‘NYPD Blue’ producers back on the beat for HBO

By Cynthia Littleton

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Deadwood” creator David
Milch is developing a new HBO cop drama with his former “NYPD
Blue” collaborator, Bill Clark.

The untitled project is based on Clark’s experiences as a
rookie undercover officer assigned to keep tabs on the Black
Panthers and other countercultural rabble-rousers during the
height of New York’s radical-chic moment. It was also the era
of New York City’s Knapp Commission probe that revealed
scandalous levels of corruption among New York’s finest.

In many ways, the new projects delve into the same themes
of lawlessness and the emergence of a social order as Milch’s
Emmy-winning “Deadwood,” which is set to begin its third season
next year, probably in tandem with the return of “The
Sopranos.”

“The post-Vietnam period was a period of enormous moral
confusion,” Milch said. “It felt very much like a starting-over
point, where there was a re-examination of social assumptions
about the idea of law enforcement and the social contract.”

Clark, who was the inspiration for “NYPD Blue’s” central
character of Andy Sipowicz, spent seven years in the Army, most
of them in Vietnam, before joining the New York Police
Department in 1969. He was recruited for undercover work right
off of his police academy entrance exam; he was working
incognito for the NYPD before he’d ever spent a minute in
uniform, Clark said.

“I couldn’t tell anyone I was a policeman. I’d never even
been to the police academy,” Clark said. It didn’t help that he
was living in an Archie Bunker-ish blue-collar neighborhood
where his antiwar activities weren’t exactly welcomed. Only a
handful of people knew he was on the force. When he came out of
the shadows and joined the detective ranks, he came face to
face with the official corruption that was then making
headlines thanks to whistle-blowers like Frank Serpico.

It will be a tall order to recreate the tension and dark
mood of that era in a weekly series, “but if anyone can really
make this work,” then Milch can, Clark said of his Emmy- and
Peabody-winning collaborator.

The show will be developed under a new two-year production
pact that also covers Milch’s services on “Deadwood.” Milch
said he’s committed to shepherding his earthy Western saga for
the foreseeable future. “It requires some cooperation from God,
but if he’s willing, I’m willing,” Milch said.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter