Steven Bochco, famous for legal/cop dramas like “NYPD Blue” and “Hill Street Blues”, is making his cable debut. “Raising the Bar” shifts the focus from serial killers and child molesters to the more mundane offenses you would encounter if you strolled down to the County Courthouse.  The defendants are scruffy, compromised and frequently innocent.  The DA is crass and cynical, prosecuting cases he thinks he can win even when he has no way of determining if the defendant is really guilty.  The judge at the center of the action is an efficiency nut who enjoys exercising the boundless power her office affords.  Juries are prone to convict unless innocence can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In other words, Raising the Bar is about the real-world criminal justice system.

The show isn’t doing very well.  The reviews have been mixed, the competition is intense, and the ratings have been dropping.   The show lacks a rivveting Dennis Franz type lead and the production values are a bit too formulaic for my taste.  But I suspect the real problem is that the American viewer doesn’t know what to do with moral ambiguity and the portrayal of a broken legal system?

I have become a loyal viewer.  The legal system presented in most legal dramas is pure fantasy (you will notice that the bad guys are almost always white and wealthy).  The “Law and Order” pantheon, though skillfully rendered, takes a pro-prosecution perspective; defense attorneys are generally sneering, well heeled and amoral.  “Law and Order” is generally a who-done-it murder mystery in a courtroom setting.  As such it avoids 90% of the cases that pass through a real courtroom.

Bochco’s “Raising the Bar” could be a sleeper.  Dramas driven by complex characters can take a while to hit their stride.  But if you want a compelling window into a broken system, “Raising the Bar” delivers.

In this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bochco talks about his new show.

Atlanta’s TNT launches new, high-profile drama
Bochco’s ‘Raising the Bar” tells tales of public defenders in crisis

By RODNEY HO

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Friday, August 29, 2008

With the success of “Saving Grace” and “The Closer,” Atlanta’s TNT has become an attractive magnet for A-list talent.

That’s why Steve Bochco, best known for masterminding groundbreaking dramas “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” and “NYPD Blue,” came aboard for his latest show “Raising the Bar,” which debuts on Labor Day at 10 p.m.

“Working with TNT today is a little bit like it used to be working for NBC and ABC in the earlier days,” Bochco said. “Broadcast has become such micromanagers of their content. It makes it hard for somebody like me to make a show.” (Don’t get him started about his experience with ABC’s “Commander in Chief” a couple years back.)

And though budgets are not as generous as those at ABC or NBC, Bochco said the creative freedom TNT gives him makes up the difference. “You can’t put a price tag on pleasure,” he said. “We’re old dogs, but we learn new tricks. We’ve learned to make a quality product on a cable budget.”

“Raising the Bar,” which taped 10 episodes, focuses on the lives of young attorneys in the public defender’s office and the district attorney’s office. Naturally, there’s plenty of back-office canoodling as well as in-court fireworks.

Bochco tapped Mark-Paul Gosselaar to star as the central public defender with a major attitude, an overly deep dedication to his job and incredibly unkempt hair. That hair, in fact, makes him virtually unrecognizable from his “Saved By The Bell” days or even his clean-cut “NYPD Blue” stint a few years back.

“We talked a lot about the hair,” Bochco said. “We wanted him to look different from his time at ‘NYPD Blue.’ And we felt his character Jerry Kellerman’s hair isn’t a fashion statement but a reflection of his utter disregard for grooming.”

“I had met up with Steven after a vacation and my hair was long and scraggly,” Gosselaar said. “He wondered, ‘Could a public defender have hair like that?’ He figured, ‘Why not?’ ”

Thematically, the show deals with what Bochco dubs “class warfare” and the “notion that the legal system is busted. And one of the first casualties of that reality is justice.”

In the first episode, Gosselaar’s character gets thrown in jail for contempt by a nasty judge played by Jane Kaczmarek (“Malcolm in the Middle”) after he protests loudly that his client was treated unfairly.

Bochco said Kaczmarek’s judge is actually “mild” in comparison to the real thing, based on co-executive producer David Feige’s experiences as a public defender. “A lot of these judges prefer power over fairness,” he said. “They live in these little fiefdoms and become cynical.”

The clients Gosselaar’s character deals with are usually down and out and not always terribly sympathetic. And unlike the “Law & Order” or “Cold Case” shows, which focus on heinous crimes and murders, “Raising the Bar” often grapples with men and women who commit petty crimes that still might ruin a person’s life by landing them in prison for years.

A schizophrenic in one episode stole a person’s camera and faced several years in jail. Another woman hit a security guard with her purse and ended up with a similar fate. Gosselaar says Kellerman deals with a child rapist and a guy who watched the door for a drug dealer, both who could potentially stay in prison for 25 years, which doesn’t sound fair at all.

“They’re all human,” Gosselaar said. “They all deserve to be defended. They have a story. They still have to be heard, whether they’re guilty or not.”

Bochco feels the show is highly compatible with the TNT’s “We Know Drama” brand. He’s also glad TNT scheduled the first three episodes after the network’s signature show “The Closer.”

“We couldn’t ask for a better lead in,” he said.