Monday 28 November 2016

547 Chicago Story




First  viewed : Summer  1982

This  one-season  US  drama  has  been  forgotten  but  I  thought  it  was  quite  good . Influenced  by  Hill  Street  Blues,   the  idea   was  to  look  at  an  event  from  three  different  perspectives   so  that  you  had  a  medical  drama, a  legal  series  and  a  cop  show  all  in  one. To  do  this  idea  justice,  the  producers  decided  they  had  to  break  out  of  the  50  minute  straitjacket  and  presented  the  networks  with  90  minute  episodes. They  gave  it  a  shot  but  couldn't  make  it  work  and  edited  down  the  remaining  episodes  to  fit  the  normal  schedules.

That  was  the  series's  undoing  and  only  fourteen  episodes  were  made  but  it was  a  pity. Bond  girl  Maud  Adams  played  the  main  medical  character  while  the  lawyers  were  a  love  triangle  with  Vincent  Baggetta  ( risen  again  from  Eddie  Capra  )  as  defence  man  Lou  Pellegrino  and  Craig  T  Nelson  as  prosecutor  Ken  Dutton,   vying  for  the  lovely  Megan  ( Molly  Cheek ). Dennis  Franz  was  the  most  memorable  of  the  cops.

The  two  episodes  I  recall   best   are  the  one  where  Maud  had  to  cope  with  an  outbreak  of   bubonic  plague  and  a  thoughtful  one  where  Lou  has  a  professional  crisis  after   a  killer  he  got   off  strikes  again  and  fails  to  defend  a  rape  suspect  properly. Ken  recognises  the  man  isn't  guilty  and  generously  finds  Lou  a  missing  witness. Whether  that  would  ever  happen  in  real  life  is  highly  debatable  but  it  certainly  created  a  tremendous  warmth  towards  both  characters.

While  Nelson  became  a  prominent  character  actor,  poor  Vince  didn't  get  another  crack  at  stardom  and,  apart  from  a  short  run   as  a  minor  character  in  The  Colbys ,  he  was  reduced  to  guest  roles. Even  those  had  dried  up  by  the  mid-90s.

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