The summer portion of a TV season usually means that NBC is missing the first responder action that comes from the three shows of One Chicago, but that’s not the case in the 2023 TV schedule thanks to LA Fire & Rescue. Although the new show is unscripted, it hails from the Wolf Entertainment production company behind Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med and delivers a look at the real-life heroes of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Executive producer Rasha Drachkovitch spoke with CinemaBlend about what having Dick Wolf as a partner meant for getting the docuseries off the ground!
LA Fire & Rescue is several episodes into a season that involved unprecedented access to the LA County Fire Department, showcasing firefighters, paramedics, lifeguards, and more to tell powerful stories. Filming with the first responders meant precautions to keep the crew safe in life and death situations, which required getting creative for the lifeguard saves that were simply too dangerous for camera operators. When I spoke with Rasha Drachkovitch about the show, he shared how they gained access to shoot across the LA County FD:
I produce a lot of shows in the first responder space, from Nightwatch on A&E to First Responders Live on Fox. To get access is the key. Without access, you don't have the show. It certainly helps to have Dick Wolf as your partner, because when we reached out to the LA County Fire Department, one of the largest fire departments in the world, it took us two years to finally convince them to grant us that.
Support from Dick Wolf can go a very long way in unscripted projects as well as scripted, apparently! Thanks to the three Law & Order shows and three FBI shows on top of One Chicago, Wolf Entertainment is already behind nine of network television’s most successful dramas. With Wolf’s success in television going back decades, he was clearly a good partner for Rasha Drachkovitch and the LA Fire & Rescue team.
And even with the Dick Wolf partnership, the project took a couple of years to get off the ground with the necessary access to the LA County Fire Department! It’s not something that happens for every production, as the executive producer continued:
What's interesting about that is they haven't granted access for any filming in almost 40 years, since the show Emergency. I don't know if you remember that show, but it was on NBC in the '70s. They were pretty private to what they do until we finally were able to convince them, and that was a game-changer because it allowed us an incredible environment to tell these stories from.
Thanks to getting that access for the first time since the 1970s, LA Fire & Rescue has been able to showcase what Rasha Drachkovitch described as the “next level heroism” of the LA County FD, which has involved a close look at the danger they face as well as very personal stories, like when firefigher Dave Castellanos opened up about his fellow firefighters supporting him through a cancer diagnosis. The show may be unscripted, but the stories it tells may seem quite familiar to fans of Chicago Fire in particular.
With Chicago Fire and the other two Chicago-set shows on NBC currently on hiatus and the WGA writers strike meaning no guarantee of when they’ll return, I would definitely say that LA Fire & Rescue is a solid summer viewing option for first responder action. There are still several episodes left, so be sure to keep tuning in to NBC on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET to see what comes next. You can also revisit earlier episodes streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
