The Steven Bochco Papers covers Bochco’s work as a writer, creator, and producer of television programs including Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and Doogie Howser, M.D. The bulk of this collection is scripts for the aforementioned shows. Many of the episodes also include production materials like shooting schedules, credit listings, and network notes regarding standards and practices.

Steven Bochco was born on December 16, 1943 in New York City. After receiving a BFA in Theater in 1966 from Carnegie Mellon, he moved to L.A. and worked as a writer at Universal Studios on mystery and procedural shows including Columbo and McMillan & Wife. Though he created multiple short-lived series prior to 1981, it was only with NBC’s Hill Street Blues that Bochco and co-creator Michael Kozoll received both critical and commercial success. With its gritty, realistic style, character-focused drama, and season-spanning story arcs, Hill Street Blues is widely credited with revolutionizing and reinventing the television procedural drama. Between 1981 and 1987, Hill Street Blues received 98 Emmy nominations. Bochco applied this same ethos to L.A. Law in 1986, which won 15 Emmys and ran for 8 seasons. When Bochco moved from NBC to ABC in an unprecedented network exclusivity deal, he once again found success with the comedy-drama Doogie Howser, M.D. and the expletive-ridden NYPD Blue, the latter of which paved the way for prestige cable dramas of the 2000s. Over the course of his career, Bochco won 10 Emmys and was nominated for 34 more, received two Humanitas Prizes and four nominations, was nominated for 13 WGA awards and won three (including the 1994 Award for TV Writing Achievement), and won four Peabody Awards. Steven Bochco passed away on April 1, 2018 at the age of 74 due to complications with leukemia. He is survived by his wife Dayna Kalins and three children.

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Available by appointment only. Please contact the Writers Guild Foundation Archive, www.wgfoundation.org.