STEVEN BOCHCO: ON BBC LAST WORDS

I spoke about the television writer and producer Steven Bochco on BBC Radio 4's Last Word programme
today. You can link to it on BBC IPlayer here, my bit is the last one on the show, starting about 22 minutes in. But it's a programme worth listening to from the start, with Winnie Mandela, Drue Heinz, and two important British sportsmen, Ray Wilkins and Eric Bristow.

If your very sharp eared you might be able to discern that some of my stories are edited down; producer Neil George cut it so you probably won't (except where, for example I refer to his friends whom I actually haven't mentioned in the edited version) but it flows wonderfully, which is as it should be as his was a wonderful story to tell. And I should have mentioned the name of the really great TV composer Mike Post, who did the Hill Street Blues theme.

What was lost was some background details, a couple of stories, and some explanation of the nature of his importance in the history of episodic television. You can fill in some of that with the Guardian obituary, to which I will post a link along with an essay filling in the bits from both. The obituary is in today's paper Guardian as well....