Miami Vice

Miami Vice debuted on television on NBC in September 1984 and ran for five seasons, ending in 1989. Filmed on location in Miami, the series follows two hard-boiled yet effortlessly chic detectives, James (“Sonny”) Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo (“Rico”) Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas), as they work undercover to bust drug cartels, sex traffickers, arms dealers, and other criminal players in South Florida’s underbelly. Notoriously mythologized in TV history as a show about “MTV cops,” Miami Vice came to represent the excesses of the 1980s. Yet the series was truly groundbreaking. Created by Anthony Yerkovich and helmed by Michael Mann as executive producer, Miami Vice introduced big-screen production techniques to small-screen storytelling and rewrote the rules for police-procedural shows.

Development: “MTV cops” meets “modern-day American Casablanca”

An urban legend claims that NBC chief programmer Brandon Tartikoff struck upon the idea of a crime show with a music-video aesthetic and scribbled “MTV cops” on a memo during a brainstorming session, and from that concept Miami Vice was born. In reality Anthony Yerkovich, a TV writer and producer who had worked on an earlier landmark police show, Hill Street Blues (1981–87), conceived a movie about vice cops in South Florida after reading a news item claiming that 20 percent of unreported income in the United States came from Miami-Dade county. In 1985 Yerkovich told Time magazine:

I thought of [Miami] as sort of a modern-day American Casablanca. It seemed to be an interesting socioeconomic tidepool: the incredible number of refugees from Central America and Cuba, the already extensive Cuban-American community, and on top of all that the drug trade. There is a fascinating amount of service industries that revolve around the drug trade—money laundering, bail bondsmen, attorneys who service drug smugglers. Miami has become a sort of Barbary Coast of free enterprise gone berserk.

Yerkovich eventually pitched the idea to NBC as a TV series called Gold Coast. The MTV angle was introduced to capitalize on the current rage for music videos and to hopefully snare a younger viewership. After Yerkovich wrote the pilot episode—centering on two initially antagonistic detectives who team up to catch the Colombian drug lord who killed their respective police partners—the project’s title was changed to Miami Vice.

Production: “No earth tones”

NBC hired Michael Mann as the show’s executive producer. A Chicago-born director and screenwriter whose previous credits included such TV series as Starsky and Hutch (1975–77), Police Story (1976–78), and Vega$ (1978–81), as well as the acclaimed neo-noir film Thief (1981), Mann delivered a directive for the new series’ production: “No earth tones.”

Unusual for many TV shows at the time, Miami Vice was filmed almost entirely on location, instead of on a Hollywood set. Mann wanted to capture Miami’s colors, sounds, and overall vibe as much as possible.

Meanwhile, two relatively unknown actors in their mid-30s were cast in the lead roles: Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett, a divorced former college football player who lives on a boat with a pet alligator named Elvis; and Philip Michael Thomas as Rico Tubbs, a smooth-talking transplant from New York City. Both actors were incredibly handsome for what were supposed to be a pair of jaded vice cops. Indeed, their visual appeal was an important part of the show’s concept. Johnson and Thomas were costumed in pastel-colored designer sports jackets and linen trousers, slip-on shoes, and sunglasses. Tubbs typically wears fancy Italian ties and silk shirts, and Crockett wears a Rolex watch and an experimental new semiautomatic pistol. Their faces always sport a five-o’clock shadow, and their hairstyles are always flawless, even after high-speed chases in a topless sports car or a speedboat. The overall look combines hard-boiled detective work with hard-partying debauchery.

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Crockett’s spiffy gun is not the only experimental part of the show. Miami Vice pioneered the use of cinematic film techniques for television. Viewers who had become accustomed to static scenes and heavy dialogue discovered a show built on action sequences, quick-cut editing, and elaborate cinematography reminiscent of classic film noirs. Miami Vice was also filmed in four-track stereo sound (in an era when new TV models were just beginning to feature stereo speakers) to make the most out of its use of contemporary songs as an integral storytelling element.

