Steven Bochco

Steven Bochco and Barbara Bosson

Steven Ronald Bochco (born December 16, 1943) is an American television producer and writer. He has been involved in a number of popular hits including Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue.

Biography

Bochco was born in New York City into a Jewish family. His parents were both artistic, his mother a painter, his father a violinist. He was educated in Manhattan at the High School of Music and Art. In 1961, he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967 known as Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh to study playwriting and theater. He graduated with a BFA in Theater in 1966, having also had an MCA Writing Fellowship.

He went to work for Universal Pictures as a writer and then story editor on Ironside, Columbo, McMillan and Wife and the short-lived Griff, Delvecchio and The Invisible Man. He wrote the screenplay for the 1968 TV movie The Counterfeit Killer and worked on Silent Running (1972) and Double Indemnity (1973). He left Universal in 1978 to go to MTM Enterprises where he had greater scope for producing. His first effort there was the short-lived CBS police drama Paris, notable as the first show on which James Earl Jones played a lead role.

He achieved major success for NBC with the police drama Hill Street Blues. It ran from 1981 to 1987 and Bochco was credited as co-creator and also wrote and produced. The series also garnered considerable critical acclaim and many awards, and was nominated for a total of 98 Emmy Awards throughout its run. Bochco was fired from MTM in 1985 following the failure of his (1983) Bay City Blues baseball project.

Bochco moved to 20th Century Fox (which ironically now owns the MTM library) where he co-created and produced L.A. Law (1986-1994) which aired on NBC. This series was also widely acclaimed and a regular award winner, but also achieved far higher ratings success than Hill Street Blues had enjoyed.

In 1987, Bochco co-created the half-hour dramedy Hooperman which starred John Ritter but was cancelled after two seasons, despite Bochco offering to take over direct day-to-day control of a third season. Hooperman was part of a lucrative deal with ABC in 1987 to create and produce ten new TV series, which prompted Bochco to form 'Steven Bochco Productions'. From this deal came Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989-1993) and the 1990 musical flop Cop Rock, which notoriously combined straight police drama with live-action Broadway singing and dancing. It was one of his most high-profile failures. In 1992, Bochco had created an animated television series, Capitol Critters, along with Nat Mauldin and Michael Wagner.

After a lull, Bochco co-created the long-running NYPD Blue (1993-2005) with David Milch. Initially controversial at the time, the show was created with the express intention of changing the nature of network one-hour drama to compete with the more adult fare broadcast on cable networks. Other projects in this period that failed to take off include Murder One (1995-1997); Brooklyn South (1997); City of Angels (2000), Philly (2001), and Over There (2005). All four shows failed to match Bochco's earlier success though "Murder One" and "Over There" garnered critical praise and have developed cult followings.

In 2005, Bochco took charge of Commander in Chief (2005-2006) which was the creation of Rod Lurie and brought in a new writing team. However, in Spring 2006, he left the show because of conflicts with ABC, and shortly afterward the program was cancelled. Bochco described his experience on the show as "horrible" [1]. Bochco has completed a pilot ABC show, Hollis and Rae, and is said to be developing a baseball drama and another legal drama for ABC in partnership with Chris Gerolmo. It was announced in March 2007 that he has taken his first steps into internet tv with the 44-episode "Cafe Confidential", each episode being 60-seconds of unscripted 'confessions' by members of the public [2]. Yet another legal drama entitled Raising the Bar is in production for TNT, this time in partnership with David Feige. 10 episodes have initially been ordered by the network.[3][4].

According to an interview with Bochco published in September 2007, he is now winding down his involvement with network television, feeling that his tastes and current fashions in TV drama no longer coincide [5]. "The network executives stay the same age and I keep getting older and it creates a different kind of relationship. When I was doing my stuff at NBC with Brandon (Tartikoff) and Hill Street, we were contemporaries," says Bochco. "When I sit down (now), they're sitting in a room with someone who's old enough to be their father and I'm not sure they want to sit in a room with their fathers."

His impact on the nature of American primetime network television drama is considerable: prior to Hill Street Blues it was rare for American straight drama shows to have story arcs, i.e. several stories running over many episodes (with the exception of primetime soaps such as Dallas). It was also rare to have a large regular cast. The structure of the modern 'ensemble' television drama comes from Bochco who many regard as having changed the 'language' of television drama .

Family

He married actress Barbara Bosson in 1969, who has appeared in several of his productions. They had two children before divorcing in 1997. He is currently married to Dayna Kalins (m. August 12 2000). His son, Jesse Bochco, whom he had with Barbara Bosson, was a producer/director on NYPD Blue and directed the pilot episode of Raising the Bar. Jesse also appeared as Captain Furillo's son, Frank Jr. (with Bosson playing his mother) on Hill Street Blues.

Awards

Emmy Awards

• 1981 Outstanding Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues
• 1981 Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues, "Hill Street Station" (premiere episode)
• 1982 Outstanding Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues
• 1982 Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues, "Freedom's Last Stand"
• 1983 Outstanding Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues
• 1984 Outstanding Drama Series, for Hill Street Blues
• 1987 Outstanding Drama Series, for L.A. Law
• 1987 Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, for L.A. Law, "The Venus Butterfly"
• 1989 Outstanding Drama Series, for L.A. Law
• 1995 Outstanding Drama Series, for NYPD Blue

Humanitas Prize

• 1981 60-minute Category, for Hill Street Blues
• 1999 90-Minute Category, for NYPD Blue

Edgar Awards

• 1982 Best Episode in a TV Series Teleplay, for Hill Street Blues, "Hill Street Station"
• 1995 Best Episode in a TV Series Teleplay, for NYPD Blue, "Simone Says"

Directors Guild of America

• 1999 Diversity Award

Writers Guild of America

• 1994 Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement

Bibliography

• Death by Hollywood (2003)

External links

• Steven Bochco at IMDb
• Bio
• Bochco video interviews produced by The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences