Steven Bochco has created and produced some of the most acclaimed and successful American television drama series since the 1980s, and with series like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue has managed to make highly innovative yet popular programs.

In January 1980, Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll pitched NBC an idea for an ensemble show set in a busy city hotel. But NBC wanted a cop show. This resulted in the series that would make Bochco’s name: Hill Street Blues (1981–87). HSB was different from any American television dramatic series of its time. Its visual style, influenced by documentary police tapes, was dark, grainy and dense, and it was filmed with handheld cameras to provide a documentary-like feel, a feel further enhanced by the overlapping dialogues. The storytelling was also groundbreaking, with a large ensemble cast, characters with complex personal lives, several subplots and ongoing storylines: a form of storytelling that up to that point in American television was typical only of soap operas.

Following a first season in which the series performed badly in ratings terms it seemed that only the luck of circumstances saved the show from being canceled. However, a positive critical response worked in the show’s favor. Moreover, NBC noted that the show did well among viewers who had cable television, indicating the cop drama was the type of show NBC and other networks needed to stave off the pay-TV threat. But probably the most important factor in HSB becoming the lowest rated show to be renewed for a second season was the fact that it picked up a record 21 Emmy nominations, and won eight. By its second season viewers finally tuned in to see what the excitement was all about and the show became, relatively speaking, a hit.

The success of HSB ran through television as many new drama series picked up its ensemble style—in fact, it can be argued that to this day every realistic cop show traces its dramatic roots to HSB—but Bochco’s own follow up, Bay City Blues (1983), the story of a minor-league baseball team in Northern California, was short lived (nowadays it is worth noting that Sharon Stone was in the cast, and it also had TV’s first full-frontal vomiting scene). The failure of this expensive series coupled with increasing costs on HSB was the last straw for MTM, and Bochco was fired in 1985 (HSB stayed on the air until May 1987).

However, the direct negotiations Bochco had with NBC resulted in a promise for a series of his own, and this commitment became the long-running legal hit drama L.A. Law (1986–94) which he developed for Twentieth Century Fox. There were clearly similarities between L.A. Law and HSB, most notably the ensemble acting and overlapping, ongoing storylines, but L.A. Law was cheerful, bright, and populated by successful people; however, it, too, dealt with stories of a moral complexity unusual in mainstream television.

In 1987 Bochco created Hooperman (ABC, 1987–89) a half-hour comedy/drama series focused on a San Francisco police officer who also owned an apartment building. After this series, and following negotiations with all three networks, Bochco accepted ABC’s unprecedented offer of a $50 million deal, for ten series over a ten-year period, plus a $5 million signing bonus. This deal was especially important to Bochco, who wanted to start his own production company based on stability and longevity.

Steven Bochco Productions was established in 1988, and its first series under the ABC deal was Doogie Howser, M.D., a half-hour comedy/drama telling the story of a 16-year-old doctor. This hit series, co-created by Bochco and David E. Kelley, ran for four seasons. Next came Bochco’s biggest critical and commercial failure Cop Rock (1990). The episodes of Cop Rock included, in a Dennis Potter-like manner, dramatic scenes interrupted by singing police officers, criminals, attorneys, and crooks. Although this was a bold experiment with the genre, critics and audiences were equally unimpressed and the show lasted only a few weeks.

Bochco’s next show for ABC was a prime-time cartoon series telling the story of mice living in the White House—Capitol Critters (1992)—that lasted just a few months. Next up was Civil Wars (1991–93) the story of a New York divorce attorney’s office. Although this series lasted for two years, it too failed to achieve either high ratings or critical acclaim. Bochco’s greatest hit was yet to come.

In the early 1990s, with so many television choices, Bochco realized that network TV drama was being hurt, so much so that the common wisdom at the time was that the one-hour format was dead. It also became clear to him that network drama could no longer compete with the more explicit violence and sex on cable and pay TV, so he set out to develop what he referred to as an “R-Rated” cop drama that became NYPD Blue (1993–present). This series about homicide detectives in New York City resembled HSB in its serialized, unstable narrative development and visual style, but if HSB broke new ground for the 1980s, NYPD Blue attempted to expand the limits of network standards even further. The show was controversial even before its appearance on the schedule since it was announced in advance it would include partial nudity and more flavorful language than was common on television at the time. Conservative groups called for a boycott, and ABC and its affiliated stations were nervous. But the audience responded overwhelmingly. In fact, apart from high ratings, over the years the show has been nominated for and won numerous awards. However, some have noted that it actually broke little new ground as far as the genre’s conventions are concerned.

Murder One (1995–97), on the other hand, rewrote the rules of television by following a single murder story through an entire series. It was Bochco’s response to the O.J. Simpson trial, based upon his understanding that the Simpson trial changed the audience’s perception of the law. Murder One dealt with one case, looking closely at the strategies for both the prosecution and the defense and following it to the verdict and its aftermath. The series did not do well in the United States, probably due to it being slotted against NBC’s medical drama ER in its first season and NBC’s hit sitcom Seinfeld in its second season. And yet, in countries like Britain this series was highly regarded and relatively successful.

In the fall of 1999, national civil rights groups complained about the lack of representation of African Americans on television on the big four networks, especially as far as leading roles in drama series are concerned. CBS was able to promise immediate change with the hospital drama Bochco was developing at the time. While Bochco included African Americans in many of his previous series, City of Angels (2000) was the first truly all African-American drama. The show was surrounded by debates, with some arguing that its (few) white characters were depicted as ignorant or even evil. Be that as it may, the first season did not draw audiences, and it was renewed mainly due to the campaigning of black groups. Some changes were introduced and critics wrote about it more favorably, but the ratings remained low. The show was canceled in mid-season.

In 1999 Bochco also had some high profile battles first with Twentieth Century Fox, the distributors of his series, and then with ABC. In 2000, having left Twentieth Century Fox, he signed a five-year development deal with Paramount Television. The first show under the new contract was Philly (2001–2002), an irreverent fast-paced legal drama series, the story of a single mom who owns her own firm barely a year out of law school, steadily building her reputation as a tough no-nonsense defense attorney in the weathered courtrooms of Philadelphia’s city hall. It did earn some respectable reviews, but hardly the ratings successes that guarantee renewal into another season.

In 2003 HBO announced the start of production for Marriage, a Bochco coproduced series set entirely in and around the bedroom of a young married couple. Restricting the action to the bedroom, bathroom, and closet was meant to create “an intimate, almost voyeuristic sense of how a couple deals with each other and their marriage,” according to the press release, which also said the series would debut sometime in 2004. But after looking at the pilot, directed by the acclaimed Michael Apted (The World Is Not Enough, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and the 7 Up documentaries) and the scripts for later episodes, HBO executives dropped the project.

In 1996 Bochco became the first television writer to receive the Writers Guild Foundation Annual Career Achievement Award. At the time of this writing, it is unknown which Bochco project will be aired next, but it is certain to be a compelling, high-quality work.