Doctors Vs. Lawyers Thursday Nights Will Be TV Battleground As Medics Of ‘Er’ Go Against Legal Beagles Of ‘Murder One’

Producer Steven Bochco’s latest legal salvo, “Murder One,” is an astute murder mystery with crisp writing, a solid premise and compelling actors.

Most people who have seen the pilot like it, including the executives at ABC, who ponied up for 23 episodes in advance.

So why is the perennial Emmy winner nervous?

Maybe it’s the uneasy knowledge that after a three-week honeymoon beginning Tuesday at 10 p.m., a time slot currently owned by Bochco’s highly successful drama “NYPD Blue,” “Murder One” is diving headlong into what is arguably TV’s most daunting niche: Thursday nights at 10 p.m., where NBC’s “ER” is entering its sophomore year already a runaway hit.

“Historically, I’ve never really worried over the stuff I can’t control,” Bochco said. “I’ve got my hands full just worrying about what I can control. But I’m feeling uncharacteristically anxious about this one.”

“Murder One” is a show that will require a savvy audience with a long attention span. It has a plot that follows a single murder case - from the defense point of view - over an entire season, keeping the audience (and the lead defense lawyer, played by Daniel Benzali) in the dark about the defendant’s guilt or innocence.

By contrast, “ER” is an adrenaline-boosting spasm of several plots per episode, few of which spill over into subsequent weeks. The fix is smart, quick and self-contained.

To keep truant viewers abreast of plot developments, Bochco will have a 60-second review at the beginning of each episode, as well as a clever rip-off of Court TV - here known as “Law TV” in which fictitious reporters covering the trial will recap key plot points.

The good news is, the addition of “Murder One” will likely make Thursdays at 10 p.m. the most cerebral hour in television, putting two shows in mortal combat for viewers with demographics that make advertisers salivate, the kind of viewers Bochco himself says he would love to have.

“I think a lot of people who’d love to see this show, were it anywhere else, will miss it,” he said. “So from that point of view, you know, I’m not crazy about the time slot. But someone’s got to be there. I’m a team player.”

He is already priming “Murder One” cohorts for a strong break in the Tuesday night slot, followed by a struggle when the show moves to Thursdays.

“For three weeks, we’re going to feel like we’re a success,” he said. “And I’m trying to warn everybody to not be disappointed when we move to Thursday night and get our (rears) kicked.”

Bochco is banking on the sophistication of an audience primed by months of real-life O.J. Simpson courtroom drama to keep up with dialogue that outsmarts his previous legal series - also a veteran of Thursdays at 10 p.m. - “L.A. Law.”

In fact, it was “L.A. Law” and its limitations that gave Bochco the idea for “Murder One” in the first place.

“I started lobbying around the second year, maybe the third year of ‘L.A. Law’ to do a storyline that would run all year long, a trial that would run all year long,” Bochco said. The idea got only a lukewarm response, which Bochco attributes to the danger of fragmenting a storyline amid a large ensemble cast.

After Bochco left the series, “L.A. Law” did have a relatively long storyline revolving around the capital murder case of Earl Williams, a black college professor who, it later turned out, was wrongly convicted of killing a white woman.

“I always thought it was a valid idea,” Bochco said. “And with the increased awareness of our system through exposure from Court TV and media coverage of these big trials, you know, the Menendez trial and the Simpson trial and the Colin Ferguson trial … it’s an extraordinary education.”

Like its future rival “ER,” “Murder One” is a show that will be driven more by the profession than the personal lives of the characters.

To help add a ring of truth to the world of high-profile criminal defense, Bochco hired Howard Weitzman - Simpson’s original attorney and counsel to Michael Jackson, among others - to be the show’s legal consultant.

Since the media has a ubiquitous role in “Murder One,” circling the crime scene with helicopters and keeping vigil outside the courtroom, Weitzman helped shape a fictional case likely to generate that kind of interest.

The end result is a combination of two key elements to a sensational murder trial: a well-known defendant and a salacious crime. Benzali’s character, defense lawyer Ted Hoffman, even acknowledges to a judge early on that he sometimes makes himself sick.

Assuming the series gets picked up for another season (and another first-degree murder case), Bochco said the story will again be told from the defense standpoint.

“Try to imagine a world in which if you got jammed up in a nasty situation, you couldn’t get a lawyer,” said Bochco, who knew Weitzman socially before soliciting his advice for the show.

“No one would represent you, because it was an unsavory undertaking. And nobody wanted to expose themselves to the ridicule of a segment of the culture. That would be pretty awful, wouldn’t it? I mean, terrifying.”