For this TV Flashback, we’re going back 40 years to remember one of NBC’s biggest dramas. If you watched television in the late 1980s, you probably don’t need us to hum the theme from L.A. Law. A few notes from Mike Post might be enough.
Forty years ago, NBC introduced viewers to McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, a Los Angeles law firm where the cases could get complicated and the lives of the attorneys were usually just as messy. L.A. Law debuted in September 1986 and stayed around for eight seasons. It became one of NBC’s signature dramas, collected a lot of Emmys along the way and gave television viewers a group of characters they got to know very well. And there were a lot of them.
The L.A. Law 40th anniversary gives us a pretty good excuse for another TV Flashback and a chance to remember why the series became such an important part of 1980s and ’90s television.
TV Flashback: The L.A. Law cast
Harry Hamlin starred as Michael Kuzak, with Susan Dey as Grace Van Owen. Richard Dysart played Leland McKenzie and Alan Rachins was Douglas Brackman Jr. Then you had Corbin Bernsen as Arnie Becker.
Becker could be slick, funny, arrogant and infuriating. Quite often, he managed all four at once. Bernsen turned him into one of the characters most closely associated with the series.
Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker played Ann Kelsey and Stuart Markowitz, while Susan Ruttan was Roxanne Melman. The L.A. Law cast would change and grow over the years, with Jimmy Smits, Blair Underwood, Michele Greene, Larry Drake and others becoming familiar faces around the firm.
That large ensemble was one of the things that made L.A. Law work. One week you might be pulled into a major court case. The next, you could be just as interested in whether two people in the office were going to stay together. Sometimes the office was more dramatic than the courtroom.
The L.A. Law Emmy wins
L.A. Law wasn’t exactly ignored during awards season. The series received 89 Emmy nominations, winning 15, and took home the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series four times.
Those L.A. Law Emmy wins were only part of the story, because members of the cast were repeatedly recognized as well. Susan Ruttan received four Emmy nominations for her work as Roxanne Melman, and we had the chance to speak with her many years ago about why she thought the show continued to have such staying power.
For Ruttan, it came down to the quality of what everyone was making.
Susan Ruttan, who earned four of those nominations in her supporting role, thinks the reason for the enduring success of L.A. Law is, very simply, the quality that went into it.
Click on the media bar below to hear Susan Ruttan.
That explanation makes sense when you go back and watch the show. There was a lot happening in almost every episode, but the people making it rarely seemed to forget that viewers had to care about the characters first.
TV Flashback: The Mike Post L.A. Law theme
Some television themes become almost inseparable from the show, and L.A. Law has one of them.
Mike Post composed the opening music, and by that point he certainly knew something about creating television themes people remembered. His credits already included The Rockford Files and Hill Street Blues, and his career would eventually include everything from Magnum, P.I. to NYPD Blue and Law & Order.
The Mike Post L.A. Law theme sounds like its era, but we mean that as a compliment. There’s something big and polished about it, with just enough of that 1980s sound to immediately take you back. Then came the car trunk and the “L.A. LAW” license plate. You knew exactly what you were watching.
Five things about L.A. Law
1. It started with a two-hour premiere
NBC launched L.A. Law in September 1986 with a two-hour television movie before it moved into its regular weekly format.
2. Co-creator Terry Louise Fisher had actually practiced law
That probably didn’t hurt when it came time to build a series around attorneys. Fisher created the show with Steven Bochco, who had already helped change television drama with Hill Street Blues.
3. David E. Kelley was one of the show’s writers
Long before Ally McBeal, The Practice and Boston Legal, David E. Kelley worked on L.A. Law. And there was another connection: Kelley had been an attorney himself. Considering what he went on to create, L.A. Law now feels like a pretty important stop in his career.
4. People are still talking about that elevator
We’re not going to pretend this isn’t one of the show’s most famous moments. Diana Muldaur played Rosalind Shays, and her character’s sudden death after stepping into an open elevator shaft became one of those television scenes that viewers simply didn’t see coming. If you watched it when it aired, chances are you remember it.
5. The show made 172 episodes
Eight seasons. 172 episodes. By the time L.A. Law ended in 1994, television had spent a lot of time inside that law firm.
TV Flashback: The L.A. Law legacy
There were legal shows before L.A. Law and there have been countless ones since. What L.A. Law did particularly well was make the cases only part of the reason you came back.
The lawyers had lives. They fell in love, broke up, argued and made mistakes. Sometimes they behaved terribly, and sometimes they surprised you.
The series also took on subjects that could be difficult television territory at the time, including AIDS, discrimination, capital punishment, race and gender. That willingness to mix serious subjects with character-driven drama became an important part of the L.A. Law legacy.
Not everything about the show has aged the same way, of course. It has been 40 years. Some of the clothes will remind you of that very quickly. A few hairstyles might do it even faster.
But good characters have a longer shelf life. So does a great television theme. And that’s probably why, four decades later, all it takes is that Mike Post music and the sight of that familiar license plate to bring L.A. Law rushing back.
For this TV Flashback, the L.A. Law 40th anniversary is a reminder of just how much the series left behind and why the L.A. Law legacy remains part of television history.
L.A. Law is available on DVD through retailers such as Amazon, and all eight seasons are streaming on Hulu.
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