The softer dramas

Written by - November 2004

By Susan Littwin

After a year as supervising producer on Judging Amy, Carol Barbee started the current season as co-executive producer before stepping into the showrunner position on the six-year-old show. (Portait by Tom Keller)

Meanwhile, the softer, family dramas now have women producers as well as women viewers.

Barbara Hall began her career writing young-adult novels and got her first television assignment from Joshua Brand and John Falsey for the fine but brief A Year in the Life [developed by Stu Kreiger]. She continued writing on their later shows, Northern Exposure and I'll Fly Away, and then did a longer stint at Chicago Hope [created by David E. Kelley]. In 1999 she was called in to rescue Judging Amy [created by John Tinker & Bill D'Elia and Amy Brenneman & Connie Tavel, developed by Barbara Hall] when early scripts weren't working. Hall was a solid writer on a shaky show, and no one questioned her authority. In fact, most of the worrying was about the authority and toughness of her main character. "Too unfeminine," read the notes. Hall left Amy to create and run another CBS one-hour drama, Joan of Arcadia, leaving showrunner duties to her sister, Karen Hall, during the 2003 season.

The torch was passed again, this time to Carol Barbee, who rose through the writing staff ranks after a year at the series to work as showrunner on Judging Amy this year.

Barbee, 45, came to writing through the side door of acting. Born and raised in Concord, North Carolina, she majored in theater at Wake Forest University and then earned an MFA in acting at UCLA. She had roles in Music Center productions and guest starred on L.A. Law, Northern Exposure, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "Then I got pregnant with my first child. I wasn't working, and I had an idea for a screenplay." She took screenwriting classes at UCLA Extension but had the advantage of an actor's feel for character arc and dialogue. "I talk to myself when I write," she says. Her screenplay, Madonnas of the Field, won a UCLA/Dreamworks award and got her an agent. "I knew one-hour drama from acting, so it made sense to me. I could explain the characters incrementally. In features, something had to blow up in the first 30 pages."

She freelanced an episode for Providence and then worked on its staff until the show was cancelled. She sold a pilot to CBS and then got the offer from Amy. (The Halls are from Virginia, and Karen Hall teased that she just wanted another Southerner on the show.) Barbee came in at the producer level and moved to supervising producer by episode nine. This year, she started as co-executive producer and became showrunner when Richard Kramer left early in the year.

Amy is a semiserialized drama about a judge (played by Amy Brenneman), her social worker mother (Tyne Daly), and a ménage of relatives with assorted problems and eccentricities. During its early years, the show was centered on Amy's family law cases and her mother's thematically related social work cases. So it has its own "procedural" elements. Last year, the focus shifted to Amy's private life, but Barbee says, "This year we're going back to a case-driven model. The show works best with sharp, strong cases." So it seems does CBS.

"I have never felt defined as a female writer," Barbee says. She worked for male executive producers and got her first jobs from men. She mentions that she came to writing late in life, as a second career, obliquely making the point that women have another odd advantage. They may not have the wunderkind slot open to them, but on the other hand no one wonders where they have been until they are almost 40. They were busy being women, having children or marriages, or working traditional jobs. "I feel fortunate," she says. "I was able to change careers at 39."

Barbee has two children, ages seven and 11. "I leave here by 7 p.m.," she says. (More typically, one of the other showrunners returned a call at 8 p.m, and still had casting people waiting for a meeting.) "If more needs to be done, I do it at home." She also runs one of those orderly shops that do not conflate chaos with creativity. Scripts are not torn apart at the last minute because of a caprice of the showrunner. "We're organized. We have a calendar of when scripts are due, so if something needs seven rewrites, there's no panic. I think the staff appreciates that I respect their time. I also think that a person who has a life will be a better writer."

Amy, she says, has an amiable cast, and she has the further advantage of a split hierarchy. Executive producer Joseph Stern oversees production, leaving Barbee to concentrate on the scripts. But she admits that she was originally intimidated at the prospect of writing for Tyne Daly. "She's such a legend, such a brilliant actress, and I come in like Little Mary Sunshine. She'll tear me apart." Now she gives notes to Daly as well as all the other actors. When she does have a problem with an actor, "the mom energy kicks in." She recalls an actor on another show unleashing a tirade at her on the set. "It's like a kid having a tantrum in the supermarket. You get him out of there." She steered the angry actor to a private corner. "I got in his face just to get his attention. Then I said, 'Let's solve this problem.' And we fixed it right then and there.'"


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