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...ABC, Nov. 27, 9 p.m. EST). Michael Jackson, Madonna and a few other stars you may have heard of join in the music channel's 10th anniversary celebration...
...work is never done. Steven Bochco changed the course of network TV in the early '80s with his breakthrough cop show Hill Street Blues. He opened new areas of provocative subject matter a few years later with his yuppie drama L.A. Law. Those hits were enough to convince ABC that Bochco was worth a long-term gamble: in 1987 the network signed him to a contract worth $50 million, to develop 10 series during the next decade. Then Bochco had to face a really tricky problem: how to top himself...
...first show under the new ABC deal, Doogie Howser, M.D., Bochco tried a gimmick: a comedy about a 16-year-old genius with a medical degree. Then he turned experimental, adding musical numbers to a police drama and coming up with Cop Rock. The show failed with audiences, probably because Bochco did part of his job too well: the gritty cop scenes were so compelling that the musical numbers (which rarely measured up) seemed like rude interruptions...
...show's dark tone has apparently given ABC executives some nervous moments. They reportedly asked Bochco to redo the first episode, adding some comic relief; it now contains a subplot about a woman seeking a divorce because her husband thinks he's Elvis. Other problems remain. Civil Wars has too little of interest going on outside the courtroom (no romance so far between Hemingway and Onorati), and its "lighthearted" moments are rather distasteful. One running story involves Hemingway's law partner (Alan Rosenberg), who has a nervous breakdown in the first show and returns later to do kooky things like...
...Bochco may be smarter than ABC thinks. Civil Wars is a canny compendium of every relationship issue the '90s has to offer. And it feeds one of TV's most enduring myths: that the cold legal system has a human face. The moral high ground is always clearly marked -- for the viewer, if not always for the judge. Lawyers, moreover, are warm, understanding and passionately devoted to their clients. Onorati, after negotiating a settlement for the "overweight" wife, accompanies her to her 20th-year college reunion. Hemingway pleads with one client, the wife of a sleazy rock musician...