Bergen Records

A family drama with docs, cops, and inmates

Special from The Philadelphia Inquirer

After hospitals (“St. Elsewhere”), cops (“Homicide”), and prison (“Oz”), what’s left for madly prolific producer Tom Fontana?

Why, all three, of course.

UPN’s “The True Story” (working title) stars Jorja Fox (intern Maggie Doyle on “ER”) as - get this - a medical intern whose father is in prison for killing her mother.

And, oh yes, intern Meghan has a brother who’s a cop.

“In one regard, this is a cavalcade of the work of Tom Fontana,” says the producer, who’s creating the new show with his longtime partner in crime, Barry Levinson. “If we included ‘Tattingers,’ we could throw in a restaurant.”

Appearances to the contrary, “Story,” to launch in the fall, is less about doctors, cops, and prisoners than it is about Fontana’s vision of the American family.

“I’ve never wanted to do a family show because I always found them kind of sentimental and easy,” says Fontana, 47. “I want to do a show about a functional family that survives an enormous tragedy.”

“Story” is based on a real incident involving a couple Fontana knew: A man murdered his wife, then jumped off the roof of their apartment building. When their young son returned home from school, he saw his father’s body on the sidewalk, then ran upstairs to discover his mother’s.

“I think all of us, as children, experience some kind of trauma that informs us for the rest of our lives and shapes us as adults,” Fontana says. “I wanted to take that to an extreme.”

In “Story,” “here are two children who were very young when the tragedy happened. I’ve written so much about the immediacy of violence. But I thought, ‘What is the aftermath 25 years later?’” He made the woman a doctor and the man a cop so ’they both become different kinds of helpers.’"

UPN has ordered a pilot and six scripts of “Story.” Once the project gets the green light, production on 13 episodes will begin in July.

By that point, the third season of “Oz” will be in the can, Fontana says, which means he’ll only have to focus on one other ongoing series - “Homicide.”