Rick Schroder replacing Jimmy Smits?

Had Steven Bochco lost his mind?

More than a few people were wondering just that last month, when it was announced that the brooding, charismatic Jimmy Smits would be leaving Bochco's "NYPD Blue" next season. To fill his shoes, Bochco will be counting on former child star Rick Schroder, who will forever remain, in many people's minds, as that cute Ricky Stratton on NBC's "Silver Spoons" from 1982 to 1986.

And that announcement was just the opening salvo in what promises to be a bombardment of cast changes this season in some of television's finest dramas. Both "Homicide: Life On the Street" and "Law & Order" are losing key cast members. Even powerhouse "ER" is losing Maria Bello and girding up for 1999, when George Clooney has said he'll walk away from the show.

But far from spelling doom, as such cast changes might have in the past ("The Untouchables" without Robert Stack? "The Defenders" without E.G. Marshall? "The Fugitive" without David Janssen?), chances are the shows' popularity with their fans won't falter. David Caruso left "NYPD Blue," Smits came on, and the show's ratings climbed. Michael Moriarty left "Law & Order," Sam Waterston came on, and the show won its first Emmy for best drama series (and climbed in the ratings). Ned Beatty left "Homicide," and the show's fans barely flinched.

Why? For one thing, the quality of writing on television is better than ever - more than a few critics have noted that this is the real Golden Age of TV drama. For another, today's best dramas, in a tradition that goes back at least as far as "Hill Street Blues," are ensemble shows, where no one character consistently dominates. That's why "Hill Street" wasn't called "Furillo" and why "Law & Order" isn't known as "The Trials of Jack McCoy."

"As long as the quality of writing and the level of acting is maintained, I think that the audience remains loyal to the show," says "Homicide" executive producer Tom Fontana. "The characters are part of a larger system. It's easier for the show to adapt to the loss of a major character because that's what happens in real life. The institutions go on."

Adds "Law & Order" executive producer Dick Wolf, "If you see cast changes as an opportunity to show the audience something they haven't seen, [audiences] cut you some slack, as long as it's done correctly."

Perhaps no decision is going to test that loyalty more than Bochco's choice of Schroder, who, since leaving "Silver Spoons," has acted in "Lonesome Dove" and its sequel, "Return to Lonesome Dove."

Reaction ranged from the skeptical to the curmudgeonly, the latter exemplified by Newsday critic Marvin Kitman. "My first reaction was to call 911 to report a crime in progress," Kitman wrote. "Or make a citizen's arrest of Steven Bochco for impersonating a producer."

But Bochco didn't get to be the guiding force behind some of television's top dramas by being crazy unless you count crazy like a fox. By replacing Smits with Schroder, he simply addressed one of the most vexing problems facing TV producers in the '90s with one of the tactics that seems to work best: hire someone who will take the show in a different direction.

"It would be foolhardy to try and replace Jimmy Smits," says Bochco, who's enraged by Kitman's nay-saying. "I would certainly never want to burden an actor with that kind of comparison. What you try to do is find someone completely different, find a way to go that doesn't just replace a character but really alters the chemistry of the series.

"The moment you say, 'What if you bring in a young guy, a baby, a detective 28 years old?' it changes everything. He doesn't have the eight years of experience [he needs] to sort of compete in the squad room. He has to overcome all the biases a guy like [Dennis Franz's] Sipowicz brings to the party.

"And," Bochco adds, sounding like a man who relishes the challenge, "it gives you the opportunity to really take a look at your show and expose aspects of your existing characters that perhaps haven't been seen before."

Shaking off the cobwebs

Fontana is using much the same philosophy in the wake of the departure of Andre Braugher, the closest thing to a breakout star NBC's critically lauded and tepidly rated "Homicide." So far, two new cast members have been announced for the series, which will begin its seventh season having lost not only Braugher, but also Reed Diamond and Michelle Forbes (who left the show in March). Giancarlo Esposito, a veteran of four Spike Lee films, will play the FBI agent son of Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto). And actress Michael Michele ("Central Park West") will play Detective Rene Sheppard, a former beauty-pageant contestant.

"'Homicide' is so true-to-life," says Esposito, "and so steeped in reality, it will suffer less from the cast changes than other shows would. It's not a show based on personalities or stardom. It's a show based on very good writing and a talented cast."

