Driving force behind several hit TV series
STEVEN Bochco, the Emmywinning television writerproducer who brought Hill
Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue to the small screen, died last Sunday. He was 74.
A family spokesman told the Associated Press Bochco died in his sleep after a battle with cancer. Bochco was known to have been battling leukaemia for several years. In 2014, he received a stemcell transplant that was credited with prolonging his life.
Bochco was the driving force behind some of TV’s most popular series for more than 30 years, with a specialty for serialised dramas with large ensemble casts and edgy plots. Known for his headstrong ways, the celebrated producer was nominated for 30 Emmys and won 10.
While Bochco’s boundarypushing ways as a producer made network executives skittish, they often deferred to him and were ultimately rewarded with strong ratings and critical kudos, a combination that was rare in the prePeak TV era of the 1980s and ’90s.
‘‘Even though the network is supposed to be the authority, I always looked at Steven as my teacher, my mentor, the genius that led me to the best decision,’’ said Ted Harbert, who worked with Bochco when he brought Doogie Howser, M.D. and NYPD Blue to ABC.
A New York City native, Steven Ronald Bochco was born on December 16, 1943, to a violinist father and a painterjewellery designer mother. He attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan for singing before spending a year at New York University. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a theatre degree in 1966.
While attending Carnegie Mellon, he received a fellowship from MCA that helped him pay for school and landed him summer jobs at Universal Studios his last two years before graduating.
Bochco began at Universal in the mid1960s, where he earned a reputation for being strongwilled. His refusal to allow the network to dictate his work earned him unprecedented creative control throughout his 50 years in the industry.
He produced the Emmywinning cop show Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law for NBC before decamping to ABC in the late 1980s.
In 1987, CBS legend William S. Paley offered the then43yearold the job of president of the network’s entertainment division. Instead, Bochco signed a sixyear, 10series deal at ABC, worth around $US10 million.
‘‘There will be an awful lot of angry people if I screw this one up,’’ he told the
in 1987. ‘‘I want to justify the enormous commitment they (ABC) have made to me. If I can’t do that, I’ll kill it for the next person who comes down the road.’’
It was there that he produced hits like NYPD Blue with David Milch and Doogie Howser, M.D. with David E. Kelley, as well as some misses, including the musical drama Cop Rock and the serialised courtroom drama
Murder One.
At NBC, Bochco expanded the idea of a broadcast television cop show when he created Hill Street Blues with Michael Kozoll in 1981, and he did it again at ABC with NYPD Blue in 1993.
‘‘What we did with NYPD Blue
opened up the world,’’ he told
The Times in 2014. ‘‘We were certainly aware of advancing the agenda.
‘‘When I left Hill Street, I said, ‘I’m never going to do another police show ever’ because I couldn’t imagine doing one better,’’ he said in 1995. ‘‘But a dozen years later (in NYPD Blue), there’s everything to wring from that old towel because the prevailing attitudes of the society shift.’’ The series lasted 12 seasons.
In 2014, asked why he had largely been absent from the television landscape after years of being involved in so many series, Bochco quipped, ‘‘I’m just old,’’ then added, ‘‘I don’t actually have the drive I used to have.’’
Bochco married three times, the first time to Gabrielle Levin and then to Barbara Bosson, who costarred in Hill Street Blues. He later married TV executive Dayna Kalins in 2000. He is survived by his daughter, Melissa, and sons Jeffrey and Jesse. —