Swinging for the Fences

The cast and creator of the game-changing series Picket Fences look back at the show’s sweetest —and most surreal—moments.

- Craig Tomashoff

Showrunner and writer David E. Kelley well understood the appeal of the adage “Home is where the heart is.” And he also knew, when he was pitching a show to CBS in 1991, that it would be all the more appealing if that home was in the actual heartland.

“He said he wanted to do a show depicting life behind the white picket fences of America,” recalls then-executive vice president Peter Tortorici. “The way he described it, though, there was so much more complexity, so manybizarre things going on behind those fences. We just thought, ‘We can’t get this on the air fast enough.’”

In theory, Picket Fences was a family drama set in the tiny town of Rome, Wisconsin, centering on Sheriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt), his wife and town doctor Jill (Kathy Baker), and their kids (Holly Marie Combs, Justin Shenkarow, and Adam Wylie). In reality, the series was unlike anything that had come before it, thanks to quirky characters like local lawyer Douglas Wambaugh (Fyvush Finkel) and his nemesis, Judge Henry Bone (Ray Walston), along with plots including a thief who left a trail of frogs, mayors who died of spontaneous combustion, and a wife who committed suicide by climbing into a dishwasher.