Michael Kozoll, co-creator of the television series, Hill Street Blues, will discuss the making of this unusual series in a presentation moderated by Professor Todd Gitlin of the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, author of Inside Prime Time. Kozoll was one of two executive producers during the series' first year and, during its second, creative consultant working with Steven Bochco. No longer involved with the series, he is presently writing screenplays for feature films. Kozoll will address the problems involved in writing and shooting an ongoing television drama, as well as those specific to Hill Street Blues: the research involved, the limitations imposed on it, and the constant challenge to keep it “fresh.”
Tod Gitlin writes, “When it first appeared, Hill Street Blues was a striking oddity in the history of American television. Dense with simultaneous stories, absurdist as well as melodramatic, it had room for intelligent women, knowing losers, and cops who knew they couldn't stop crime. The characters spoke whole sentences; their lines didn't seem to have been programmed by a joke machine. The sound was busy, the camera edgy. With its clash of viewpoints, Hill Street Blues from the start seemed to catch the energy of American liberal middle class ideology turned on itself.”