BOCHCO RENDERS OPINIONS ON ‘LAW’

The man who showed TV viewers that there’s more to being a cop than driving fast and brandishing firearms is about to do the same for lawyers.

Or sort of the same. Practicing law tends to be a more mundane activity than police work to begin with.

But in the world according to Steven Bochco, co-creator and longtime executive producer of “Hill Street Blues,” lawyers also argue with their clients and mates, sleep around, laugh, get frustrated, act self-righteously and sometimes act badly. They give good advice and they give bad advice, they win some and they lose some.

In other words, they are human.

That’s pretty much what those familiar with the show say viewers can expect from “L.A. Law,” Bochco’s new series, which is headed for a minimum 12-week run on NBC in the fall.

“You don’t have, literally, your life being in jeopardy every time you walk out the precinct doors,” he said the other day, from a comfortable office at 20th Century Fox once occupied by “MASH.” “But you have a wellspring of legitimate stories to tell. Everybody impacts with the legal system in a hundred different ways, whether you go down to fight a traffic ticket or you’re in the process of getting a divorce.”

As evidence, he cites a scene in the two-hour opener, which recently completed filming. It takes place in one of “L.A. Law’s” richly detailed sets on the Fox lot, the large conference room at the full-service law firm of McKenzie Brackman Chaney & Kuzak.

“There’s a husband and his attorney on one side of the table and a wife and her attorney on the other side. And there’s more recognizable rage and violence in that scene than there is in most episodes of ‘Hill Street Blues.’ ”

Though Bochco is reluctant to give much away about “L.A. Law,” his brief description, combined with details from those who have seen either the script or segments of film, suggest some familiar trademarks: lots of suggestive or adult language couched in network-acceptable terms; a hip sense of irony as sharp as a sushi knife and a dose of macabre humor.

As with “Hill Street,” “L.A. Law’s” ensemble cast is composed largely of unknowns or little-knowns. Bochco believes that classification extends even to Harry Hamlin, whose character of law firm partner Michael Kuzak carries much of the two-hour episode.

Like Daniel J. Travanti’s Frank Furillo and Michael Nouri’s minor league baseball manager in Bochco’s short-lived “Bay City Blues,” Hamlin may be Bochco’s perhaps-idealized alter ego: ethnically dark and obviously liberal, a compassionate but firm leader, the Freudian ego surrounded by baser ids and conscientious superegos.

The “L.A. Law” ensemble includes another well-known actor, Richard Dysart, as law firm founder Leland McKenzie; Alan Rachins, who received good notices in Henry Jaglom’s film “Always,” as Douglas Brackman Jr., the cold but efficient son of one of the founding partners, and Corbin Bernsen as Arnold Becker, a smooth-talking womanizer.

Rounding out the cast of regulars are Jill Eikenberry as Ann Kelsey, legal savior of the downtrodden; Michael Tucker as Stuart Markowitz, so immersed in tax law that he works a mention of it into a eulogy; Jimmy Smits as the street-smart, flashily dressed Victor Sifuentes, and Michele Green as Abby, a young-and-innocent law clerk.

That list reflects another similarity to “Hill Street”: Bochco likes to work with friends and relatives. Tucker, along with Bochco and “Hill Street’s” Bruce Weitz are all Class of ’66 graduates of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. (Charles Haid graduated a year later and Bochco met his wife, actress Barbara Bosson, on the same campus.)

Tucker has remained a close friend, Bochco said, and, not coincidentally, is married to Eikenberry.

Rachins is married to Bochco’s sister, actress Joanna Frank (whose husband Rachins played in “Always”). Dysart is an old friend and Green had been on “Bay City Blues.”

The joke that “L.A. Law” co-creator and former attorney Terry Louise Fisher likes to tell around the office is that Bochco could produce a show called “Battle of the Network Nepots.”

“I could field quite a team,” Bochco said with a chuckle.

“I think it goes without saying that they gotta be right and they gotta be ready and they gotta be good,” he added.

Bochco believes that casting friends improves the show: “I feel more comfortable writing for them. The degree to which there is intimacy in the ensemble is the degree to which the work takes on dimension other than simply doing the job.”

There had been loud and durable rumors that “L.A. Law” would never get off the ground, that Bochco had to swear in writing he wouldn’t go one dime over budget. His reputation as a big spender and a demanding producer had preceded him, based largely on the rumors surrounding his dismissal as “Hill Street’s” executive producer a year ago by MTM Enterprises, which produces the series.

Bochco acknowledges a certain defensiveness on the issue of budgets. “I think in retrospect the people who might have thought we were not good producers because we were spending so much money would have to admit that, given what ‘Hill Street’ was when (co-executive producer) Greg Hoblit and I were doing it, it was probably as responsibly produced a show as exists in television.”

Twentieth Century Fox Television, which signed Bochco to an extremely rich deal, isn’t in for the same financial burden that “Hill Street” evolved into for MTM, Bochco said. “L.A. Law,” is “an easy show,” he said. “Its costs are predictable, much more than a show like ‘Hill Street,’ where you’re out on the streets three or four days out of every episode.

“I don’t want it to seem as if I’ve gotten my butt kicked, and as a result I’ve gone off to make a cheaper show. But I knew I wanted to do a show about lawyers, and as that evolved it turns out to be an easier show.”

And the rumors about troubles at Fox?

“All false,” he said. “I’m the nicest guy.”

Comparison between “Hill Street” and “L.A. Law” is inevitable, so closely was Bochco’s name associated with the former’s unprecedented critical acclaim.

Bochco himself has a seemingly cool detachment about the series he presided over for five seasons and 101 episodes, yet he is constantly referring to the show. The contrast brings to mind the divorced couples he and Fisher write about as they might appear a year down the road.”It’s quite honestly a relief to not be doing ‘Hill Street,’ ” he said. “It was the most exhausting five years of my life.”

These days, he looks relaxed, perhaps even younger than he did a year ago. “Oh, I’m a lot more relaxed,” he said. “But then again, it will have been 15 months that I have not been in ongoing series production. That’s a nice rest, boy.”

The relaxation comes to an end in July, when “L.A. Law” goes back to Fox sound stages for 11 episodes.

Bochco is hesitant to say how well it will do. “I’m not falsely modest, “ he said of “Hill Street.” “Michael Kozoll and I created one of the finest shows ever put on television, period!” But the flip side of the “Blues” coin starts with the words “Bay City.” “A more stunning failure has not come along,” he said, a reference to that 1983 series’ combination of minuscule viewership and high budget.

The differences between “L.A. Law” and the two “Blues” add up to what Bochco expects to be “as reasonable a shot as exists in television.”

“L.A. Law” could appeal more to women--the majority of TV viewers--than either “Hill Street’s” macho action or “Bay City’s” focus on baseball.

Too, NBC wasn’t the top-rated network when those two shows got their starts. “ ‘L.A. Law’ is going to be promoted on some of the top-rated shows on television,” Bochco noted.

Such is NBC’s confidence in Bochco that the network agreed in advance to air at least 13 hours of his first series after leaving “Hill Street.” That gives viewers plenty of time to find the show whose creator refers to it as “flappin’ lips.”

“Please understand something,” Bochco explained. “I have very little interest in making quirky failures. I’m making a show that I don’t expect to be a monster hit, but given the network I’m making it for and its audience--which I also think is my audience--I know that there’s a reasonably good bet to be made that a core group of people will watch it.”