Tavis Smiley interview

Bochco discusses his career and his upcoming series for TNT, Murder in the First, in this interview for PBS.

Well, cop shows are by definition melodramatic, they’re larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They’re provocative, assuming they grapple with – to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture. They really provoke thought and conversation and I think people have always liked the sort of certainty of good guys and bad guys. One of the things I always tried to do in the cop shows I did was to blur those lines and be a little more ambiguous, whether it was a cop show or a lawyer show.