DAVID E. KELLEY
1956-

TELEVISION PRODUCER

Producer of the Decade

At the end of the 1990s, David E. Kelley had five shows on television and Emmys for Best Drama and Best Comedy. Without a doubt, Kelley was the most influential TV producer of the decade. Kelley started his TV career as a story editor for L.A. Law (1986-1994). The next year he became executive story editor and then supervising producer. When Steven Bochco left the show after its third season, Kelley became executive producer. Following L.A. Law, Kelley was creative consultant for Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989-1993), another Bochco production, and then executive producer of Picket Fences (1992-1996), Chicago Hope (1994-), Ally McBeal (1997-), The Practice (1997-), and Snoops (1999-). His shows have won seven Emmys for Out-standing Drama and Outstanding Comedy.

Background

Kelley was born in Maine in 1956. He attended Princeton University and Boston University Law School. An associate at a law firm in 1983, he used his legal experience as the basis for a movie script that was produced as From the Hip (1987), starring Judd Nelson, Elizabeth Perkins, and John Hurt. When Bochco was planning L.A. Law, he began to look for writers with some legal expertise. He saw Kelley's script and invited him to discuss the possibility of writing an episode of L.A. Law. The meeting was so successful that Bochco hired Kelley as a story editor for the show. Bochco was Kelley's mentor, and when he left the show to produce NYPD Blue (1993-), Kelley stepped into his shoes as executive producer and continued to write scripts for the show. In 1993, Kelley married actress Michelle Pfeiffer.

Quirky, Vulnerable Characters

The one thing Kelley's vast array of programs had in common was characters who were vulnerable, needy, quirky, ridiculous, and often embarrassed; they struggled with difficulties, as well as complex moral and ethical questions. Five-time Emmy Award-winning Chicago Hope followed the personal and professional dilemmas of medical personnel in a leading urban hospital. Against the backdrop of high-tech medicine and the ever-changing world of modern health care, the staff members attempted to maintain sanity in a place with a reputation for being "the last, best hope," a hospital that provided treatment no other institution could or dared to give. Ally McBeal and The Practice could be considered two sides of the same coin. One a comedy and the other a drama, both were set in the world of the courtroom. Ally McBeal focused on a young, single lawyer who joined a rather unconventional law firm in which her former longtime boyfriend worked. One of the most interesting elements of the show was its blending of fantasy with reality—Ally's interior life often appeared on the screen—dancing babies and unicorns, for example. Neither did the show shy away from controversial issues, often engaging and offending viewers at the same time. It was an immediate hit, pulling in an average of 11.4 million viewers a week in its first season. The Practice, a more serious courtroom drama focusing on the complexities and moral ambiguities of the legal system, premiered on 4 March 1997 to immediate high acclaim. In 1999 The Practice was nominated for thirteen Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, as well as a Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Series and the George Foster Peabody Award for overall excellence. Kelley's last production of the decade was Snoops, a detective show in which three female private eyes teamed up with a surveillance expert to solve cases, which premiered 26 September 1999.