|
|
The verdict is in: Mother-daughter drama 'Judging Amy' is holding its own
Philadelphia Daily News - October 26, 1999
By Ellen Gray
JUDGING AMY. Channel 3, 10 p.m.
One person who's probably not complaining about ABC postponing the season premiere of "NYPD Blue" until Jan. 11 is the woman whose hit series on CBS helped drive that decision.
"I think I'd rather keep facing 'Once and Again,' because we've been proving ourself in our slot," Barbara Hall, co-creator of "Judging Amy," said Friday in an interview
conducted shortly before ABC announced its decision. "When you're doing well, you don't want anything to change."
And make no mistake: "Judging Amy" is doing well.
Just six weeks into the fall season, Hall finds herself the unexpected flavor of the month, as pundits (yeah, that's us) struggle to explain how a series about a mother-daughter relationship could
have not only cracked the Nielsen Top 10 but drawn more viewers than the widely acclaimed - and also successful - "Once and Again." The ABC drama's tenure in "Blue's" time slot
has been extended until January, in part because the network reportedly feared losing women viewers to "Judging Amy."
"It's really exciting," said Hall, a novelist and veteran TV writer whose credits include "Chicago Hope," "Northern Exposure," "I'll Fly Away" and
"Moonlighting." "It's a huge deal. . . . The thing I can't just get over is to have a hit show at all," because it's so rare for a drama, particularly, to become a hit in its
first season. "That's the part that I'm so floored by."
And yes, she's aware that few people expected fireworks from "Judging Amy," which stars Amy Brenneman as a fledgling family-court judge and Tyne Daly as her mother.
"I think people didn't know what to make of the show when they saw the pilot," Hall said of television critics, noting that many compared it to NBC's estrogen-fueled hit,
"Providence," and that even the most positive reviews she'd seen had described the show as a "sleeper."
"I just think that one of the things that happened was that people really came out in force to see Tyne and Amy. I think there was a lot of interest in both of them," she said.
Curiousity alone wouldn't explain "Amy's" steady rise in the ratings, progress only slightly slowed last week by the last game of the Mets-Braves National League playoff. Averaging 15.5
million viewers for the season to date, "Judging Amy" is the top-rated drama of the new season - and running only a little behind "Once and Again" among the 18- to 49-year-olds
most networks target.
So was it word of mouth that overcame the critics' drumbeat for "Once and Again"?
"I'm the show's show runner. I think it's because it's a great show, of course [but] yeah, I think it's word of mouth," Hall said.
Hall created the show with Brenneman, who's also an executive producer.
"Amy is very involved in the overview of the show," she said. "We get together and do what I call the big-muscle groups," discussing, for instance, plans for the rest of the
season after CBS picked up the series up for the full season.
Brenneman's not the only cast member with something to say.
"Tyne is really great," Hall said of her other star. "Tyne has a really strong sense of who she is and what her strengths are and she's a really fearless actor . . . She's all about
the work. And when people are all about the work I find them easy to work with, no matter how demanding they are."
"Judging Amy" is loosely based on the story of Brenneman's mother, a Connecticut judge, but it's also partly Hall's story, she said. "The mother-daughter relationship that I wanted
to depict was not unlike my own and not unlike Amy's and her mother's," she said.
In addition, glimpses of Hall's relationship with her own daughter, Faith, 7, can be seen in the interactions of Brenneman's character, Judge Amy Gray, and her young daughter, Lauren.
"What I like about what's emerged is that it's a depiction of single motherhood that isn't bleak, that isn't a terrible struggle . . . She's not a victim," said Hall, who remarried last
year after four years as a single mother.
"I don't want to be an advocate of divorce," she said, but "the shock of being described as having a broken home when I was divorced - I don't ever want to go through that again. I
really believe that homes are broken when they aren't working."
What's working for "Judging Amy" is a lack of "gimmicks," Hall said.
"We think the best gimmick is to keep telling great stories and to showcase great acting," she said. "We're not going to show any butts, that's not what we're doing."
Copyright © 1999 Philadelphia Daily News. All rights reserved.
|
