James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano looking serious in The SopranosImage via HBO
By
Thomas Butt
Published 16 minutes ago
Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.
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Heat is more than just a movie; it's a dogma for cinephiles. Michael Mann's 1995 crime epic that pitted Al Pacino against Robert De Niro as a cop and robber, respectively, has only grown in adoration 30 years since its release. Now, with the publication of a sequel novel and an upcoming adaptation of the book, written by Mann and Meg Gardiner, Heat is a full-blown universe. Heat 2 is set to begin filming soon, with Mann returning to the director's chair and working with an all-star cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver.
Before its arrival on the big screen, Mann's proof of concept for Heat was the television series, L.A. Takedown, which was later repurposed as a TV movie by NBC. Mann has an accomplished history on the small screen, notably with his production of the show that defined the aesthetic of the 1980s, Miami Vice. However, his greatest contribution to TV was with Crime Story, a serialized police procedural that tried to break new ground, and as a result, was cancelled far too soon.
Michael Mann Brought His Cinematic Language to Television with 'Crime Story'
Dennis Farina in Michael Mann's 'Crime Story'Image via NBC
After directing one of the finest debut films in history in 1981 with Thief, Mann predominantly stayed within the confines of television, a medium best suited to his fascinations with crime and police procedure. With the rise of slick, stylized visual language propagated by MTV, Mann's slick camera was more than welcomed on the airwaves. Thanks to Heat and Collateral, Mann is celebrated as the poet laureate of Los Angeles, capturing the vast landscape and lonely heart of the city. However, he was born and raised in Chicago and still speaks with the local accent.
Crime Story, created by Chuck Adamson and Gustave Reininger, is set in a familiar milieu for Mann: the Chicago police department and their fight against organized crime in the Windy City in the 1960s. While he only directed one episode (Season 1's penultimate episode, "Top of the World,") it features all the Mann trademarks we love. The show primarily centers around the extended showdown between tough police detective Lt. Mike Torello (Dennis Farina, a real-life cop whom Mann discovered when shooting Thief) and mobster Ray Luca (Tony Denison). Similar to Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna and Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley from Heat, Torello and Luca have an insatiable drive to defeat each other while also feeling like kindred spirits as committed professionals.
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Posts 21 By Jen Vestuto Jul 30, 2025The series also stars Stephen Lang, Jon Polito, future Heat star Ted Levine, and Andrew Dice Clay, a few years before becoming a prominent stand-up comic. Crime Story is also notable for being Julia Roberts' acting debut, where she played a rape survivor in the episode "The Survivor." Debuting with a feature film-length pilot directed by Abel Ferrara of Bad Lieutenant fame, the series aired on NBC from September 1986 to May 1988, lasting only 44 episodes across two seasons. Airing opposite ABC's Moonlighting on Tuesday night, Crime Story boldly subverted the procedural genre's conventions by serializing episodes, a counter to the typical stand-alone case of the hour structure.
'Crime Story' Paved the Way for Shows Like 'Mad Men,' 'The Sopranos,' and 'Twin Peaks'
Mann had even higher aspirations for his short-lived series, as he envisioned a sweeping arc that tracked the evolution of law enforcement across multiple decades. In the pre-premium cable era of television, the medium strictly enforced a formula — something Mann had no interest in following. Between new narrative curveballs and long-running plots, Crime Story demanded aggressive, committed viewership, a cinematic approach later adopted by the titans of the Golden Age of prestige television like The Sopranos and Mad Men. Mann's dedication to realism and first-hand accounts from authentic police officers and criminals gave the show a gritty edge and sophistication unfounded in all cop shows at the time. Storylines moved at their own pace and rhythm, giving it the sense of an immersive crime novel.
Crime Story not only laid the groundwork for Michael Mann's filmography, but it also spawned a new wave of revisionist and boundary-pushing crime procedurals, everything from Twin Peaks and The X-Files. It's hard not to draw parallels to The Wire, which studied the role of the police department as an institution through an anthropological and societal lens. Cops and robbers separated into black and white roles were routine on television, but Mann blurred these lines, highlighting the dark side of law enforcement that the mass media shielded away from.
Artistic pioneers are often overlooked and misunderstood upon release. Simply put, audiences weren't ready for the rich depth, unflinching tone, and attention to detail that Crime Story ushered into the television medium. Mann showed the world a new realm of the police procedural genre, one that was more fixated on long-term character studies and macro implications on a respective community, rather than the rush of solving one isolated case.
NBC
Crime Story
Like TV-PG Crime Drama Action Mystery Release Date 1986 - 1988-00-00Cast
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Dennis Farina
Lt. Mike Torello
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Tony Denison
Ray Luca
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Steve Ryan
Det. Nate Grossman
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Paul Butler
Det. Walter Clemmons
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