American television producer, screenwriter, and novelist Stephen J. Cannell has died, aged 69. He was a master storyteller behind hours of entertaining crime dramas or action/adventure shows.Stephen J. Cannell started his long and highly successful career at the end of the sixties as a writer for
Universal Television on shows like
It takes a Thief, Ironside or
Adam-12. In
1973 he wrote the screenplay for
Double Exposure, one of the most famous episode of
Columbo, where the murderer played by
Robert Culp used a subliminal image to trap his victim. One year later TV producer, writer and creator
Roy Huggins (
Maverick,
The Fugitive) teamed up with Cannell to create
The Rockford Files, starring
James Garner as
Jim Rockford.
Rockford, a private eye, wrongfully served time in prison before being pardoned. He lived in a mobile home (doubling as his office) in a parking lot on a beach of Malibu. The show, which lasted
six seasons, contained everything that made the style of Stephen J. Cannell as a creator/producer: likeable outcast characters, a cocktail of comedy and drama, modern and witty dialogues, and the music of
Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.
Cannell went on writing History of US television with
Baretta (
1975-1978),
Baa Baa Black Sheep (
1976-1978), or
The Greatest American Hero (
1981-1983). In
1979 he formed
Stephen J. Cannell Productions, which became a powerful production company with the success of with
The A-Team (
1983-1987), co-created with
Frank Lupo.
In the eighties, his creations/productions epitomized this sense of popular entertainment which gave US dramas a global appeal. With his shows, atypical cops (
Hunter) or private investigators (
Hardcastle & McCormick,
Riptide, Stingray) then rivaled
Aaron Spelling's productions for the domination of network primetime schedules.
Always anticipating evolutions in his business, Stephen J. Cannell opened a studio facility in
Vancouver, British Columbia, toward the end of the 1980s in order to reduce production costs. There he produced shows like
21 Jump Street (
1987-1991), the innovative and critically acclaimed
Wiseguy (
1987-1990), or
The Commish (
1991-1996).
New World Communications acquired his company in
1995, then Cannell founded
The Cannell Studios.
Sometimes Stephen J. Cannell appeared as an actor in his own shows or in series produced by others: he played corrupt cop
"Dutch" Dixon in
Renegade (
1992-1997), his own creation, or TV producer
Jackson Burley in the hilarious
1997 episode of
Diagnosis Murder called
Must Kill TV. Since the nineties Cannell was also a best-seller novelist and he appeared as himself in the pilot and two episodes of
Castle (
2009), playing cards with the main character and fellow novelists
James Patterson and
Michael Connelly. The most extraordinary is that Cannell lived with
dyslexia his whole life and was even a spokesperson on the subject.
During three decades Stephen J. Cannell entertained millions of TV viewers around the world with his stories, his characters and his productions. Some were not rating hits but left imprints in a way or another:
City of Angels (
1976, co-created with Roy Huggins) and
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (
1980) are revered as masterpieces, the short-lived
Unsub (
1989) is widely considered as the protype of
CSI and
Profit (
1996) is a cult classic.
With the death of Cannell, it's an entire era of the US television industry which is ripped from his typewriter and flies away.
http://www.cannell.com/http://www.crescentblues.com/1_2_issue/cannel.shtml
[18.25 - French Time] The Waters of Mars will be aired in France by DTT pubcaster France 4 this saturday. The Doctor Who specials starring David Tennant as the tenth Doctor marked a new era for the French-speaking dubbing dialogues with the arrival of two talented authors: Chantal Bugalski (The West Wing, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and François Dubuc (The State Within).
