Steven Bochco dead; ‘Hill Street Blues’ creator was 74

Steven Bochco, the creative force behind three bedrock prime-time dramas — “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue” — died Sunday following a long battle with cancer. He was 74.

In a statement released to the trades Sunday night, family spokesman Philip Arnold said, “Steven fought cancer with strength, courage, grace and his unsurpassed sense of humor. He died peacefully in his sleep [at home] with his family close by.”

In 2014, Bochco, who had a rare form of leukemia, received a stem cell transplant from an anonymous donor. He later set out to meet the donor, and did — Jon Kayne, a 23-year-old who had donated his bone marrow out of a religious conviction. Bochco credited him for saving his life.

Bochco was one of the rebels of prime time, who broke free of traditions that had first guided — then throttled — television from its earliest days. By the 1970s, the factory line was producing prime-time dramas which were inoffensive and disposable, with a few exceptions. Then, in 1981, he and a collaborator, Michael Kozoll, were handed a mandate to try something new, and the factory line came tumbling down. The legacy and spirit of “Hill Street Blues” remains to this day in many prime-time dramas: nonlinear, messy, character-driven and confrontational.

Bochco knew a little something about confrontation, too. He fought with executives at three different networks over content and language, and almost always prevailed. He and Kozoll threatened to walk when NBC presented both with a list of grievances over the “Hill Street” pilot. Bochco took the fight to his friend, Grant Tinker, then chairman of NBC, whose legendary collegiality was tested in the ensuing fight. Bochco and Kozoll won, and “Hill Street” aired almost entirely as written.

The battle to get “NYPD Blue” on the air was preceded by months of negotiations over the inclusion of specific words, or over what parts of the human body — male and female — could be shown on network TV. Because Bochco, co-creator David Milch and ABC eventually codified what could be said, the rules held over the show’s 12-season run. And because “Blue” introduced common epithets never before heard on network TV, some critics — notably a few boycotting stations and advertisers — said it represented the coarsening of the culture. But to fans, “Blue” represented a long-overdue embrace of the real world. The controversies blew over, and “Blue” went on to 84 Emmy nominations, and establish a “content” template that itself would be shattered in due course.

Bochco created “Doogie Howser M.D.,” which launched the career of Neil Patrick Harris.

As a powerful showrunner, Bochco extended his influence beyond the many shows he created or produced. Bochco was a writer who esteemed other writers, and mentored dozens, some of whom went on to establish empires of their own, like David E. Kelley.

Bochco grew up in Manhattan. His mother was a painter and his father a concert violinist. While at Carnegie Mellon University in 1966, Bochco had an internship with Universal Studios. One of his first jobs there was to rewrite rejected hour pilots so they could be turned into two-hour movies, part of a TV principal — he later joked — that “no part of the pig goes unused.”

The idea of “Hill Street” came from embattled NBC chief Fred Silverman who wanted a cop show roughly based on 1981 movie “Fort Apache the Bronx.” Bochco had no interest until NBC promised that he and Kozoll would have complete creative freedom. “I have a hard time looking at it now,” he said in a TV Legends interview years later. “It feels so unrealistic to me.”

With “Hill Street,” Bochco shattered a number of rules, notably the idea that an episode’s story was resolved by hour’s end. Resolution was not in “Hill Street’s” DNA. As Bochco recalled, “As the concept of the series evolved, we realized we had so many characters that the only way to service all of them was to service multiple storylines.” Bochco and Kozoll then wrote two separate and concurrent storylines — the foreground one which featured dialogue of the primary characters, and another which featured dialogue of characters talking in the background. At times the result on-screen was a din, but there was a hidden logic to it because those background conversations “spilled over into subsequent episodes,” he said. “Those were in fact elements of stories and character relationships that would emerge in the foreground two episodes later.”

Like all TV producers, Bochco had his flops, too, and in fact created one of TV’s most famous ones. “Cop Rock” (1990) was initially the inspiration of someone who had come to Bochco hoping to make a Broadway musical out of “Hill Street.” Instead, Bochco became enamored of a series that brought Broadway to the cop show. He later conceded the obvious: “It embarrassed people, the way you’re embarrassed when Uncle Louis gets up half-bagged at Thanksgiving.”

He also said, “I loved it. It was the most fun I ever had working on a show.”

By Verne J Gay

Verne.Gay@newsday.com@vernejgay

Verne J Gay is the television critic