NYPD Blue” is still one of the most successful cop series in the USA – but it has never been shown in its entirety in Germany. Disney Plus is now making up for this step by step. Season 9 can now be streamed there.
In the USA, “NYPD Blue” had an absolutely impressive run. Started in 1993, the police series enjoyed huge popularity through twelve seasons with a total of 261 episodes until 2005. The stories about the unit of a fictional police department in the New York borough of Manhattan were exuberantly celebrated overseas for their authentic portrayal of everyday cop life and their unusually rough tone, especially for conventional network television – which was also reflected in their influence on later genre representatives and in an award of 20 Emmys and four Golden Globes.
In Germany, where the series was shown on TV under the title “New York Cops – NYPD Blue”, the spark never really took off, however, which is why the TV broadcast was cancelled several times and at one point actually completely. Several years later, however, the cult series was brought back by Disney to add to the portfolio of its own streaming service Disney+ (both the original TV channel ABC and the production company 20th Television now belong to Disney).
After 2022, mainly the seasons that were already known in this country found their way to Disney+, there is now a real premiere that has been more than 20 years in coming. From today, 25 January 2023, the ninth season of “NYPD Blue”, which was already produced in 2001 and 2002, can be viewed on Disney+ – the very first time it has been shown in Germany and in the German dubbed version (after at least part of season 8 had already been shown in Austria earlier).
“NYPD” IN GERMANY
Disney+ thus provides an ideal opportunity to catch up on a piece of television history that has so far been denied us in this country in its entirety. In the 90s, ProSieben was still quite optimistic about the huge success of the series in the US and even broadcast the first three seasons in prime time between 1994 and 1997 – with mixed and rapidly declining success, so that season 4 was then moved to the night programme and the local free TV broadcast was then paused for a long time.
It was not until 2006 that Sat.1 dared to start the fifth season, but after another crash landing in the ratings it was quickly cancelled in the middle of the premiere. This finally ended the German free TV career of Detective Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) and his team. And after two more seasons were at least shown on pay-TV on Premiere, it was off the air once and for all in Germany – until Disney+’s current “NYPD Blue” offensive, where we assume that the remaining three seasons will also celebrate their belated German premiere soon.
