Bruce Paltrow’s strengths lie in television ensembles whose flawed characters are worth spending time with. We recommend St. Elsewhere with reservations about its pace and its occasional determination to explain what we have already understood.
Fi1m perspective
The hospital staff in St. Elsewhere (1982) have faults, and the actors make those faults worth our attention. We want to keep following them even when the programme takes too long to get on with things. That is the strongest reason to spend an evening with Bruce Paltrow’s work: he helped build television around people who could sustain that interest. He served as executive producer, director and writer on the series. Giving him sole credit would be unfair to the ensemble, but looking only at his directing would miss much of his contribution.
The earlier The White Shadow (1978), which he created and executive produced, brought social and racial questions into an inner-city high school. The move from school to hospital kept his attention on groups of people dealing with problems larger than their own. His preference was for realism with room for comedy, rather than treating a serious subject as a reason to exclude humour. Writer-producer Tom Fontana was among his collaborators, and Paltrow also helped develop writers and directors.
St. Elsewhere also shows where that approach can become wearing. We grew impatient when the writing insisted on a lesson we had already understood. Explaining the point again slows a programme whose principal pleasure is following the staff, and the actors deserve more trust than those passages give them. The pace can drag even without the instruction, so this is a recommendation with a qualification about the time it asks for. We still find enough in these imperfect people to make that time worthwhile.
Paltrow also directed the features A Little Sex (1982) and Duets (2000), the latter a karaoke-themed ensemble film. Later television ventures such as Home Fires (1992) did not match the critical standing of St. Elsewhere. That uneven record gives us no reason to recommend everything with his name on it. Start with the hospital staff, and be prepared to forgive the occasional lecture.
Biography
Bruce Paltrow was an American television and film director and producer. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied painting at Tulane University and began directing stage productions in New York City in the late 1960s.
He was executive producer of the series The White Shadow (1978–1981) and St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), on which he also directed fourteen episodes and wrote three. He directed one episode of Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and the feature film Duets (2000). He was married to actress Blythe Danner from 1969 until his death; their children are actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.
Paltrow died in Rome, Italy, on 3 October 2002, aged 58.
