Homicide: Life on the Street

This episode features Vincent D'Onofrio as John Lange, the victim. The next episode, All is Bright, features Kathryn Erbe as Rita Hale, a suspect. Four years after this episode first aired, D'Onofrio and Erbe would go on to star together in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

The above note was confirmed in a PBS documentary that aired on 4 Nov 1998. The documentary called "Anatomy of a Homicide: Life on the Street" covered the production of this episode. All the way from the time when writer James Yoshimura pitched the story and wrote the first draft of the script, to the time when he oversaw the production of it through his other job on the series as Supervising Producer. The documentary also featured a complete, commercial free viewing of the entire episode.

One viewer, Paul Schwarz, noted to me that the genesis for this story might have come from something he'd seen on TV, an HBO production called "The Best of Taxicab Confessions". A cop in New York rides in a cab and tells the driver about the "most upsetting thing he ever saw," a man who is hit by a train, a recreated in this episode. Of course, Pembleton did mention something about "being from NY and hearing about this sort of thing." Thanks also to John Walker.

Music in this episode: Love Riot "Killing Time" alb: Killing Time.

Richard Belzer, Reed Diamond, Michelle Forbes, Peter Gerety, Yaphet Kotto and Callie Thorne do not appear in this episode.