Starting in 1988, “The Street” was a gritty cinema verite look into the lives of two teams of Newark street cops. Shot in low light, it was fictional but felt real – the first time I watched it, it wasn’t till the credits rolled that I realized it was a drama, not a documentary. The series offered some powerful stories and memorable characters, very definitely not Hollywoodized.
I taped all the episodes back then. This evening I hauled out the old tapes and discovered to my dismay that the first two videocassettes, containing a good third of the series episodes, had frozen from long disuse and couldn’t be played. Googling about made it clear that “The Street” has never made it to DVD.
So, two questions: Did anyone else ever see it? Does anyone know where I might find tapes of the series? A faint hope, I know, but dammit, I hate to lose those episodes, though it looks like I’ll have to chuck out the tapes.