"Homicide," created by Tom Fontana and produced by Barry Levinson, may have been the most consistently intelligent and humane show in television history. A few weeks ago, NBC canceled it, and on Friday, May 21, after seven years on the air, it abruptly aired the season finale as the final episode. It's true that the show had over the years lost some of its charm, not to mention important cast members, including Emmy winner Andre Braugher. But there was always more challenge and feeling in a bad episode of "Homicide" than a great episode of anything else.

One of the main reasons was Yaphet Kotto, who from the show's 1992 beginning played Lieutenant Al Giardello. Called "Gee," he was a burly Baltimore native, the widowed son of a Sicilian father and a black mother, and as head of Baltimore's Homicide unit, his job was to make the detectives do theirs. Gee spurred on his troops with a mixture of menace, deadpan sarcasm, and a little old world grace. When things got really rough, the usually jumpy cameras would hold still as Gee recited Sicilian wisdom. It was a testament to "Homicide's" successful integration of grit and surrealism, and to Kotto's total authority as an actor, that such moments made complete sense. In the show's last episode, Gee was promoted to Captain of another division, but turned down the assignment to remain a Lieutenant in Homicide. The decision is vintage Gee -- he's ambitious, he's ruthless, but he never forgets he's most at home lurking around in a dark mystery.

Kotto, 49, was born in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx. His parents were Jewish -- his mother came from Panama, his father, from Cameroon -- and Kotto was, not surprisingly, the only black kid in his neighborhood who went to Yeshiva and wore a yarmulke. He got into acting, he says, accidentally. He first appeared off-Broadway in "A Good Place to Raise a Boy," about the life of Emmet Till. His first movie was Nothing But a Man, directed by Mike Roemer. Over the years he has appeared in over 75 plays and 40 films, including Paul Schrader's Blue Collar and Ridley Scott's Alien.

His fans may be traumatized about the cancellation of "Homicide," but Kotto, not unlike the unflappable Lieutenant he plays on TV, is hardly brooding. Sarah Miller reached him at his home in Baltimore, where he took three hours of his time to reflect on seven years in Charm City, his plans for the future, and the unrivaled benefits of not giving a shit.

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