Critics and viewers alike often look to the late '90s and the rise of HBO when tracing the birth of prestige television. The premium cable network debuted "Sex and the City" in 1998 and the mob-crime drama "The Sopranos" in 1999. While both series ushered in a new wave of television that brought a cinematic feel to the small screen, it would be unfair to say that they first ignited the flame. Five years before Carrie and Big began their epic (and exhaustive) love story, "The Wire" creator David Simon's first novel, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," was adapted for television. More than three decades after its 1993 debut on NBC, all seven seasons of "Homicide: Life on the Street" and its accompanying TV movie are finally available to stream on Peacock.

Created by Paul Attanasio, “Homicide” is an intense, addictive, and hyper-realistic examination of the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit. While many cop shows of the era followed a standard path for audiences, roboticly unpacking cases and offering simplistic character analysis, “Homicide” did something different. Attanasio, showrunner Tom Fontana, and Simon, who served as writer and producer on the series, had a higher regard for their audience, as evidenced by the unique choices made throughout the series.

As the pilot "Gone For Goode" opens, viewers are thrown onto the streets of Baltimore. Under cover of darkness, Detectives Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito) discuss a book as they search for clues at a crime scene. As the shot widens, a dead man is seen lying on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the head. As the scene ends, without the necessary evidence in hand, Crosetti casually quips, "That's the problem with this job; it has nothing to do with life."

Though the series has been remastered in high definition and 4K, it has a graininess that is now lost in the hyper-polished nature of digital filmmaking. And though the show is somewhat serialized, each episode functions as a puzzle piece for the next. The homicide squad color-code cases on a giant whiteboard, written in black for closed or red for open. The cases loop around one another and are eventually solved (or not).