L.A. Law is an American television drama series that lasted eight seasons at NBC, from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994.
Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contains many of Bochco's trademark features including an ensemble player, a large number of parallel storylines, social drama, and off-the-wall humor. It reflects the social and cultural ideology of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured in this event deal with warm issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, harassment sexual, AIDS, and domestic. violence. The series often also reflects social tension between the rich protagonist of senior lawyers and their low-paid junior staff.
In addition to the main cast, L.A. Law is also famous for featuring relatively unknown actors and actresses in guest starring roles, which then proceed to greater success in movies and television including Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Tambor, Kathy Bates, David Schwimmer, Jay O. Sanders , James Avery, Gates McFadden, Bryan Cranston, CCH Pounder, Kevin Spacey, Richard Schiff, Carrie-Anne Moss, William H. Macy, Stephen Root, Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi, and Lucy Liu. Some episodes of the show also include celebrities such as Vanna White, Buddy Hackett, and Mamie Van Doren appearing as themselves in a cameo role.
The show was popular among spectators and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards during its showcase, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.
Video L.A. Law
Sinopsis
The series is built in and around LA-based law firms McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, and features attorneys at the company and various support staff members. The exterior for the firm was shot at the Citigroup Center in downtown Los Angeles, known as the 444 Flower Building at the time. The opening sequence of credits from each episode begins with a close-up of the trunk of the car slammed shut revealing the California personalized "LA LAW" number plate. For the first seven seasons, the model car used is the Jaguar XJ6; for season 8 and last, Jaguar replaced with Bentley Continental R. 1993. Both cars carry a registration sticker showing the year in which each season begins. Two different musical openings for the theme of the show are used: saxophone riffs (as did by David Sanborn), for lighter episodes in tones; and an unpleasant chord of synthesizers, for a more serious storyline.
Maps L.A. Law
Transmission and character
L.A. Law took over NBC's precious 10PM (9PM Central) time slot from another Bochco-produced show, Hill Street Blues , and himself was eventually replaced by another hit ensemble drama, ER Bochco was fired from Hill Street Blues in 1985. LA The legal start time period is Friday 10 pm after Miami Vice , but after struggling there, NBC moved it to Thursday when Hill Street Blues was winding down. The original two-hour pilot was aired on Monday, September 15, 1986. The series was a critical favorite even before its premiere. An encore of the film premiered on Saturday Night Live on September 27, 1986, became a rare screenplay in the late-night slot.
Co-creator Terry Louise Fisher was fired from the series in season 2 and filed a well-publicized lawsuit with Bochco and the studio. Bochco and Fisher also co-created the 1987 series John Ritter Hooperman for ABC.
The scene in season 5 in which Leland McKenzie (Richard Dysart) is shown in bed with his enemy Rosalind Shays (Diana Muldaur) was ranked as the 38th greatest moment on television (this list originally appeared in the edition of EGG Magazine). The episode of "Good To The Last Drop" where Rosalind met her death - fell into the open elevator shaft - ranked # 91 in the 100 greatest episodes of all time on TV Guide's All Time. It was referenced in the The Star Trek Encyclopedia (before LA Law , Muldaur has played Dr Katherine Pulaski during season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation) in which Pulaski's biography says: "There is no truth to the rumor that Dr. Pulaski's ancestor was killed falling from an elevator shaft at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm."
After writing feature film, From the Hip , Boston lawyer David E. Kelley was hired by Bochco during the first season L.A. Legal Kelley went on to critical and commercial success as the show-runner of the series before departing to make Wood Fence . While at L.A. Law , Kelley and Bochco helped create Doogie Howser, M.D. as Steven Bochco Productions's first series for a big ten-series deal with ABC. Shortly thereafter, Bochco was offered a job as President of ABC Entertainment, but he refused.
At the peak of the show's popularity in the late 1980s, attention focused on the fictitious sexual technique called "Venus Butterfly" in season 1. The only clue that explains this technique is a vague reference to "ordering room service". Fans and interested people flooded the show's producers with a letter asking for more details about this mysterious technique.
The show tied itself into the events of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, fueled by the release of four white police officers on trial for a video beating by US motorcyclist Rodney King. In a scene reminiscent of Reginald Denny's incident, tax attorney Stuart Markowitz was beaten by a mob, and ended up with a serious head injury, causing a number of problems for him and his wife for several episodes as a result. Douglas Brackman, their boss, was also arrested in riot chaos as he was on his way to remarry.
