"Miami Vice" TV Series

First aired in September 1984 on NBC-TV, "Miami Vice" is one of the most innovative TV series of network television, and perhaps the best example of what media critic John Thornton Caldwell calls "televisuality." According to Caldwell (1995), the way to view television is as a self-conscious, stylistic medium, and the police drama "Miami Vice" is a prime example of a televisuality-based program. Media sociologist Jeremy Butler (1985) cites "Miami Vice" as one of the most visually stylized programs of the 1980s, and Andrew Sargent (2002) contends that "Miami Vice" represents the style and dominant cultural aesthetic of the 1980s more fully and indelibly than any other TV series.

The popular series aired from 1984 through 1989, with 114 episodes, and is still in syndication 15 years later. The ground-breaking police show is set in the Vice Department of the Miami Metro-Dade police force. It is not, however, the pair of interracial undercover detectives' battle against illicit drugs, firearms and prostitution that give power to the show, but its stylistic attributes. The ambience is as crucial as plots or characters. The show is best known for its visual style, watercolor pastels, and fashions, but most notably for its use of music of the 1980s and technique of the quick-cut visual style of MTV videos. In fact, the original name for the show was MTV Cops. Music was the foremost ingredient of the show with at least four to five current songs featured per episode. Other music w

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he show, he replied, "no earth tones" (Sargent). Butler argues that "Miami Vice" drew its stylistic inspiration from the film noir genre of movies, incorporating high contrast lighting, unconventional camera angles, and deep focus shots to create dynamic visual compositions that looked unlike anything else on TV at the time. Mann's aesthetic vision had a great deal to do with the look. He was one of the first to adopt cinematic production values for television. Aside from the color coordination of the show using primarily pink, lime green and aqua, Mann and his camera crew used reflection shots off car hoods, sunglasses, and water; this was one of the first times if not the first-that reflections shots were used as part of television format productions. An example is Sonny Crockett driving (fast naturally) to the music of Phil Collins, the top down on his Ferrari Daytona Spyder convertible, and the city lights reflecting off the car's black lacquer finish. The "Miami Vice" look involved not only the slick look of the show, but the look of its main characters as well. As with all buddy cop shows, the more charismatic the stars, the more popular the show. Think of Dennis Franz in "NYPD," and Jerry Orbach in "Law and Order" on tod

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