By AMANDA SPAKE
Homicide's executive producer and head writer Henry Bromell,
40, is not an issues man when it comes to television drama. "We
really try to avoid issues," he says. "The O.J. trial revealed what
we all knew, but the vehemence was staggering. How to deal with
it on the show? We're not sure."
Some cop shows, particularly NBC's Law and Order, seek out
their plots from the newspapers. Not Homicide.
"You take something out of the headlines and make it a
story...with our kind of writing, it doesn't get
you anywhere," says Bromell, who has also published short stories and novels and
taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "Two scenes into it, you've already told your
story. Our writing has to be coming from the characters."
But there's not enough coming from his character, argues Homicide star Yaphet Kotto, who insists that Lt. Giardello has not been fleshed out enough by Bromell and the other writers. Bromell disagrees: "If you really look at it with
clear eyes," he says, "we probably know as much about Yaphet's
character as we do about any character on the show. We've seen Yaphet's
daughter, we know about his marriage and about his growing up as
part Italian, part black. When you think about Andre (Braugher),
we know he was raised by Jesuits and we've seen his wife."
On the first episode this season, Bromell broke his own
rule about stealing from the headlines to explain the loss of Ned
Beatty and Daniel Baldwin, who left the show to pursue movie opportunities. At a police convention in Washington, D.C.
this summer, members of the New York City force and several D.C.
cops ran wild in a posh hotel, drinking publicly, damaging
property and mooning guests. Many officers were suspended as a
result. Bromell added two more: Beatty and Baldwin.
"That's a good example of where the story is specific enough
to work for us," Bromell says. "It's interesting and it's local."
The renaissance of the hour-long drama, which began with
Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere and grew into a new crop
of shows like Homicide, has made room for quality writing on
television again. Increasingly, TV
drama attracts serious writers' attention. At Bromell's request,
Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Jane Smiley, for example, wrote
an episode of Homicide last season.
"In some ways, TV writing is better than most novels,"
says Bromell.
