Film and Television

NBC has struck a rich deal (ching-ching!) with Dick Wolf will keep his three LAW AND ORDER shows on the air for at least two more seasons… and bring a fourth LAW AND ORDER show to the network by midseason. Dick Wolf owns so much NBC real estate, pretty soon the network itself will become part of his franchise (ching-ching!). From www.variety.com:

It didn’t take new conglom NBC Universal long to lock up its most valuable employee: Dick Wolf has sealed a deal that keeps the “Law & Order” bossman firmly entrenched there through June 2008.
As part of the deal, NBC has also picked up Wolf’s “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” through the 2005-06 season. And the fourth installment of the “Law & Order” franchise, “Trial by Jury,” is now officially on the boards and will likely premiere sometime next midseason.

All told, the Wolf pact — which the Peacock had been anxious to finalize prior to next week’s upfront presentations — could be worth well north of $1 billion (Daily Variety, May 4). That includes Wolf’s fees, as well as the license deals for all four shows.

CBS seems headed in the same direction. CSI: CBS has ordered CSI: NEW YORK for next season. The pilot airs next month as an episode of CSI: MIAMI.

Can CSI: YES DEAR be far behind?

It’s official…Deadwood is my favorite show on television right now. Unpredictable. Shocking. Offensive. Memorable. Hilarious. Ugly. Unexpectedly moving. The characters are fresh and surprising, the sense of place palpable, and the dialogue utterly original. I don’t think I have ever heard profanity used so effectively or, dare I say it, poetically. Watch this show are your peril…it’s addictive and hard to get out of your head.

Another true TV anecdote…

Bill Rabkin and I were in middle of writing an episode of “Spenser: For Hire,” which was airing at 10 p.m. on Saturday nights. In our episode, Spenser sees a woman jump off the roof of a building, so he begins to investigate why she wanted to commit suicide. He discovers she’s fleeing her brother, with whom she shared an incestous relationship. The network loved the story.

We get a call on a Friday from the network. They had just decided to move “Spenser For Hire” to 8 pm on Sunday, sandwhiched between “The Wonderful World of Disney” and “The Dolly Parton Show.”

Somehow our episode didn’t seem quite right for the Family Hour, unless your idea of family is rather twisted. But the network didn’t think it was quite as big a problem as we did.

“We love everything about the script, so all you need to do is take out the incest,” the network exec said, “but maintain the integrity of the story.”

Justina Muchado has left our show and Mark Consuelos has stepped in. Production began this week on our second season…and just let me say, Vivica Fox rocks.

Lifetime’s ‘Missing’ finds Fox, Consuelos

“Missing” is produced by Lions Gate TV in association with CHUM TV. Glenn Davis, William Laurin and Debra Martin Chase are exec producers.

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.