TV TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

By CALVIN TRILLIN

As the new television season begins, I can't help wondering whether this will be the year when somebody on NYPD Blue gets to go to trial. In the past, a malefactor who's brought into the station house by detectives on that program ends up confessing. Anyone who wants his day in court has to get arrested by detectives from Law & Order.

On Law & Order, in fact, a trial is practically de rigueur. Imagine what would happen if a career criminal who's used to being picked up by NYPD Blue gets busted by the Law & Order detectives instead. I picture him sitting in the interview room saying, "Isn't there anybody around here I can confess to? I'd really like to get this off my chest." Detective Briscoe doesn't even look up. He's dialing one of the assistant district attorneys who will be doing the prosecuting.

It's sometimes difficult to believe that all these detectives are working for the same police force. If you're a steady watcher of NYPD Blue, you get the impression that concern about a backed-up criminal-justice system in New York City must be a thing of the past. Watching perpetrators spill their guts to Detective Sipowicz, you can envision a forlorn-looking New York trial judge sitting on his bench in an empty courtroom, hoping that this will be the day when a defendant comes by.

Fans of Law & Order, on the other hand, must figure that the D.A.'s office in New York City, in order to have on hand enough assistant district attorneys to argue the moral issues in every case, has a hiring program that bears some similarities in scale to the World War II draft.

It isn't unprecedented for people on television programs set in the same city to take different approaches to their jobs. A couple of years ago, I announced that if I knew someone in Chicago who'd been taken to Chicago Hope, the hospital in the program of the same name, I would do my utmost to get him out of there immediately. The doctors at Chicago Hope are a bunch of neurotics who spend most of their time complaining to one another, occasionally becoming distracted enough to leave small instruments in patients' intestines.

I'd arrange to transfer my friend to the hospital on ER, which is right across town. Those ER doctors cure just about everything with great dispatch, and they're only residents. If some whiny Chicago Hope doctor like Aaron ever tried his kvetching in an ER trauma room, Mark would tell him to pull up his socks or go home.

There is, in fact, nothing to prevent such guest appearances from people who have their professional credentials from another show. If that perp on Law & Order who's trying to confess is ignored by Detective Briscoe, what if Detective Sipowicz walked in and gave him a couple of quick whacks to focus his attention?

But if the perp confesses, would that leave Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy with nothing to do? No. Because the Law & Order detectives, unaccustomed to Sipowicz's interrogation techniques, would arrest him for police brutality. Sipowicz would know enough to clam up and call a lawyer. Finally a suspect from NYPD Blue would go to trial.