Word: bochco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been, in other words, business as usual in the world of Producer Steven Bochco. And that business has been awfully good. Bochco, 44, a deceptively laid-back Californian with a fierce determination to shatter TV's familiar formulas, is on a roll. L.A. Law, his designer drama about life in the legal fast lane, is about to end its second season on NBC as the highest- rated dramatic show on TV's highest-rated network. Hooperman, starring John Ritter as a sensitive San Francisco cop, is one of the season's top-rated new series and an ambitious pioneer...
...other quiet comedy this season is ABC's Hooperman, created by the L.A. Law team of Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher. Starring John Ritter as a San Francisco police detective who inherits a run-down apartment building, the half-hour series plays like a scrunched together episode of Bochco's Hill Street Blues without the violence. The premiere segment made some jarring missteps (a running gag about a policewoman trying to seduce a gay cop) and lunged too hard for the emotional knockout (Ritter bursting into tears over the death of his landlady). But the engaging Ritter is adept...
...series survived many traumas and changes, from the death of Co-Star Michael Conrad (who as Sergeant Phil Esterhaus opened each episode with its trademark roll call) to the 1985 departure of Steven Bochco, the show's co- creator, fired after reported disputes over cost overruns. Yet new characters (like Dennis Franz's choleric Lieut. Buntz) and continued good scripts (including one this season by Playwright David Mamet) injected fresh life. "This one never went downhill," says NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff. "It's like a ballplayer: you want to see someone go out a winner, like Sandy Koufax, instead...
...Bochco's career has stumbled since the initial success of Hill Street Blues. His much touted 1983 series about a minor- league baseball team, Bay City Blues, was canceled after a few low-rated weeks. In March 1985 he was fired from Hill Street, reportedly after disputes with his bosses at MTM Enterprises about cost overruns. Nevertheless, NBC is giving his new series, L.A. Law, a double-barreled send-off. The two-hour pilot episode premiering this week will have an unusual encore presentation in the Saturday Night Live time period two weeks later...
...which revolves around the doings at a high-powered Los Angeles law firm, exhibits most of Bochco's now familiar trademarks: a large "ensemble cast"; multiple, overlapping plots; a rounded look at its characters' personal and professional lives; and a well-calculated mix of drama and comedy. Stylistically, however, the show is more conventional than Hill Street. The long camera takes inside the station house, with characters streaming in and out of the frame, have been replaced by more routine TV close...