Word: bochco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...public concern about the effect TV violence might be having on young viewers, the networks have vowed to scrub their houses even cleaner. The label itself may turn out to be sparingly used. Network officials say few, if any, of their regular series will be so branded; only Steven Bochco's racy new cop show for ABC, NYPD Blue, has been singled out as likely to get a weekly warning. In general, the label will be applied on a case-by- case basis to certain TV movies and individual episodes of regular series...
...ANGELES -- What's worse, TV cops who sing or TV cops who swear? America will get to decide that question this fall when producer Steven Bochco, who created Cop Rock (as well as Hill Street Blues), premieres his NYPD Blue on ABC. Bochco negotiated an unusual agreement with ABC over the crude vernacular he could use on the show. According to that confidential document, among the 30 or so prime-time words acceptable to ABC are such bizarre semi-obscenities as mother jumper and humphead, as well as a vulgar term for feces and a vulgar term for female genitalia...
...recent mini-series Queen, Dr. Quinn is hokum without an agenda, other than re-creating some old-time TV pleasures. The town characters -- a naive telegraph operator, a good-hearted prostitute, a smoldering hunk who hangs out with a pet wolf -- are colorful in the innocent, pre-Bochco sense of the word, and the series has sweep and moral heft. (For the opening credits, the screen is even masked at the top and bottom to simulate a CinemaScope epic...
...duds you know are better than the duds you don't. The biggest surprise on the fall schedules is the number of shows that weren't canceled. Steven Bochco's drama Civil Wars, ABC's post-World War II soap opera Homefront, CBS's nostalgic sitcom Brooklyn Bridge, and NBC's family drama I'll Fly Away were all marginal performers in the ratings. But all will be back in the fall. They are upscale, critic-friendly shows that, the networks hope, could catch on with a little patience...
Executive producer Dick Wolf (Law & Order) at least doesn't trivialize the well-worn subject. He avoids Bochco-like comic subplots and focuses on weighty medical-ethical issues rather than on hospital soap opera. Early stories range from a boxer showing symptoms of Parkinson's disease to a couple who refuse surgery for their young son because of religious convictions. And John Mahoney, as a doctor who teaches a course in humanistic medicine, is the best gruff-but-kindly TV physician since Dr. Gillespie hung up his stethoscope...