Homicide Easter Egg - Documentary X2

This Egg is well-known to Homicide fans but may be less-known to the general audience:

In "The Documentary," vidographer Brodie sits the Homicide detectives down to watch a documentary he has made about them. The documentary includes a scene where Dets. Lewis and Kellerman chase a suspect through an alley and come upon a film crew filming a television pilot (or a movie?) for a show called - what else? - Homicide. The director of the film crew is - who else? - Barry Levinson, producer and occassional director of Homicide. This, in and of itself, would be complicated enough, but it gets better ... during the filming of a previous episode, actors Clark Johnson (Det. Lewis) and Richard Belzer (Det. Munch) participated in a citizens arrest when a robbery suspect, fleeing the Baltimore PD, stumbled upon the film set of Homicide and, seeing the badges and the cop car lights, surrendered to the two actors, thinking they were cops. The crew and the actors held him until the real cops came, and the incident became a legend on the set and was used to good effect in "The Documentary" episode.

One final note on this episode: Brodie sends his documentary to PBS, who says it's going to air it. PBS did air a Homicide documentary, about the making of the "Subway" episode; at the time "The Documentary" was written, PBS and the producers of Homicide were in negotiations about "The Subway" project.