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A major problem for any new series is to attract attention, especially during the fall rush. Steven Bochco shows are an exception. Bochco is peerless at generating attention-grabbing controversy.

      Be it mood-breaking music with Cop Rock, nudity and ground-breaking street language on NYPD Blue or a salacious nickname for the vice squad of Public Morals, Bochco usually finds a way to get people talking about his programs. This doesn't guarantee success -- see Cop Rock and Public Morals -- but it tends to translate into a larger sampling, which is all any new show can ask. 

With Brooklyn South, the latest terrific police drama from Bochco, controversy found the show. The central story line, an event that will resonate throughout the first season, involves the death in custody of a suspect. The fictional incident has disturbing parallels to the alleged sodomizing of a Haitian man in a Brooklyn police station, an outrage so grotesque it became a national story this summer.

      So that it's clear Brooklyn South is not trying to exploit an ugly situation, be aware that the pilot was shot last spring and has been in the hands of TV writers since June, well before life wound up imitating art. 
      Some in New York who are familiar with the Brooklyn South pilot expressed expectations (or hopes) that the pilot wouldn't air, lest it further inflame a tense situation. Bochco stood his ground. As with all his series, there are continuing story arcs in Brooklyn South. Scrapping the pilot would have necessitated deep-sixing four or five additional completed episodes and restructuring the central theme of the first season.

      Besides, when the situations are dissected, the fictional and real life incidents are similar only in that each involves mistreatment of a black man by white Brooklyn police officers. The suspect in the real life incident was booked for a relatively minor offense (resisting arrest). His guilt still has not been determined. In Brooklyn South, the ``victim'' is a mass murderer and there is no doubt of his culpability. His killing rampage occurs on crowded streets in broad daylight. (This is amplification, not justification of vigilante justice.)

      The show opens with a police roll call being interrupted by gunshots outside the station house. A suspected bank robber, enraged at cops for what he feels was disrespectful treatment of his mother when the police were trying to find him, has gone berserk. En route to the police station to vent his fury, he begins shooting everyone in his path. Cops rush out to confront him, and a furious firefight develops. The carnage is frightful.

      In the midst of the shootout, a third party, a rooftop sniper with a grudge against cops, injects himself into the fray. By this time, the main suspect has been wounded several times. Police apprehend him and drag him out of the line of fire into the station house. Having seen several colleagues die in the street at his hand, the officers make it clear that keeping the suspect alive is not a priority. When he finally expires on the station house floor, one officer blurts out, ``Good.''

      Internal Affairs becomes involved, as it does in all police shootings. A cursory diagnosis finds that while the suspect might have died of his bullet wounds anyway, the immediate cause of death was internal injuries, the type of which usually are the result of being roughed up. Somehow word reaches the streets, and a belligerent community leader shows up suggesting that the deceased is some sort of martyr.

      The ensuing probe is the thread to be woven throughout the season, impacting the lives of all the recurring players.
      Leading the investigation will be the cast's most familiar actor, James B. Sikking, as Lt. Stan Jonas. Sikking is a Bochco regular, with Hill Street Blues and Doogie Howser, M.D. on his credits sheet. Another recognizable face from a Bochco show is Michael DeLuise, as Officer Phil Roussakoff, who joins the precinct only minutes before the shooting starts. DeLuise played Andy Sipowicz's son in NYPD Blue.

      Jon Tenney, who has been in several short-lived series, is the most equal of the rest of a large ensemble, as Sgt. Francis X. Donovan. Dylan Walsh plays Officer Jimmy Doyle, a super cop from a long family line of police officers. Patrick McGraw is Jimmy's younger brother, who aspires to be the next Officer Doyle. Gary Basaraba is Sgt. Richard Santoro, a cynical, sharp-tongued front desk officer. Yancy Butler is Officer Anne-Marie Kersey, who is traumatized by seeing her boyfriend gunned down. Titus Welliver is Officer Jack Lowery, for whom shootouts are almost a relief from his tumultuous home life. His unfaithful wife complains that Jack doesn't provide for her financially or physically. What's more, she accuses him of being involved with Officer Nona Valentine, played by Klea Scott.

      If the similarities to the real-life sodomizing incident hadn't ignited a controversy, the fact that all of Brooklyn South's heavies are African-Americans while the vast majority of the cops are whites would have been a bone of contention. Indeed, it was on the summer press tour, which took place before the incident in Brooklyn.

      David Milch, the gifted head writer most responsible for the gritty realism of Bochco cop shows, was somewhat miffed when he was challenged about why there isn't a more realistic racial balance. ``I just won't write that way,'' he said. ``But having said that, I think it was an error of writing, not an error of politics or corporate policy or anything else. It produced an ineffective dramatic impression not to have a (high profile) male African-American (police officer). You wind up making a thematic point which, in fact, we're not making.''

      Milch promised that significant positive African-American characters would be written into the show.
      Another issue raised was a police officer's head literally exploding when it is hit by a bullet. Some critics felt this is gratuitous, especially in an environment in which violence on TV has brought the scrutiny of Congress upon television. Although the language of Brooklyn South is as racy as that on NYPD Blue, CBS apparently has not given Bochco the license that ABC has to titillate with nudity. Thus the exploding skull is the only envelope-pushing element of Brooklyn South.

      Milch protested that such a suggestion misses the point of what Bochco shows try to do in broadening the parameters of TV drama. Going back to NYPD Blue, he explained the nudity and language were devices to prepare the audience for more mature storytelling than it had been accustomed to seeing on TV. ``It was Steven's sense that the most accessible kind of message had to do with the sort of language that was used and the degree of nudity. The goal was not to show more (skin) or to use dirty words. It was to tell more ambitious, complicated, adult stories.''

      Likewise the intense violence of Brooklyn South's opening moments is also intended to set a mood, Milch said. ``If you want to isolate on that shot, or that initial sequence of violence, it had to do with our intention of establishing an atmosphere once. There may not be that much violence again in a whole season. What we were trying to do is to expose the audience to one source of reality in a cop's life, which would prepare the audience to understand a moment which comes later and which will take an entire year to live into. That is, the death in custody of the perpetrator. No one was looking to create controversy for controversy's sake.''
      They have become so good at this business that they can succeed at it without really trying.