Ratings and critical response

Miami Vice struggled in the ratings its first season, not finding an audience until the following summer during reruns. By season two the show had become a media sensation and a top 10 program in viewership. Its tone had also significantly changed. Midway through season one, the show ditched Crockett’s pet alligator and most other aspects of comic relief and killed off the vice unit’s Lieut. Lou Rodriguez (Gregory Sierra). Replacing the lieutenant was the brooding, taciturn Martin Castillo, portrayed by Edward James Olmos in a star-making turn.

Critics reacted to Miami Vice with a mix of admiration and skepticism. Time reporter Richard Zoglin wrote, “Miami Vice has brought to TV a swift and evocative mode of visual storytelling.” Critics based closer to the show’s setting expressed a love-hate reaction to Miami Vice’s depiction of their city. Its violence was a point of both concern and humor. Crime novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen joked to Vero Beach Magazine in 2023, “I did a column every year on how many people were killed in just one episode, which was almost higher than the annual murder rate in Miami.”

Music and guest stars

Although Miami Vice was not the first show to use current music in its episodes, it may have been the first to incorporate modern songs so effectively. As Mann explained to Rolling Stone in 1985, “We haven’t invented the Hula-Hoop or anything. If anything, we’re only contemporary. And if we’re different from the rest of TV, it’s because the rest of TV isn’t even contemporary.”

Miami Vice’s theme was a pulsing, synthesized score that reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and won two Grammy Awards. Composed by Czech-born keyboardist Jan Hammer, the theme plays over an opening montage of Miami’s beaches, palm trees, high-rises, windsurfers, flamingos, Rolls-Royces, and jai alai athletes.

Songs were also used in place of dialogue. The pilot, for example, features a celebrated sequence in which Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” plays as Crockett and Tubbs journey in a Ferrari to a meeting with murderous drug dealers. The only dialogue is a brief, strained phone call between Crockett and his ex-wife.

Miami Vice became known over the years for its bevy of guest stars. Famous musicians and singers were among the most prominent guests. Hammer, Collins, and the Eagles’ Glenn Frey (whose songs featured in several episodes) all appeared on the show, as did Miles Davis, Eartha Kitt, Gene Simmons (of Kiss), Sheena Easton, Little Richard, and Barbra Streisand (who was dating Johnson at the time). Miami Vice was also a stepping stone for many new actors who went on to become film and TV stars, including Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Dennis Farina, Jimmy Smits, Helena Bonham Carter, Ed O’Neill, Liam Neeson, Benicio Del Toro, Ben Stiller, Giancarlo Esposito, and Stanley Tucci. Among the recurring guest appearances was Pam Grier, who played Tubbs’s fickle love interest.

Awards and series finale

After its first season Miami Vice garnered 15 Emmy Award nominations, the most of any show that year. It won in four categories: film sound editing, cinematography, art direction, and supporting actor (Olmos). The series earned 20 Emmy nominations overall. Among its other accolades are two Golden Globe Awards in 1986, for Johnson as lead actor and Olmos as supporting actor.

Despite the show’s initial big splash, ratings eventually dropped. The series ended in 1989 with a two-hour finale called “Freefall” that sees Tubbs and Crockett amicably part ways. Four “lost” episodes aired after the finale, including “Too Much, Too Late,” which was held back until 1990 and run in a late-night time slot because of its violent content.

Film

In 2006 Mann resurrected Miami Vice for the big screen. Starring Jamie Foxx as Tubbs and Colin Farrell as Crockett, the film adaptation steered away from the pastel colors and high-fashion style that made the TV show famous. Instead, Mann presented a darker version of Miami Vice, both visually and thematically. He also opted for digital cinematography, an innovative approach for film at the time. Critics gave the movie mixed reviews, though it was reappraised by some reviewers years later as another of Mann’s masterpieces.