Last week, A&E announced a development deal with producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson to produce a new half-hour cop drama called The Box. According to Digital Spy, episodes of the series, if picked up, “will focus on a small ensemble of detectives and their interactions with a key suspect or witness.”

This is great news for fans of the 1990s series Homicide: Life on the Street, which was also produced by Fontana and Levinson. Anyone who’s seen that show knows that its greatest dramatic pinnacles occurred in the interrogation room, otherwise referred to as “the Box.” That show dealt with the legal, moral, and ethical ramifications that arose out of techniques detectives use in getting confessions from suspects.

1996-1997 Cast of Homicide: Life on the Street

Nobody on Homicide could get a more thrilling confession both in the box and on TV than Andre Braugher’s Det. Frank Pembleton, who bar none set the standard for TV cops in the years since the series debuted in 1993. To watch Braugher putting the squeeze on suspects in the interrogation room was a good half of what made this NBC drama so unbelievably great. Needless to say, I’m a fan, so I’ll be looking forward to Levinson and Fontana’s latest collaboration.

Just to get a taste of how good Homicide was, here are three scenes from the series for your enjoyment. The first clip is from the debut episode, “Gone for Goode.” This features Pembleton and his rookie partner, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), and demonstrates the moral and ethical quandaries that occur in the box. The second clip is from “Black and Blue” and is, along with first season episode “Three Men and Adena,” the show's most riveting and celebrated. This also features Pembleton who forces a confession out of an innocent man. The third is from fifth season episode “Documentary.” In this clip, each of the detectives deliver a monologue to the camera about what suspects ought to expect once they're in the box. The dialogue was lifted directly from David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing, the nonfiction book on which the series was based. Simon, who also worked on Homicide during its later seasons, later wrote and produced the HBO series The Wire. He is currently the showrunner on Treme.