Decorated TV vet Judd Hirsch hopes new show ‘Forever’ lives a long life

By Nick Patch, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – Back in 1978, Judd Hirsch was relatively new to television. He was a 40-something stage actor who had only booked major roles guest-starring on “Rhoda” and heading up the acclaimed but short-lived detective series “Delvecchio.”

Still, the first time he leafed through a script for “Taxi,” he knew exactly what he had — a template for real longevity.

“I looked at the script and went: ‘Pfft. Years,'” said Hirsch in a spring interview in Toronto. “It was that good. It was that predictable. When the characters are desirable, funny and all this stuff — you win.”

Indeed, the influential sitcom ran for five seasons and 114 episodes, reeling in 18 Emmy Awards along the way — including two for lead actor Hirsch.

Over the course of a long screen career, the 79-year-old has participated in TV runs that amounted to marathons (“Numb3rs” and its 114-episode order; the 90-chapter “Dear John”) and false starts (the swiftly cancelled “Regular Joe,” “George & Leo” and “Detective in the House”).

On CTV this Monday, he launches the optimistically titled “Forever.” The crime procedural centres on Ioan Gruffudd’s Dr. Henry Morgan, a distinguished New York medical examiner with a secret: he’s inexplicably immortal and has been alive more than two centuries.

Hirsch is Morgan’s chatty mensch confidant, the only one in the loop on the doctor’s loopy secret. Since the show hinges on the freewheeling chemistry between its old-soul leads, Hirsch says he was relieved to learn how much he enjoyed Gruffudd’s company.

“We were fast friends,” said the decorated Hirsch, a two-time Tony Award winner and an Oscar nominee for “Ordinary People.”

“We met in five seconds. He has a silly name and so do I. I mean, I couldn’t figure out his name. That was the first 20 minutes. … I have to call him ‘yo-hahn,’ because I think that’s what his real name is.”

Hirsch says he simply loved “Forever”‘s story, which he calls “filmic” and “wondersome.”

An old-school screen vet, he’s not necessarily enamoured of TV’s movement toward serialization. Each episode of the show, he said, should stand alone, though he notes that “there’s a mystery involved in this which would go on for many, many, many years.”

You know, should the show last that long.

“Talk to me in 10 years,” he said with a smile. “We’ll see if it works.”

— Follow @CP_Patch on Twitter.

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