John Larroquette is a familiar face to fans of sitcoms and legal dramas,
and a well-known voice to horror-heads. He's been plenty busy since "Night Court" first
ended in 1992, but if you missed his many turns, here's a rundown.
More than thirty years after its final episode aired, "Night Court"
is back. The reaction has been mixed, but some critics, like William Hughes at the A.V. Club,
insist that once the reboot hits its stride, it's a worthwhile watch. Hughes rhetorically
asks why a "Night Court" reboot needs to exist and provides a two-fold answer. First, it provides a
new sitcom home for "The Big Bang Theory" star Melissa Rauch. For the second, Hughes writes,
The original "Night Court" imprint is all over the new series. Rauch's Judge Abby
Stone is the daughter of Judge Harry Stone, who was played by the late Harry Anderson.
"I moved here for a job. I am the new night court judge."
[scream]
Yet Larroquette is the only original cast member to return as a regular in the new
series as prosecutor Dan Fielding. So what led him back to Judge Stone's courtroom?
"Night Court" was by no means the actor's first go-around in sitcoms.
His very first TV appearance was in an episode of "Sanford and Son." He also appeared in other
classic sitcoms of the era, including "Three's Company" and "Mork & Mindy."
After he broke out with "Night Court," it's not all that surprising that Larroquette
jumped right into starring in his own sitcom, "The John Larroquette Show." Premiering on NBC
in the fall of 1993, the show revolved around Larroquette's John Hemingway,
the manager of a bus depot in St. Louis. Themes usually involved recovering alcoholic Hemingway's
sobriety and membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, topics with which Larroquette was familiar.
The series struggled to attract viewers. Though its premise underwent some retooling
after the end of its first season in an attempt to lighten its atmosphere,
it was abruptly canceled only one month into its fourth season in 1996.
The following year, Larroquette made his first appearance as Joey Heric on the ABC
legal drama "The Practice." First appearing as one of attorney Bobby Donnell's clients in Season 2,
Joey is revealed to be narcissistic and conniving, willing to manipulate the legal
system to his own ends and literally get away with murder, not just once but twice.
When he returns in Season 6, he passes the bar and becomes an attorney himself.
"Can't anybody say, 'Hey, good to see ya?'"
Larroquette's sinister Heric ended up appearing in six episodes of the David E. Kelley drama.
"The Practice" ended in 2004, and spun off into a new series that year, "Boston Legal." Larroquette
joined the cast of that series in 2007, but not as Heric, as a totally new character.
He played Carl Sack, senior partner at the firm Crane, Poole & Schmidt. In Season 4,
Sack transfers from New York to the Boston office. He is initially put
off by the Bostonians' more carefree attitude, but eventually finds his home
among them. Larroquette remained a regular on the series for its last two seasons.
Larroquette has made a habit out of playing lawyers,
so it's fitting he portrayed mystery-solving former-LAPD-officer-turned-attorney Mike
McBride in all ten entries in the "McBride" TV movie series,
which aired on the Hallmark Channel between 2005 and 2008.
Larroquette himself directed four of the 10 movies, in which McBride investigated
the murders of a therapist, a radio host, a Hollywood madam,
and many others. All had punchy titles like "McBride: Murder Past Midnight" or "McBride:
Tune in for Murder." There was even an entry that focused on a murder at a dog show called "McBride:
Dogged." Larroquette's son Jonathan provided music for some of the movies.
A non-lawyer thread that has run throughout Larroquette's career is
one you may not know about, since his face is never shown in any of the movies. He
has narrated numerous entries in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise,
starting with the very first film in 1974. That movie was his very first acting job.
"For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare."
Larroquette told Parade magazine that he had known director Tobe Hooper at
least five years before the movie was made. Hooper called in a favor from
his friend and was so strapped for cash that he paid him with a bag of cannabis.
Other films for which Larroquette has provided narration include the
2003 "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake, its 2006 prequel "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:
The Beginning," and 2022's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
Despite his crucial contribution to the series,
the actor insists that horror isn't really his genre. He has never watched any of the films.