ethnic insult); Frank was not only patient but
smart enough to read her static as the frightened signs of love.
''Hill Street'' was particularly deft at catch-