TV legend Steven Bochco is one of the minds behind TNT’s new drama Murder in the First, which he co-created with Eric Lodal. The series — which may evoke memories of Bochco’s short-lived but critically acclaimed ABC series Murder One — stars Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as two homicide detectives who investigate two seemingly unrelated murders in a case that lasts for the entire season.
The show premieres this Monday night (June 9) at 10PM (ET/PT), following the season premiere of Major Crimes.
Beyond Diggs and Robertson, the show boasts a very full and talented cast including Tom Felton (Harry Potter), Mimi Kirkland (Safe Haven), Raphael Sbarge (Once Upon A Time), Lombardo Boyar (The Bernie Mac Show), Ian Anthony Dale (Hawaii Five-0), Bess Rous (What Just Happened), Nicole Ari Parker (Revolution), Currie Graham (Raising the Bar), Richard Schiff (The West Wing), James Cromwell (Babe, L.A. Confidential) and Steven Weber (Wings).We recently visited the show’s sets and spoke to cast and crew, including the legendary Steven Bochco himself, about what we can expect from a show like Murder in the First.
“Michael Wright was interested in developing a show that had a single storyline that goes for a season, which, for TNT, which is like ten episodes run straight,” Bochco explained. “When I did Murder One, that was 22 hours, and that’s a lot. It’s also a lot to ask of an audience. Michael’s original interest was in creating a show that sort of encompassed all of the facets of the criminal justice system, wrapped around a murder mystery. I said ‘I know how to do that!’
“We had pretty broad strokes for the entire story, and the idea was to start as a police drama, where a murder mystery unfolds, and then let that police drama sort of morph into a legal show, and a courtroom drama, and then it comes back full circle as a cop show,” Bochco continued, before explaining why the show is set in San Francisco. “I love the idea of San Francisco, because we haven’t seen that [in a while]. It is a great city for this kind of a story, because its entire criminal justice system is housed in one giant building, 850 Bryant Street. It’s an entire city block. The court system, district attorney, the jails, the medical examiners… it’s the whole thing, right there in one building. It gives it a nice kind of box for us to play in,” he said, also pointing out that the police technology is a bit more retro than what you might find in other places.
Here is a trailer for Murder in the First, and if you’d like, you can read more about the series here at KSiteTV soon.
