There has been a lot of talk in TV circles about when this whole new “golden age” revolution began. Some source it back to the beginning of “The Sopranos,” others “The Wire” or “The Shield.”

Some put “24,” which began shortly after 9/11, in that mix as a network example of the new golden age of television. Kiefer Sutherland, the star of that series (and back at it in England as Jack Bauer on “24: Live Another Day”), says he’d go even further back.

“I’ve always thought the revolution started much earlier,” he said recently in London. “Dramas changed for me with ‘Hill Street Blues.’ As a young television watcher, there was nothing like that for a very long time.”

The NBC cop show ran from 1981 through 1987 and won 26 Emmy Awards — tied with “The West Wing” for most ever by a drama. All 144 episodes are together for the first time in a new DVD boxed set, Shout! Factory’s “Hill Street Blues: The Complete Series,” which arrives in stores April 29.

Created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, the series was ground-breaking for its hand-held camera work, taboo-breaking storytelling and unconventional casting and characters.

It made stars out of, in Charles Haid’s words, “a collection of mutts,” including Haid, Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, Bruce Weitz, Betty Thomas, Michael Warren, James B. Sikking, Joe Spano, Ed Marinaro, Barbara Bosson, Taurean Blacque and Michael Conrad. Dennis Franz, Ken Olin and Mimi Kuzyk came later.

Conrad, who played veteran police officer Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, died of cancer during the run of the series. He was 58. The writers paid tribute to the two-time Emmy-winning actor and the character by having Esterhaus — famous for his libido — die “in the saddle” while making love to his frisky girlfriend Grace Gardner (Barbara Babcock, who won an Emmy for the role).

The cheeky title of the episode: “Grace Under Pressure.”

Dark humour was a hallmark of the series, remembers Haid, who credits the showrunners for setting the tone.

“You put Steven Bochco and David Milch and Jeffrey Lewis into a room with a bunch of actors like we had,” he says, and “other than the fact that it sounds like a bunch of 12-year-old boys telling dick jokes, at the same time, you’ve got these brilliant guys who understand that dick jokes are actually funny.”

Haid was originally supposed to get killed off in the pilot. His cocky character, Officer Andy Renko, was gunned down during a random street search with his partner, Officer Bobby Hill (Warren).

Haid was up for another part in another pilot at the time. When that fell through — and he got word that Hill and Renko had tested “through the roof” in the pilot — he talked his way back onto the series. Bochco had to reshoot the pilot’s ambush scene to make it look possible that Hill and Renko survive.

Haid had a little notoriety at the time, coming off the theatrical hit “Altered States,” and had his agent negotiate a special “and Charles Haid as Renko” credit. “I played that card a little bit,” he says, knowing “that credit on that show” was worth gold.

The now 70-year-old actor says he had no problem finding Renko’s brash, know-it-all voice. “I was imitating my relatives back in West Virginia,” he says. “I figured out this guy was in a time warp. He was like a perennial teenager.”

He said he made a “big choice” with the character and eventually had to find a way to make Renko a human being. “Bochco kept a good collar on me,” he says. The writer/producer told the actor he could “improvise around my lines, but make sure you say my lines.”

Bochco had to keep a collar on other things going down on the set too. On one of the commentary tracks as an extra bonus on the DVD boxed set, Bochco alludes to rampant drug use. At one point he had to fire a camera assistant who was supplying cast members.

“That didn’t stop a lot of the guys,” says Haid, who says the drug lifestyle in the ’80s took a toll on many in Hollywood. “Our generation, we were the last of the beer-drinking, pot-smoking hippies. Without going into detail, we were all over the place.”

Haid has gone on to an award-winning career as a director, crediting Bochco for hiring him to direct subsequent shows such as “Cop Rock,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” “L.A. Law,” “Murder One” and “NYPD Blue.” He went on to direct many episodes of “ER” and, in recent years, “Criminal Minds” as well as a series often cited as a leading example of today’s golden age, “Breaking Bad.”

The outspoken actor/director, however, feels that when people throw around the phrase “golden age of television,” well, let’s be careful out there.

“Here’s the deal,” he says, sounding more and more like Renko. “The reality of this is, everybody’s always sayin’ it’s the ‘golden age of TV.’ Every time something comes along that breaks the mould or excites — ‘The Sopranos,’ for instance — ‘the golden age of television.’

Yet “who watched ‘Breaking Bad’ until the last year, buddy? Nobody watched!” “Boardwalk Empire” — that’s not golden age, says Haid. “It’s good. Or ‘True Detective’? Whatever that was, you know — Freud in a murder mystery.”

The reality, says Haid, is there will only ever be one golden age of television — “when Sid Caesar was on.” Haid feels the early ’50s, when TV was new and everything was truly ground-breaking, was TV’s one and only golden age. “That’s just how it rocks.”

As for “Hill Street Blues,” Haid credits Bochco for making a show that inspires a lot of TV makers today to go for the gold.

“The permission we got from Steven Bochco to follow ourselves creatively,” he says, “was the sensational gift of that show.”

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Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.