Remembering Steven Bochco
TV producer was behind Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law
Steven Bochco may be gone, but his imprint on television will remain forever.
Over a half-century career, the writer and producer, who died Sunday at the age of 74, broke many of scripted TV’s rules, despite resistance from an industry wary of change. He transformed TV with such shows as “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” “L.A. Law,” and, yes, even “Cop Rock,” elevating it as an art form.
He also opened the door for other TV auteurs who eventually went on to their own pioneering shows, including David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) and David E. Kelley (L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, The Practice).
Years before “The Sopranos,” deservedly lauded for launching the current golden age of television, Bochco revolutionized a staid medium dominated by three broadcast networks with his first series, NBC’s Hill Street Blues, in 1981.
His introduction of overlapping dialogue — the way people really talk — rather than TV’s more formal conversational style and shaky, hand-held camera work created a TV version of cinema verité.
Viewers felt like they were in the Hill Street police station with Captain Furillo, Sgt. Esterhaus and the biting detective, Mick Belker.
Those richly drawn characters and their complex, unpredictable interactions with fellow precinct dwellers overtook the usual copshow subject, the crime, to become the program’s most compelling interest.
Serious, real-world topics, including police corruption and alcoholism, were refreshing additions to the genre, and Hill Street mixed them with elements traditionally kept separate, including soapy serial romance and mordant humour. Its diverse precinct stood out in its time. Those contributions may seem less revolutionary when viewed today, because so much current programming reflects Hill Street’s influence.
It took Hill Street, which opened to dismally low ratings, a bit of time to catch on, possibly because it was so unusual. Some viewers were bothered by camera work so different that it made them dizzy, but a growing fan base was mesmerized — and realized it could ask for more from a medium that often settled for lowest-common-denominator broadness.
Bochco refined the complex workplace a few years later when he traded Hill Street grit for upscale glamour with NBC’s “L.A. Law,” offering more memorable characters and a legal system more intriguing than the Perry Mason template that had dominated.
The producer displayed a showman’s ability to surprise and remain culturally relevant. Everyone wanted to learn the Venus Butterfly technique after it turned meek lawyer Stuart Markowitz into a sexual dynamo (details of the practice, coined by writer Terry Louise Fisher, were never revealed, because they didn’t exist).
Law shocked and even angered some viewers when it disposed of a ruthless lawyer, Rosalind Shays, by having her walk unaware into an empty elevator shaft, a demise both cruel and slapstick (and perhaps a comment on the show’s and viewers’ thoughts about ambitious women in the early ’90s).
“NYPD Blue,” which arrived on ABC in 1993 as more daring, unrestrained cable networks were starting to steal broadcasters’ thunder, pushed network boundaries with taboo language
and partial nudity, drawing FCC fines, affiliate pre-emptions and a devoted audience.
Bochco’s Blue also gave us one of TV’s all-time great characters, Dennis Franz’s coarse, difficult Andy Sipowicz, an angry, lost man whose series-long redemption was inspiring.
But Bochco’s contribution is also reflected in his less-celebrated shows.
FX’s low-rated Over There, a challenging, critically acclaimed look at soldiers fighting in Iraq, launched in 2005, just two years after the war started. Viewers may have had less interest in a show about a conflict that was constantly in the news.
With ABC’s “Cop Rock,” Bochco outrageously reinvented the cop drama within a musical format. The bizarre marriage didn’t work, critically or commercially, and it’s become a TV punchline over the years. But in the tradition of artistic creativity, where advance only comes with the risk of failure, Bochco showed impressive bravery.
TV, addicted to remakes and franchises even in this plentiful age of wonderful shows, could use more of Bochco’s daring. We’ll miss him.