Notice something similar about all these hit TV shows? Yep, they all come from the brain (and pen) of one man. Television editor BEVAN RAPSON talks to David E. Kelley.
Objection, Your Honour! Doesn't television have too many American lawyers?
Denied, counsellor. Given the ratings precedents you're in danger of being found
in contempt. Approach the bench.
Thanks to television, most of us are at least as familiar with this kind of exchange as we are with the usually more restrained language of our own courts.
While the imported stream of television law, American-style, dates back as far as Perry Mason, the most recent glut can be blamed on one man: powerhouse producer David E. Kelley.
Kelley is the outrageously prolific creator of The Practice, screening here on TV3, and Ally McBeal, which has just finished a hugely successful first season on TV2.
In mitigation, the law was Kelley's first career, abandoned only after he was lured to a writing career on Steven Bochco's LA Law back in the late 80s. He's entitled to have a soft spot for the courtroom.
Secondly, his CV reveals a willingness to delve into other genres. He was a creative consultant on Bochco's Doogie Howser M.D. and went on to produce and write the critically-acclaimed oddball drama Picket Fences and produce the medical hit Chicago Hope. He's a former college hockey player who has also toyed with doing something set in the sporting world.
This, however, has been the year of the two lawyer shows for which he has been feted in the United States. With Ally a smash hit and The Practice winning best drama in this year's Emmys, Kelley has confirmed his reputation as one of television's hottest properties.
His five-year, four-series contract with Twentieth Century Fox is said to be worth $NZ60 million and grant him liberal creative control. Fox even built his production company its own sprawling studio.
Such faith is based not just on Kelley's talent for creating shows but on his astounding productivity as a writer. Armed with just a pen and a stack of blank yellow legal pads the 42-year-old is said to churn out the draft of an episode in two days. Most writers take two weeks.
Of 44 scripts produced for Ally and The Practice last year, he reportedly wrote 41.
His commitment to both shows is one of the reasons he hasn't got around to developing the new series he is obliged to produce soon for Fox, Kelley explains by telephone from his Los Angeles base. "Both of these shows are pretty dear to me and I would like to stay with them for as long as I can."
He's not prouder of one over the other because "they are such alter egos." Both are set in law firms in Boston -- where Kelley practised -- and follow ensemble casts through their professional and private lives.
Ally, of course, is the so-called dramedy, full of quirks and surreal images. The lead character is played by the rail-thin Calista Flockhart, who bears a spooky resemblance to Kelley's wife, Michelle Pfeiffer.
The Practice is a far grittier, straighter take on the legal world. It has Dylan McDermott as Bobby Donnell, a driven lawyer-with-a-conscience.
"I kind of go back and forth about which one's more fun to write," says Kelley. "It depends on what kind of mood I'm in that day."
He has penned crossover episodes, which in the United States gave The Practice a boost from all those Ally fans, but says that having two distinct "venues" for his ideas brings a kind of freedom. "I don't have to sort of jerry-rig stories to fit the tone or decorum of one series because I have the other one.
"If something is a little too strange or whimsical there's Ally and if something is a little too serious or dark, I've got The Practice.
He once compared the two to the tortoise and the hare and while he jokes now he hopes they'll both be "fast turtles," he clearly sees The Practice as the show likely to last longer.
"Ally, it caught on quickly and it feels like it's more of a flavour and a current trend," he says.
"The Practice is probably steadier and as a result you think you can tell these stories for a long time without it beginning to be redundant.
"The irony is that Ally thrives on being fresh and original but after five years the very thing that it trades on, the newness, may no longer be there."
The networks might see Kelley as a kind of television Rumpelstiltskin -- turning blank legal pads rather than straw into gold -- but doesn't he sometimes run dry? "I used to more than I do now," he says.
In the second season of LA Law he remembers he and other writers deciding there were no more stories to be told and being relieved when a writers' strike halted production.
He also hit the wall a couple of times in the first two years of Picket Fences but says experience teaches that another idea might be just around the corner. "I realised the pressing was maybe the biggest cause of writer's block. Once I stopped doing that it has never been a problem ... knock on wood."
Debate over television in this country has sometimes become tied up in knots over "quality" and, despite all its viewers, Ally McBeal has surely remained a mystery to the British-is-best school.
Kelley says his own assessment of each show combines his own instinct and audience response. "You can't be so arrogant to say, 'Well, I know it's great because I like it even though the rest of the world thinks it stinks.'
"If the reaction is negative then overwhelmingly there's a good chance that there's something wrong with it."
Quality is a subjective term, he says. A broad sitcom, for example, might unfairly be excluded from such a label even though it involves "very talented, intelligent people choosing certain targets and hitting them."
That said, he likes to assume the audience is intelligent, that it won't accept inconsistencies or incongruities that other writers might think they can get away with.
"If it doesn't work logically and dramatically for us the one thing we'll never do is sit back and go, 'Yeah, but there are those out there who will buy it'."
The legal setting of his current shows might suggest the former lawyer is pining for the courtroom, but Kelley quickly scotches the idea. "I think because I get to write about all the interesting legal stories it has just the opposite effect," he says.
"Intellectually and creatively I get to be involved in much more interesting cases this way.
"You don't get the adrenalin of competition that you do practising law in the real world, but this is easier. If your case is going poorly you can just make up new facts, and they tend to frown on that in actual practice."
He still visits courtrooms when he goes back to Boston, though not in search of actual story ideas. "There's something about sitting in that venue that's good for the gestation part of the process."
Most of what happens in court is boring but at its best the real-life drama beats anything television can offer, he says. "It can be as dull as a bad physics class when it's bad but when it's good it's very, very dramatic."
He cites a "riveting" adjournment in the televised trial of English nanny Louise Woodward and the delivery of the OJ Simpson verdict. The latter was electric, he says, "not just in the room but in everybody's living room as they brought back that verdict.
"As good as fictional dramatic TV can be, it never rises to that level."
Who: David E.Kelley
What: The Practice
Where: TV3
When: 8.30pm, Tuesday
--Weekend TimeOut, 07/11/98
Notice something similar about all these hit TV shows? Yep, they all come from the brain (and pen) of one man. Television editor BEVAN RAPSON talks to David E. Kelley.
Objection, Your Honour! Doesn't television have too many American lawyers?
Denied, counsellor. Given the ratings precedents you're in danger of being found
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