ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603120049
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: MANUEL MENDOZA DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Though he has two acclaimed drama series on the air, you've probably never heard of David E. Kelley.
But if you know his work on CBS' ``Picket Fences'' and ``Chicago Hope,'' then you know why the 39-year-old former lawyer is perhaps the most revered creator/writer/producer in television.
Quiet and unassuming - he rarely does interviews and is private to a fault - Kelley has built a reputation for tackling serious societal issues in bizarrely entertaining ways.
He's in the tradition usually associated with ``Northern Exposure'' and ``Twin Peaks.'' But years before those shows brought ``quirky'' into the TV vernacular, he was breaking small-screen conventions as the primary writer and later the executive producer of ``L.A. Law.''
``What's distinct about David's shows is David,'' says his mentor, Steven Bochco, who gave the untrained and inexperienced Kelley his start on ``L.A. Law.'' ``He does that stuff because he can. I think David will occasionally take an almost perverse delight in how far out there he can get and still bring it back.''
Kelley's unique angle on the stranger aspects of late-20th-century life has led to more than 30 Emmy nominations for his shows. He has won seven himself.
In less than a decade, he has written more than 100 hours of television, including almost the entire first three seasons of ``Picket Fences.'' Last year, he also cranked out most of ``Chicago Hope'' while keeping up the same pace with ``Picket.'' During the first five years of ``L.A. Law,'' he wrote more than half the scripts.
``If he never writes another word for television, he ranks up there with `Marty' dramatist Paddy Chayefsky, 1950s TV comedian Ernie Kovacs and Bochco,'' gushes Robert J. Thompson, associate professor of TV, radio and film at Syracuse University.
Kelley draws this kind of praise because his shows go against the grain, even as they address the same issues dealt with in other quality dramas. To understand his style, you have to know ``Picket Fences,'' his trademark show.
Set in the small, Middle-American town of Rome, Wis., ``Picket'' revolves around the Brock family: Jimmy (Tom Skerritt), the town sheriff, and his wife, Jill (Kathy Baker), a physician. They are surrounded by three children, Jimmy's deputies, a pair of geriatric men of law and a gaggle of other, often weird, supporting players.
But unlike most characters on TV dramas, even the best ones, these characters are sincere instead of jaded, so they tend to face their problems head-on. This makes for a volatile mix because Kelley throws at them some of the most outrageous situations ever depicted on TV.
``We had many themes that were unbelievable, and he made them believable,'' says Fyvush Finkel, who won an Emmy in 1994 for his portrayal of Picket's loudmouthed lawyer, Douglas Wambaugh. ``Who would ever hear of a cow giving birth to a live baby? He did. He wrote about it. And the public started to believe it.''
``I knew I wanted to address serious societal issues, but I know there's a danger of repelling viewers who don't really need at the end of their day or at the end of the week to sit down and have these big debates put in front of them,'' Kelley said.
``My idea was that I was going to try to seduce the viewer with entertainment and then reveal that it was actually about something serious...In other shows, the outrageous thing happens in Act Four. In `Picket Fences,' the outrageous or the aberrant or the big twist happens right off the bat, then as you unfold it, you reveal that, `This isn't as crazy as I thought.' A cow gives birth to a human baby in Act One? Please! Then as you go along and start to explore, by the end you're not talking about the fact that a cow gave birth to a human, you're addressing issues of, `Gee, how far are we going to let technology extend before we think it crosses the line of human nature?'''
The reach of technology - specifically how advances in medicine affect our concepts of life, death and God - get further treatment in ``Chicago Hope,'' which Kelley added to his oeuvre in 1994. For example, does the wife of a man who is comatose and brain-dead have the right to conceive a child with him?
Kelley doesn't take sides on these issues. Or more precisely, he starts out arguing one point of view before illuminating the other. And he does this fearlessly.
``He has a capacity for being a little outrageous without losing the center,'' Bochco says. ``The center holds most of the time.''
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB