robertbisceglia This show is one of the classic greats. It's so well made and well acted. The production value also looks high. The music was always awesome and definitive of the 80s. Life's too short to not take inspiration from a great show like this. A TV masterpiece.

ShelbyTMItchell As it had great music plus great and dry humor acting and writing. Don Johnson became a household name as Sonny Crockett who often used the alias Sonny Burnett and lived on a houseboat with his pet crocodile Elvis.Philip Michael Thomas as the NY smooth cop Ricardo Tubbs as he was looking for his brother's killer. He and Sonny as you can image butted heads. But still managed to throughout the years become best buds and partners that manage to get the job done.The support cast is just as great. And that Miami is shown with lots of colors. Having used to live there for nearly nine years. Plus it is a very dangerous place to live.Edward James Olmos is the no nonsense boss with a heart of gold. Who tries to keep the team straight. With great music from artists like Glen Fry and who could forget Jan Hammer's very famous score for the TV series! Miami Vice lives!

SeussMeTub When it comes to police procedurals, TV history can subdivide it into two eras: before Miami Vice and after Miami Vice. Before Miami Vice came along procedurals would usually show cops as overweight, pudgy guys wearing ill-fitting suits (like in Hawaii Five-O, Kojak and Dragnet) or as incorruptible blue centurions in uniform (as in Hill Street Blues or Police Story) who were straight up god fearing boy scouts who did their job and nothing else. Shows about cops tended to be mechanical, with cops going about their daily, almost boring routines when it came to solving things like murders, robbery and such; undercover cops in these shows tended to look like street winos with their ragged clothes and even worse hair.But when Miami Vice came along it changed everything. Essentially a show that focused on the drug war that engulfed (and still continues) Miami in the 1980's, this show turned the normally plodding police procedural up on its ear. The series centers on tough but sensitive Detective Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and his suave, streetwise partner Ricardo Tubbs (Phillip Michael Thomas). Gone were the ill-fitting cheap suits that cops of yesteryear wore, Crockett and Tubbs were handsome, hip and wore the best designer suits drug money could buy as well as having high powered speedboats and Ferrari sport cars as their vehicles of choice when it came to nabbing the bad guys. Miami Vice was also one of the first TV shows that had a cool, synthesizer rock score (courtesy of Jan Hammer) and regularly included the latest pulse pounding music by the original artists as part of its score. Vibrant pastel colors replaced the usual boring earth tones of other cop shows to the point where the series was actually responsible for the art deco renaissance of Miami Beach. It was also one of the first TV shows to have a series finale and their guns were always state of the art.Despite their stylish clothes and fast lifestyle, there was a substance to the characters of Miami Vice that very few mainstream TV shows could match back then- both Crockett and Tubb's relationships with their women and their families, while looking fast and trendy from the outside almost always ended up in tragedy as the series wore on, by the end of the series both men were burned out that the whole show ended up as a microcosm of America's never-ending and ultimately futile War on Drugs; the constant betrayals of their friends and the ubiquitous corruption both within the police force and the courts and politicians ultimately took its toll. As the show finished its five year run, it went from hip and zany to nihilistic and dark; much like the wave of popular opinion as the cheerful Eighties turned into the cynical Nineties.While never a ratings superstar and despite only lasting five seasons, the influence of Miami Vice lives on in the countless other TV shows that have been shown since then.

paul_sorvino In a very few words, the most impressive things for me, apart of the brilliantly played characters, the drama that surrounds a great majority of the stories and the realism of some of them, is the music.Jan Hammer clearly gives through his magic touch of the keyboards a certain glow to the series, that apart of the origin in the eighties surrounds the characters, the stories and amplifies in a very subtle manner the dramatic passages that appear just when you are ready to think this is "just another cop series"...Was this the only vehicle for Don Johnson's success? Maybe so, but let us not forget the unforgettable Edward James Olmos, with his killer look, cool head, but also heart of gold. Could this be an archetype for a good boss?Too bad that here we can't get around a DVD box with ALL the seasons...