Television

I was reading the Publishers Weekly close-up on mysteries, which reminded me of a pitch meeting we had a few years ago at a basic cable network, before MONK burst on the scene. I pitched a mystery series, a blend of reality and scripted tv, to the new development exec. He interrupted me in middle of the pitch.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You want to do a mystery every week?”

“Uh, yes,” I said.

“It can’t be done,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“I mean, you can’t tell a new mystery every week,” he said. “It’s just not possible.”

“Of course it is,” I replied. “I’ve done it. Diagnosis Murder was a mystery.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it was,” I argued.

“Nobody can do a mystery every week,” he said. “It’s ludicrous.”

“Murder She Wrote, Law and Order, CSI, those are all mysteries,” I said.

“No, they aren’t.”

“Okay,” I said. “What is your idea of a mystery?”

“Scooby-Doo,” he replied.

“That’s an animated Saturday morning cartoon,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said.

I was unaware this was national turn off your TV week until Bob Sassone told me. They need a better publicist. Or maybe a good TV commercial. Anyway, the idea is you should stop watching TV and spend more time with your family and read more books. I’m all for those things naturally, but I think both are overrated. The last conversation I had with my wife and daughter involved my daughter musing about what colors the uniforms might be on her soccer team. And my daughter isn’t even on a soccer team yet. The last book I read was a mystery, that shall go nameless, and that was no better than an average TV show. So was I really better off having that conversation and reading that book than watching the latest episode of “law and order?” I don’t think it’s an either or question really. Turn off your TV week is just stupid. I’m not just saying that as someone who makes his living in TV and writes a lot of TV. The fact is television viewing is at an all-time low — at least among the major networks. I wonder if people are really watching as much TV is the anti-TV people think they are. And even if they are so what? Is TV worse for you than a bad book? Is TV worse for you than a video game, computer game, playing with your PDA, your blackberry, or your cell phone? There are a thousand things keeping us from wonderful wholesome family conversations and classic novels. Why single 0ut tv? I say let’s have a no Game Boy week, a no cell phone week, or no Internet week. Let’s see how that would fly!

I was reading about the exec shakeup at ABC this morning…

One of the sad things about the ABC situation is that they actually put some good shows on the air that probably would have been hits on other networks — like LINE OF FIRE, DRAGNET (SEASON 1) and KAREN SISCO. If any of these three shows had been on NBC, they might still be on the air now. Though, to be fair, the last three episodes of SISCO felt like the fifth year of a very tired show (they did the heros-are-hostages in bank heist episode for God’s sake). Still, there is a good reason ABC is mired at #4. Their dramas sucked. I dont think anybody is going to miss KINGDOM HOSPITAL, THREAT MATRIX, THE DA, or 10-8. Remember VERITAS, MDs, THIEVES, Push Nevada, miracles, that was then, the court, snoops, the beast, Dinotopia anyone? Plus, they never aired my special THE BEST TV SHOWS THAT NEVER WERE, making the show an ironic joke in and of itself. If they’d aired my show, they’d probably be at least #3 now.

Before starting a pitch, I like to ask the execs what they are looking for. At a recent meeting at a network, the exec said:

“We’re wide open,” she said. “The only things we don’t want to hear are cop shows, science fiction shows, anything set in the past, military shows, buddy detectives or stuff with monsters.”

I could think of only one genre she left out. “What about a medical show?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “We don’t want those, either.”

I was in middle of pitching three TV series ideas when the newly minted network exec – formerly a lawyer, rock musician, accountant and personal trainer—interrupted me.

“You have no clue what makes a good TV series concept,” the exec said. “And your pitches suck.”

I smiled. “But does the rest work for you?”

“You want to hear a pitch? This is the perfect pitch, I just bought it.” the exec continued. “There’s a cop. He’s a rebel. He’s a rogue. He doesn’t play by the rules. He’s also an incredible slob. He’s teamed up with a new partner who’s a stickler for the rules, a team player, and a neat freak. His new partner is…a dog.”

I stared at him. “A dog?”

“A dog,” he said proudly.

“Does the dog talk?” I asked.

The exec’s eyes lighted up. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

A good friend of mine, Terry Winter, writes for the Sopranos. He’s a very funny writer, and not surprisingly, writes the funniest episodes of the show. Despite best-known for running the Pines Barrens episode last season. Anyway tonight he wrote episode that was pure Terry. Besides being damn funny, it was full of TV references. Including nods to that’s life, which was written and produced by former Sopranos writer Frank Renzuli, as well as Nash Bridges, which was written by John Wirth, who Terry also worked with. There were also some sly references to law and order, Dick Wolf, and Rene Balcer. There was also a clip on the TV in one of the flashbacks to episode of Cannon — and it wouldn’t surprise me if David Chase worked on it at one point in his early career. In an episode a season or two ago, Terry had junior watching diagnosis murder. I still can’t figure out why Terry didn’t use a clip from the episode he wrote for us!

From the Evening Post

Rebus show killed off by ITV bosses

A spokeswoman for ITV said: “Four episodes were commissioned and they did very well. But we are not obliged to make any more.”

In other words, she’s saying the show sucked. I don’t disagree. I’m a huge rebus fan and I was really looking forward to the series. But John Hannah was miscast, the direction was flat and the scripts didn’t capture the feel of Ian Rankin’s wonderful books at all (it reminded me of the lousy Blood Work adaptation…it, too, sounded so good on paper and was so bad in execution). It wasn’t the Inspector Morse/Nero Wolfe sort of adaptation all of us rebus fans were waiting for. I hope they try again — with new writers and a new star .

This is a true story:

I was working on Murphy’s Law, a light-hearted detective series starring George Segal as an insurance investigator when I got this call from the network censor with notes on our script:

“You’ve got one of your characters calling another character a moron,” the censor said.

“Yeah, so?”

“You can’t do that,” he said. “We’ve approved ‘dolt,’‘dummy’ or ‘dink,’ as acceptable alternatives.”

“What’s wrong with calling somebody a moron?”

“You’ll offend all the morons in the audience,” he said.

I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

So I said, “Don’t worry, all the morons in the audience are watching Hunter.”

Three months later, Murphy’s Law was cancelled… and I got a job on Hunter.

I got this note in response to my “Fiction is Reality on Television” post:

I was amused by your post on CSI, because I work in a forensics lab [name and location omitted] and CSI has affected our business, too, albeit in different ways than it’s affected yours. One problem we have is that with CSI and NEW DETECTIVES and the like, everybody’s an expert (as Briscoe
wise-cracked on one episode of LAW & ORDER). Except, of course, they’re not.

The good news: CSI’s success means a) funding and b) jobs. The bad news: people actually *believe* what they see on the show, down to the bizarre plots.

I’m sure people on jurys now consider themselves forensic experts, too. I wonder what impact the show is having in America’s courtrooms.

Used to be you could watch a TV mystery and have a shot at figuring out whodunit. Not anymore. Not unless you have a crimelab in your family room. Eric Deggans wrote an interesting article about the murder of the whodunit.