Bochco still marching to his own drummer

The man sitting in the big comfy chair in the big comfy office in Santa Monica looks familiar and sounds familiar but -- in some hard-to-define way -- he is not familiar at all. He turns 64 this December yet remains youthful in a way that only California and good genes can confer. His hair is gray. His skin is unwrinkled.

But what is so different about Steven Bochco may be this: He is reflective and even philosophical. "I'm not chasing the way I used to," says someone who spent four decades in the chase and changed television in the process.

There is an autumnal air about Bochco.

And Bochco, you should understand, is not an autumnal sort of guy.

He is not chasing, nor is he doing much producing. Bochco, co-creator and executive producer of such heralded series as "Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law" and "NYPD Blue," is shooting a pilot for TNT titled "Raising the Bar." It's about a public defender in the Bronx and stars Jane Kaczmarek and Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

But after that, zip.

An association with ABC that dates back to 1987 ends shortly. he has little interest in working for the networks -- too much micromanaging -- though admits the feeling may be mutual.

"I don't think there's a big appetite for the stuff I like to do," he says.

In the argot of the trade, Bochco is a reality-based drama producer in a business now crawling with "high-concept" fantasists who draw their inspiration from comic books. "You're looking at 400-year-old cops and detectives who are vampires. . . . It's fine. I don't have any disdain for it. It's just not what I do."

What Bochco has done well are cop and legal dramas. He's arguably the most successful drama producer in TV history -- nine Emmys, a pair of Humanitas prizes and a penchant for pushing the boundaries of content and language, which made him a controversial figure at the outset of "NYPD Blue's" run in 1993. (The word "blue," of course, was a double-entendre for the uniform of cops as well as their language and off-duty behavior.)

Dennis Franz, "NYPD Blue's" Andy Sipowicz and a Bochco associate going back to "Hill Street Blues" in 1981, said in a recent phone interview, "Steven is very much a realist and he never tried to fool anybody with anything. What you see is what you get, and he's very honest with himself and with other people around him to a fault. But . . . he's acknowledged [to me] that when you get older, the fires don't burn as strong, and the drive may not be as strong as it was. I'm experiencing the same thing."