soul
of blessed memory
continued from page 67
Steven Bochco, Jewish Creator Of Hill Street Blues, Dies At 74
Times of Israel
S
teven Bochco, a writer and pro-
ducer known for creating the
groundbreaking police drama Hill
Street Blues, died Sunday, April 1, 2018.
He was 74. A family spokesman said
Bochco died in his sleep after a battle
with cancer.
Bochco, who won 10 primetime
Emmys, created several hit television
shows including L.A. Law, NYPD Blue
and Doogie Howser, M.D.
Premiering in January 1981, Hill Street
Blues challenged, even confounded the
meager audience that sampled it. Then,
on a wave of critical acclaim, the series
began to click with viewers, while scor-
ing a history-making 27 Emmy nomina-
tions its first year.
During its seven-season run, it won
26 Emmys and launched Bochco on a
course that led to dozens of series and
earned him four Peabody awards in
addition to the 10 Emmys.
Hill Street Blues had a sprawling uni-
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April 12 • 2018
jn
Bochco
verse of engaging yet flawed characters,
a zippy pace and layers of overlapping,
scripted dialogue, shot in a documen-
tary style.
But what really set the show apart
were the multiple narratives that inter-
laced each episode with those that came
before and after. With the rare excep-
tion of the few prime-time soaps, almost
every series up to that time — whether
comedy or drama — made each episode
freestanding, with a reset button for the
one that came next.
Bochco once recalled a fan telling him
that Hill Street Blues was the first TV
series with a memory.
“That’s what I always thought of
myself doing in the context of TV: craft
a show that over time would have a
memory,” he told the Associated Press
in an interview two years ago. “I sensed
that very early in my career. It just took
me another 10 or 12 years to get to the
point where I earned the right to take a
shot at it.”
Bochco grew up in Manhattan, the
son of Jewish parents — his mother,
Mimi, was a painter, and his father,
Rudolph, was a concert violinist. After
arriving in Los Angeles after college,
he wrote for several series at Universal
Studios. Then he got a big break: writ-
ing the screenplay for the 1972 sci-fi
film Silent Running. But Bochco said
the disrespect he confronted as the
writer soured him on writing for the big
screen.
“Once you’ve delivered the screenplay,
they don’t want you around because
you’re gonna get in the way of someone
else’s vision,” Bochco said.
In his self-published memoir, Truth
Is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in
Television, Bochco tells the story of his
prolific career, which he began at 22 as
a story editor on a popular NBC drama,
The Name of the Game, all the way to
Murder in the First, which ran on TNT
from 2014 to 2016.
In his book, Bochco recalls his great
collaborations and his battles with
actors, studio heads and network execs,
along with the flops (Bay City Blues and
Cop Rock) that made the triumphs even
sweeter. •