Fontana agrees and embraces the invigorating powers of a few carefully considered cast changes. "I think it rejuvenates everyone," he says. "It forces everyone, the actors, the writers, to shake off the cobwebs of complacency and remember why it is that we started to do these shows in the first place.

"I think that we have a tendency in TV to get formulaic, to do the same show week after week - because the pressure and the time is such, you go with the thing that is expedient. Any time you are forced to write a scene in a new way, that's a positive."

No one has perfected the art of surviving cast changes better than Wolf, whose "Law & Order" has retained not a single cast member from the original pilot (which didn't include Steven Hill's Adam Schiff, the only holdover remaining from the first season).

Since the show's debut in 1990, not only have Moriarty and Waterston traded chairs, but George Dzundza was replaced by Paul Sorvino, who has been replaced by Jerry Orbach; Christopher Noth has been replaced by Benjamin Bratt; Dann Florek has been replaced by S. Epatha Merkerson; and Richard Brooks was replaced by Jill Hennessy, who was replaced by Carey Lowell, who has been replaced by Angie Harmon to begin the 1998-99 season.

"It's always a challenge to the writers to make the glove fit whoever is cast," Wolf says. "Then again, it's pretty hard to complain about going from Dzundza to Sorvino to Orbach.

"In the case of 'Law & Order,'" he adds, "we've never regretted a cast change. If the original cast was on the show, I don't think we'd be on the air. After five years, you get sort of sick of looking at the same people. Look at what's happening on A&E; [which airs random repeats of the show, jumping from one season to the next]. Part of the attraction is, you never know who's going to show up."

Cast changes are not new to television dramas; neither is a show surviving them. Who remembers that Steven Hill preceded Peter Graves as leader of the IMF team on "Mission: Impossible"? And while Farrah Fawcett will always be remembered as one of "Charlie's Angels," she left after the first season and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd, who quickly became just as identified with the show.

Still, particularly during the 1970s, the vast majority of TV dramas were driven by a single character and were thus irrevocably linked to their stars. "Columbo" would never survive without Peter Falk, and the same could be said for such shows as "The Rockford Files" (James Garner), "Mannix" (Mike Connors), "Kojak" (Telly Savalas) and "Magnum, P.I." (Tom Selleck).

Anyone who believes stars aren't vital need only consider "Perry Mason," which thrived from 1957 to 1966 with Raymond Burr in the title role, yet flopped when it was revived in 1973 with Monte Markham as the world's most infallible defense lawyer. Only when Burr reprised the role in a series of telefilms did the franchise show renewed signs of life.

Things began to change with the 1981 debut of Bochco's "Hill Street Blues," a show that not only featured top-notch writing, but also a cast that seemed endless - and yet, almost every actor got his or her share of screen time.

Critics praised the ensemble approach, and viewers were fascinated by the intertwined stories (an approach that had been thriving for years on daytime soap operas). The formula's resilience was tragically tested in 1984, when the death of actor Michael Conrad forced the departure of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (in typical "Hill Street" fashion, he was said to have expired during sex). His place in the station house was soon taken by Robert Prosky's Sgt. Stan Jablonski.

"I felt at the time that Michael Conrad was irreplaceable, and I was right," Bochco says. Esterhaus "was such a unique and quirky character, and the juxtaposition of that persnickety sort of fastidious man, played by this moose of a guy, was just a rare piece of characterization and casting. To me, there was just no way to really come close to the uniqueness of that character and yet the show finished out its fourth year and had three more strong years after that."

Since then, ensemble dramas have been the order of the day, and almost all the best ones have survived cast changes ... and even thrived on them. "St. Elsewhere" saw the departure of Ed Flanders, David Birney and Cynthia Sykes, and the arrival of Stephen Furst, Alfre Woodard and Cindy Pickett. "L.A. Law" said goodbye to Susan Dey and Harry Hamlin, hello to Amanda Donohoe and Blair Underwood. Even a two-character show like "Cagney & Lacey" saw Sharon Gless take over for Meg Foster.

"I hate to concede this," says Waterston, who took over as lead prosecutor on "Law & Order" after Moriarty left in 1994, "but you know what they say about real estate, that there are three things that matter: location, location, location? In television series, I think it's story, story, story. If you're telling really compelling stories, there's some flexibility about who tells them.

"In some respects," he adds, coming on as a new cast member "is an advantage. The audience is already familiar, and if the show is being successful, they're already pleased with the format of the show. You only have a single job, which is to convince them that it's not worse than it was before."

Pub Date: 7/21/98