After the fifth season, Kelley left the show. Patricia Green and Rick Wallace are their successors as executive producers. Green is the main creative force. The addition of its character in the middle of the cast turnover is filled with mixed reactions. He left the show in January 1992. Kelley and Bochco re-wrote the episode and Bochco moved back to executive producer of consultant while Kelley remained a consultant. Bochco left the executive producer position after the sixth season and John Tinker and John Masius were brought in for the seventh season. Kelley came out as a consultant. In the middle of falling ratings during the seventh season, co-producer John Tinker & amp; John Masius was fired midseason, and while the show went on hiatus, William M. Finkelstein was brought in to fix it. Tinker and Masius have brought a strange and similar tune to the soaps for the series they already knew in St. Elsewhere . And Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson) appeared in Homer costumes and hired the lawyers in the seventh season premiere. The episode also reflected the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Finkelstein reined in the series, returning to a serious legal case that made the series famous.
In the eighth and final seasons, the characters of Eli Levinson (Alan Rosenberg) and Denise Iannello (Debi Mazar) were transplanted from the aborted Bochco law series Civil Wars, which had run on ABC from 1991-1993. Eli Levinson was revealed to be Stuart Markowitz's cousin. During the last season, the hiatus series was in January 1994 to launch the second season of "Murder: Life on the Street". When the series was wildly successful with a guest appearance by Robin Williams, it was expected that L.A. Law will conclude that May and Murder: Life on the Road will succeed on Thursday in the fall. However, ER was tested so well that Warner Bros. executives. campaigning network president Warren Littlefield to deliver the series was a valuable Thursday slot.
The series ended in 1994, despite a one-time reunion, L.A. Law: The Movie , aired in 2002, and featured most of the main cast of the series (except Smits, Underwood, Donohoe, and Spencer). A re-show is displayed in Lifetime and then A & amp; E during the 1990s and 2000s.
Reception
Due to its popularity, L.A. The Law has a profound influence on how Americans view law and lawyers. The New York Times describes it as "the most serious television endeavor today to describe American law and those who practice it... LA Law , perhaps more than any other force. has shaped the public perception of lawyers and the legal system ". Lawyers report that the event has influenced the way they dress and talk to the jury (and, perhaps, how the jury decides the case), and the client expects that cases can be tried and decided within a week. The number of applicants to law school increases because of how it glorifies the profession (including, as one law school's dean said, "endless possibilities for sex"), the professor uses L.A. Law as teaching aids to discuss with their students the legal issues raised, and legal journal articles analyzing the meaning of the storyline. The event reportedly teaches future lawyers things that are not law school, such as time management and how to negotiate, and lawyers state that the event accurately depicts life in a small law firm.
A law professor writes in the Yale Law Journal that L.A. Law has delivered more 'bytes' of information (honestly or not), more images about lawyers, than all the Law Study programs, all open sections, all PBS events put together. " The show is "a big distortion of reality... LA law lawyers are caricatures," he said, but "caricatures have always been caricatures of something, and it has become real". Others wrote on the issue that the show "reduces eighty-ninety-nine percent of the lawyer's work life" and overemphasizes the rest of the glamor. Unlike other legal fictional works such as Perry Mason and Innocent Assumptions , however, which is basically a mystery solved by lawyers, L.A. Law ' s plot teaches tens of millions of viewers torts, ethics, and basic legal ideas and other dilemmas comprising the first year of legal education.
DVD release
Revelation Films has released all eight seasons of LA Law on DVDs in the UK (Region 2). This is the first time this event has been released on DVD anywhere in the world.
On April 18, 2016, Revelation Films released L.A. Legal - The Complete Collection on DVD in UK. The 46-disc box features all 171 episodes of series in a special collector pack.
In Region 1, Shout! The factory has released the first three seasons on DVD.
Accolades
The event won many awards, including 15 Emmy Awards. He won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1991. He was also nominated for awards in 1988 and 1992. Several actors, such as Larry Drake and Jimmy Smits, also received Emmy for their performances. The series shared an Emmy Award for most of the acting nominations by regular cast members (not including guest star category) for one series in a year with Hill Street Blues and The West Wing >.
For the 1988-1989 season, nine cast members were nominated for an Emmy. Larry Drake, Jimmy Smits, and Richard Dysart are the only ones to win (for Supporting Actor). The other nominated are: Michael Tucker (for Lead Actor); Jill Eikenberry and Susan Dey (both for the Main Actress); and Amanda Donohoe, Susan Ruttan, Michele Greene, and Conchata Ferrell (all for Supporting Actresses).
Law L.A. won the Latino Image Award.
It was listed as # 42 on Entertainment Weekly's list of The New Classics in the July 4, 2008 issue.
Emmy Primetime Awards
Golden Globe Awards
References
External links
- L.A. Legal in IMDb
- L.A. Legal on TV.com
- L.A. Legal in TV Tropes
- An interview with Steven Bochco from the Academy of Television Arts & amp; Science. This video may not currently be available in some countries outside of the U.S.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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