Norman Buntz

Norman Buntz works the roughest corners of the precinct with a cigarette, a rumpled suit, and no patience for procedure that gets in the way of results. He's a detective who knows every hustler and informant on his beat by name, and he'll bend a rule flat if it closes a case faster.

Dennis Franz plays him without a trace of vanity, all sagging shoulders and weary sarcasm, which makes Buntz feel like he actually smells like the streets he patrols. The writing lets him be genuinely funny and genuinely compromised in the same scene, and Franz never tips his hand as to which one is the real Buntz.