Television is an insatiable beast that requires sustenance 24 hours a day. The prolific TV writer and producer Stephen J Cannell, who has died aged 69 from complications associated with melanoma, was just the man to help feed it. Looking back at the beginning of his career, he declared: "I thought, television, my God! There's a thousand episodes of this written each year. I ought to be able to get in there, and if I grin – I was a good salesman – I ought to be able to pick off one or two assignments. It was the only way I figured I could afford a family."
Most of his work was unapologetically formulaic, but Cannell managed to find enough variations to keep series such as The Rockford Files (1974-79) and The A-Team (1983-87) going for some years and please a vast public.
Born in Los Angeles, Cannell went through years of education with undiagnosed dyslexia. Despite poor marks in English, he announced at an early age that he was going to be a writer, and graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism. While working in one of his parent's furniture stores in Pasadena, California, he began to write television scripts and come up with story ideas.
In 1970, two scripts of his were accepted by NBC for the series Ironside, starring Raymond Burr as the wheel-chair-using detective. From then on, there seemed hardly an action series that did not have Cannell's name on it, either as writer or producer, or both. He first established himself by writing 15 episodes of the police series Adam-12 (1971-73) which, based on real case histories, followed two likable cops going about their work, without arbitrary drama. This put Cannell into a position to become a producer of his own work.
The first series for his own company was Toma (1973-74), about a real-life narcotics detective, Dave Toma (Tony Musante), who had made a name for himself by using unorthodox techniques to get the goods on criminals. The series re-emerged as Baretta (1975-78), revolving around the maverick detective (Robert Blake) of the title. Less conventional was The Rockford Files, whose hero was a down-at-heel ex-con private eye, James Scott Rockford (played by James Garner), who lives in a trailer, tries to avoid trouble and rarely carries a gun.
In contrast were the macho characters in the equally successful The A-Team, dreamed up by Cannell, who wrote most of the 97 episodes. The action adventure television series, about a group of Vietnam veterans who work as mercenaries while being on the run from the military for a "crime they didn't commit", epitomised, for some critics, the worst of mindless 80s American television, with its one-dimensional characters, constant explosions, car chases and fist fights. However, The A-Team gained a huge audience worldwide, proving that it appealed to a broader spectrum than adolescent males.
"All hits are basically mistakes," Cannell remarked. "Everyone starts out desperately trying to make a hit, but some people are just more mistake-prone than others. I happened to be fairly mistake-prone. Of the 40 shows I made, I'd say 10 were hits, which is a pretty good average."
Among the hits were Wiseguy (1987-90), an innovative undercover thriller about an FBI agent penetrating criminal gangs, which carried a story arc over as many episodes as needed; 21 Jump Street (1987-91), featuring Johnny Depp as a baby-faced cop and aimed at a teenage audience, with the idea that crime prevention is better than cure; and The Commish (1991-96), which followed the activities of a police commissioner in a small town. Not content with contributing scripts to scores of TV series, Cannell, still active at the time of his death, wrote around 14 crime novels.
The apt ending of each of his productions showed Cannell, sporting his distinctive goatee, typing on an electric typewriter, before triumphantly ripping out a sheet of paper and throwing it into the air, which becomes the company logo against a black screen.
He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Marcia, two daughters, Tawnia and Chelsea, and a son, Cody.