Deadline (2000 TV series)
Deadline is an American drama television series created by Dick Wolf, that aired on NBC from October 2, 2000, to October 30, 2000. It stars Oliver Platt as Wallace Benton, star columnist for the fictional New York Ledger, a daily tabloid newspaper seen in many episodes of Law & Order and modeled after the real-life New York Post. Cast and characters Oliver Platt as Wallace Benton Bebe Neuwirth as Nikki Masucci Tom Conti as Si Beekman Lili Taylor as Hildy Baker Hope Davis as Brooke Benton Damon Gupton as Charles Foster Christina Chang as Beth Khambu Production Series creator Dick Wolf hired Robert Palm as head writer and executive producer. Palm had worked for years as a newspaper reporter on the Hartford Times and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner before moving into screenwriting with jobs on Miami Vice. He and Wolf had worked together previously on the tenth season of Law & Order. They didn't want to do another "cop show" and agreed on one with journalism as its focus. In 1999, Wolf pitched the show to NBC with Oliver Platt as its star and sold it without producing a pilot, as is the norm, but instead with a three-minute