Iconic producer Steven Bochco has died at 74 These 5 shows explain how he changed TV

Steven Bochco, one of the most influential creators and producers in TV history, died Sunday in his sleep. He was 74. (No official cause of death has been released, but Bochco had been battling leukemia for several years.)

As a TV writer in the late 1960s and '70s, Bochco worked on everything from Columbo to McMillan & Wife, cranking out sharp scripts for the well-oiled TV machines of the time. But it was when he joined the then-powerful MTM Productions (the company behind classic sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show) to help the company jump-start its drama division that he became someone who must be acknowledged in even the most cursory summaries of TV's history.

His first show with MTM, Paris, which ran for 13 episodes in 1979 and 1980, was groundbreaking for the time, starring James Earl Jones as a police captain whose relationships with the officers working under him were satisfyingly complex. What's more, the show actually followed him home to see how he interacted with his wife, something few police dramas had done before. In its interest in contemporary issues and the protagonist's personal life, Paris served as a cursory blueprint for what was to come.

But it was Bochco's next show that would change everything. Co-created with Michael Kozoll, Hill Street Blues would debut in 1981 on NBC and run for 144 episodes that altered television forever. From its storytelling style to its visuals, Hill Street rewrote the rules of what a TV drama could be, and made possible the boom in great drama that followed in the '90s and 2000s.

Here, then, are Hill Street Blues and four other TV shows that will help you understand why Steven Bochco is one of the all-time greatest TV producers.

If you were to watch just one series to understand how dramatically Bochco changed the game, make it this one. Even better, take a look at one of the great dramas of the '70s ' like The Rockford Files, for instance ' then look at this one to see just how differently it approached its storytelling.

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