Word: yerkovich
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...returns to the streets in The Oldest Rookie, Jerry Orbach as a private eye in The Law and Harry McGraw, and Dale Robertson as a crime-solving Texas billionaire in J.J. Starbuck. Only Robertson seems to be truly enjoying the work. NBC's Private Eye, created by Anthony Yerkovich (Miami Vice), is hipper but not much better. Star Michael Woods, as a disgraced cop who becomes a private eye to avenge his brother's murder, growls like a road-company Don Johnson; the stylized 1950s look is unconvincing, and the dialogue sounds like parody: "I can look at myself mornings...
...mundane TV fashion, in the Burbank, Calif., office of NBC's Tartikoff. Trying to figure out how the network might cash in on the success of rock videos, he had jotted down a few notes to himself; one read simply, "MTV cops." Tartikoff presented the notion to Anthony Yerkovich, 34, formerly a writer and producer for Hill Street Blues, who related a movie idea he had been mulling, about a pair of vice cops in Miami. Yerkovich went to the typewriter and turned out the script for a two-hour pilot, originally called Gold Coast and later Miami Vice...
...Yerkovich (who supervised the first five episodes after the pilot, then left to develop film projects for Universal) was fascinated by South Florida as a setting for his new-style police show. "Even when I was on Hill Street Blues, I was collecting information on Miami," he says. "I thought of it as sort of a modern-day American Casablanca. It seemed to be an interesting socioeconomic tidepool: the incredible number of refugees from Central America and Cuba, the already extensive Cuban-American community, and on top of all that the drug trade. There is a fascinating amount of service...
Even a Ninja warrior might have a hard time competing for attention with what many consider the real stars of Miami Vice: the music and the visual pyrotechnics. Both are largely the contributions of Michael Mann, who joined the show as executive producer when NBC decided to turn Yerkovich's pilot into a series. Mann had directed the stylish film thriller Thief and the TV movie The Jericho Mile, as well as creating the TV series Vega$. But Miami Vice marked his first opportunity to bring a cinematic eye to the small screen...
...everyone is so enthusiastic about the direction Miami Vice is taking TV. "Miami Vice is a cop show--very well done and stylish, but still a cop show," says Bruce Paltrow, the executive producer of St. Elsewhere. "It's hip and glib, but not very deep." Concedes Creator Yerkovich: "In the long run you can only rely so much on color coding and Bauhaus architecture and the Versace spring catalog." Yet Vice may be revving up to move beyond such trendy props. "As soon as they get a handle on the script situation," says Yerkovich, "the show is going...
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