No New Clues: 'Homicide: Life on the Street' Complete Season DVD

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SO IS IT wrong that we're totally underwhelmed by the repackaged box set for "Homicide: Life on the Street"?

David Simon fans, don't get offended — that's not any kind of slight on the man now best known for "The Wire" and whose nonfiction 1991 book, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," inspired "Homicide," one of the best cop shows of all time.

Instead, it's more of a dig against A&E Home Video for repackaging the complete series and releasing the set without any new features or extras that separate it from the exact same product that came out in 2006.

Yup, that's right: The exact same thing — totally and completely identical, just with less-cool packaging.

In 2006, A&E released these same 35 discs, but in an awesomely designed set that resembled a file cabinet, complete with a drawer you could pull out that held all the discs together and faux file dividers that listed details for each season. They then stopped producing the set about a year later and waited two years to release this new collection. In comparison, though, this new set ($135 at Amazon) is simply a cardboard box with a fake drawer handle printed on each side. Downgrade.

So what else is there to complain about? Not much, really. The set itself is expansive and detailed, complete with all 122 episodes of the show, the three crossovers it did with "Law & Order" and the made-for-TV "Homicide: The Movie." Also included are numerous extra features, such as commentary on a number of episodes — such as season six's "Subway" which won a Peabody Award and was nominated for two Emmys, and series finale "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" — interviews with Simon, cast biographies and the two-hour PBS documentary "Anatomy of a Homicide," which focused on "Subway."

But again, if you already owned all the seasons of "Homicide" or the 2006 boxed set, none of this is anything new.

That doesn't make the set boring — we're not sure if anything could hurt "Homicide" in our eyes, honestly — and it's nice to be able to watch all the episodes and catch all the guest stars, like a fantastic turn from Robin Williams as tourist Robert Ellison, whose wife gets shot as their family visits Baltimore (it'll remind you a lot of Williams in his similarly depressing role in "Good Will Hunting"), a young Mekhi Phifer as the murderous Junior Bunk in the two-part season six finale, "Fallen Heroes" and the far-too-serious Jason Priestley as Det. Robert Hall in "Homicide: The Movie" (a step up from Brandon Walsh, we'd say).

Plus, watching the stars of "Homicide" team up — and compete against — the stars of "Law & Order" in the three crossover episodes is also worth your time.

For example, in episode "Charm City," New York detectives Briscoe (the late, great Jerry Orbach) and Curtis (mm, Benjamin Bratt) search for a bomb-happy militia leader who set off an explosion in a subway, while Baltimore detectives Pembleton (the great Andre Braugher) and Bayliss (Kyle Secor) travel to the city to also find the guy, who they think is responsible for a similar bombing in a Baltimore church five years prior. Watching Briscoe and Pembleton trade catty snark? Well, we don't mind if we do.

But at the end of the day, this new set compares to the old one like apples and — slightly different apples, not really oranges. So if you've got the 2006 set, we're jealous; if you're lacking in the "Homicide" department and looking to spring for this one, we give you the go-ahead. If you're a sucker for packaging, though, then we'd suggest scoping out eBay for the cooler-looking collection before you hit up Amazon — it's what our image-obsessed selves would do.

Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
Photos courtesy NBC