NYPD Blue

NYPD Blue premiered on ABC on September 21, 1993, created by Steven Bochco and David Milch and shaped by Milch's friendship with Bill Clark, a former New York City detective who became one of the show's producers. The fictional 15th Precinct squad was shot mostly around Los Angeles, with New York used for exteriors — the station-house shots came from the real 9th Precinct building on East 5th Street, the same facade Kojak had used. Mike Post's theme never changed across the run: a percussion opening meant to sound like a subway train leaving the station, then an oboe melody modeled on the Irish-American music played at NYPD ceremonies.

The nudity and language were the story before the first episode aired. At least 30 ABC affiliates, mostly in smaller and conservative markets, refused to carry the show at launch; by the start of the third season nearly all of them had come around, because the ratings overruled their objections. L. Brent Bozell III later told TIME that the series moved him to found the Parents Television Council. The first season was built as a vehicle for David Caruso's Detective John Kelly, with the promo shots putting Caruso front and center. He left four episodes into season two after failing to get the raise he wanted — a departure TV Guide would rank in 2010 as one of television's ten biggest blunders — and the show became an ensemble around Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz, the alcoholic, bigoted veteran who spends the series trying to be better. His partners over the years were Jimmy Smits, Rick Schroder and Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

The critical run was long: 84 Emmy nominations and 20 wins, including Outstanding Drama Series in 1995 and four Lead Actor awards for Franz. Smits's exit episode, "Hearts and Souls," landed at No. 30 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes list. The show stayed capable of a fight to the end — in 2008 the FCC fined ABC $1.4 million over a 2003 episode's nude scene, a fine a federal appeals court threw out in 2011. The series finale aired March 1, 2005, after 261 episodes; it stood as ABC's longest-running hour-long primetime drama until Grey's Anatomy passed it in 2016, and on its twentieth anniversary Variety called it an outlier that broadcast television never followed.