How BECKER came to be

Here's a Friday Question that warrants an entire post because the creator of BECKER, Dave Hackel was nice enough to answer this BECKER question. 

Michael had the question:

 

Do you know if BECKER was first pitched to NBC before ending up on CBS? I would have assumed NBC would have been interested in Ted Danson's first new show after CHEERS. 

Dave?


The quick answer is “no.”  

The show was only pitched to CBS.

The more detailed answer is this:  It’s difficult to remember the order of the chess moves, but at the time, now twenty-three years ago, the character of Becker was considered pretty edgy, so Paramount suggested that we try to attract an actor first.  

Also, it was known in the community that CBS had a deal with Ted but had not yet come up with a show for him. 

Paramount sent it to Ted’s representatives, they sent it to him, he read it and wanted to meet with me. Then if you remember, I put together a reading of the pilot. Ted wanted to see how it felt to be John Becker and he wanted me to see if I thought he was a good fit for the part.  Our deal was that if either of us didn’t feel it worked, we could walk away — no harm, no foul.  

We were both pleased with the way the reading went so Paramount took our “package” to CBS.  It was the perfect confluence of actor, script and timing.  Remove any one of those three elements…mainly Ted, of course…and the script would likely still be in my desk drawer.

Hi, it’s me again.

I remember that reading.  I was initially skeptical.  But Ted won me over by page 3.  He combined that one magic element — the ability to be edgy while still being lovable.  I’m still trying to achieve that.

Thanks again to Dave Hackel.  

from By Ken Levine