What is Homicide: Life on the Street's IQ Score?

Homicide: Life on the Street has an IQ Score of 166/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient framework, placing it in the Masterclass tier. The score breaks down to 42/50 Cognitive Stimulation, 41/50 Educational Value, and 41/50 Craft & Quality.

Is Homicide: Life on the Street educational?

Homicide: Life on the Street is strong on educational value, 41/50 on TVI's rubric, which covers academic content, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, life skills, and knowledge transfer.

How does TV Intelligentsia calculate IQ Score?

TV Intelligentsia's IQ Score is calculated as round((Cognitive Stimulation × 0.4 + Educational Value × 0.35 + Craft & Quality × 0.25) × 4), scoring titles from 0 to 200 across five tiers: Masterclass (≥160), Stimulating (≥130), Competent (≥100), Passive (≥70), and Numbing (<70). The framework is published at tvintelligentsia.com/methodology/.

Homicide: Life on the Street , IQ Score 166/200

Homicide: Life on the Street has an IQ Score of 166/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient rubric, placing it in the Masterclass tier.

By Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH·Updated 2026-06-17·Methodology

dramacrimeprocedural

166/ 200

Masterclass

Measurably increases domain knowledge or cognitive capacity

Score Breakdown

Cognitive Stimulation/50

Educational Value/50

Craft & Quality/50

IQ = round((Cognitive × 0.4 + Educational × 0.35 + Craft × 0.25) × 4) · How we score →

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Why you should trust this score

Scored under Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH

Physician and founding editor. Maintains the adult catalog against the published rubric and reviews the rubric application.

Methodology

Published rubric, v1.2

Formula

round(C × 0.40 + E × 0.35 + Q × 0.25) × 4

Database scale

2,338 titles, version-controlled

How we stay independent. We accept no studio money. We pay for our own streaming subscriptions. Our reviewers see no sponsor data, no affiliate revenue, and no screener access in exchange for coverage. More about how we work →

The TVI Take

Tom Fontana's 1993-99 NBC police procedural set in the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit, David Simon's source-material franchise pre-dating The Wire. The structural commitment to letting Baltimore-specific institutional cognitive register be the actual subject, and the Andre Braugher / Yaphet Kotto / Richard Belzer ensemble work, is the canonical pre-prestige-TV prestige drama.

Direct ancestor of The Wire's documentary-procedural register.

Where to Watch

Stream