safenoe Review of Anatomy of a 'Homicide: Life on the Street'

Anatomy of a 'Homicide: Life on the Street' (1998 TV Movie)

Excellent PBS documentary looking at the making of Subway

[10/10 · 4 October 2016]

Whilst you get a regular stream of documentaries about a TV series, it's not often you get a documentary about the making of a certain episode of a TV series. I love Homicide: Life on the Street, and this PBS documentary excels. It focuses on the making of Subway, one of the most haunting episodes of HLOTS. It covers the writing, creative, acting, and directing processes. It focuses on the screenwriter James Yoshimura, who is one of the major talents in screen writing, and who played a major role with Tom Fontana in HLOTS during its run. Getting the Baltimore subway to co-operate was impressive, and the technical aspects were incredible to watch.

In Subway Vincent D'Onofrio plays John Lange (incidentally, in New Zealand Lange is pronounced "Longy") who is pushed into a subway track in the path of an oncoming train by the disturbed and deranged Larry Biedron (played by Bruce MacVittie). Interestingly the actor Bruce MacVittie has a Wikipedia page in Danish, Finish and Italian, but not English. Maybe Bruce has a cult following in the European Community.