Down by ‘Law’: Robert Palm Keeps New Series in Order

Though he is usually about 3,000 miles from the scene of the crimes on NBC’s New York-based “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” Robert Palm is pretty much running the show.

It’s no small task on many levels, but the Hartford, Conn.-born-and-raised television executive has it down by now.

Though Dick Wolf, creator and executive producer of the Emmy-winning “Law & Order” and the “Special Victims Unit” spinoff, is ultimately the boss, it’s Palm who keeps this challenging new series on track.

That’s what show runners--as they are known in the business and the name implies--do.

Wherever they are.

After more than a few years in the business, the 50-year-old gone-gray-but-still-boyish Palm knows the TV turf, whatever the coast, well enough.

Sitting in his office, Palm offers an affably blase account of how he got from there to here:

“Graduated from Loomis [Chaffee prep school in Windsor, Conn.]; came out here to L.A. for a summer gig; went to San Francisco, dropped acid; went to the University of North Carolina for three weeks, dropped out; lived in England; lived in San Francisco; was a bum; became a TV writer.

“It’s perfect,” he goes on, smiling, dressed in a classic L.A. uniform: blue jeans, T-shirt and sports jacket. “I wasted my God-given talents for a long time, and then I found myself in Hollywood, and now I’m making a million dollars a year.”

He was also a house painter and a journalist at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the job that gave him his biggest break--playing softball with the legendary president of NBC Entertainment, Brandon Tartikoff.

“I pitched [Tartikoff] an idea, which opened the [door to producer] Stephen Cannell, which led to ‘Miami Vice’ [and his first produced script] and then to Dick Wolf.”

And now working with Wolf means Palm is executive producer and writer on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

Building on the Emmy-winning “Law & Order” franchise, now the longest-running drama series on television, “Special Victims Unit” isn’t an easy show on many levels, though it has the benefit of familiarity and crossovers.

Starring Christopher Meloni (“Oz”), Mariska Hargitay (“ER”), “Law & Order” veteran Dann Florek and Richard Belzer (“Homicide: Life on the Street”), the drama focuses on sex crimes, with a particularly strong emphasis on the victims and the psychological ramifications for the detectives handling the cases.

As a writer of several acclaimed episodes during the first two seasons of “Law & Order,” Palm--who also wrote the 200th episode of that same series, the one featuring Julia Roberts--was a natural choice for the job.

Even though the crimes in “Special Victims Unit” are committed off camera, the story lines are undeniably tough.

Wolf says Palm shares many of his own sensibilities and that this particular show and its novelistic approach is right up Palm’s alley.

“He’s an incredible writer,” Wolf said. “He has a great personality for a show runner; the writers are crazy about him. But beyond that he was one of the key players in the first two seasons of ‘Law & Order,’ wrote some of the best of the early ‘Law & Order’ episodes--some of my personal favorites, and here he is back in this world . . . and there is a continuity and an understanding of what we’re all trying to accomplish, which would be difficult to duplicate on a new show.”

The show, though performing respectably in the ratings, seemed poorly positioned for success from the start.

It has been broadcast Mondays at 9 p.m. against Fox’s “Ally McBeal,” ABC’s “Monday Night Football” and CBS’ “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

“It was never a show that I think you want to start the week with, but I think after a rough week, it’s tailor-made for that [10 p.m.] time slot,” Wolf says of the show’s impending move to Friday nights.

Wolf’s ultimate plans, he says, are to build on the “Law & Order” franchise, which he says is now “almost a brand.”

It is hard to say whether Palm will be working for Wolf when “Law & Order” becomes the TV tapestry Wolf envisions.

Palm, one of five children and the self-proclaimed “black sheep” of the family, seems the restless type.

It hasn’t been wall-to-wall success.

He worked, for instance, on a “Fargo” pilot with Bruce Paltrow, “which was a great experience. It didn’t get on the air, but it was great.”

And he winces, almost, at his association with the Steven Bochco bomb called “Total Security,” which starred Jim Belushi but made Palm “more money than God.”

And though Palm’s “American Gothic” didn’t last as long as many would have liked, the series was widely praised. The show was sometimes “an interesting mess,” he says, but adds: “It was noble. It was cool. And it was up against ‘Law & Order’ for, like, two episodes.”