#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
The fine folks at TVTracker are circulating the Fox schedules for both fall and midseason, too, when 24 and AMERICAN IDOL return to the air. The new drama series include BONES (about a forensic anthropologist), THE GATE (about deviant criminals and the cops
who pursue them), HEAD CASES (Chris O’Donnell as a mentally-disturbed lawyer) and PRISON BREAK ( a guy breaks into the prison he designed to help his falsely accused brother escape).
The complete schedules are on the jump.
I got this email today…then again, it seems like I get it every day:
I have a great idea for a TV cop show but I’m not a writer. How can I sell it?
I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before, but here goes anyway. This is a column I wrote several years ago for Mystery Scene about an experience I had with a woman who wanted me to sell her Really Great Idea For a TV Series. Parts of it will be familiar to those of you who’ve read my replies to this question before…
I was a guest at Sleuthfest in Florida a few years back and after one of my panels, a woman approached me saying she had a great idea for a television series. Even better, she already had 22
scripts written and a list of actors she felt were perfect for the parts.
All I had to do, she said, was sell it and we’d both be rich.
CBS has announced their fall schedule. The highlights: The network is jumping on the LOST and MEDIUM-inspired speculative fiction bandwagon with two shows — THE GHOST WHISPERER (Jennifer Love Hewitt talks to dead people and solves crimes) and THRESHOLD (aliens invade from STAR TREK producer Brannon Braga and BLADE screenwriter David Goyer). Cancelled: JOAN OF ARCADIA, JUDGING AMY and Jason Alexander 43rd awful sitcom since SEINFELD.
The schedule, as printed by USA Today, is on the jump.
Okay, I admit it. I can’t resist Frank Sinatra as private eye Tony Rome. He made two movies about the Miami-based private eye, TONY ROME and THE LADY IN CEMENT, and I love them both. They are based on books by Marvin Albert and owe, at least in the film versions, a large debt to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels. Rome is an ex-cop who lives on a boat and barely scrapes out a living. I find it impossible to channel surf past either movie, even though I’ve seen them both a hundred times. The stories aren’t all that well-plotted, but there’s something about that Rat Pack take on the hard-boiled detective that I find irresistable. Now Hugo Montenegro’s soundtrack to LADY IN CEMENT is out on CD. I bought it as fast as I could click. Like I said, it’s an addiction. I’m even easy prey for Sinatra’s other cop movies — THE DETECTIVE, CONTRACT ON CHERRY STREET, and the awful SEVEN DEADLY SINS. Is there any hope for me?
PS – They tried to turn TONY ROME into a TV series. Twentieth Century Fox did a short demo film/pilot that never aired called NICK QUARRY. Jerry Goldsmith did the music, which is terrific and has been released as bonus material on his STRIPPER soundtrack CD.
A sample of the NICK QUARRY theme is posted on the BuySoundtrax site, but you can listen to it here:
The WB announced their schedule today. The highlights: Don Johnson returns to primetime as a lawyer in JUST LEGAL and director David Nutter continues his amazing winning streak — his pilot SUPERNATURAL made it on the sked. Out of 11 pilots he’s shot, 11 have sold. Midseason shows include BEDFORD DIARIES, a series about sex educators at a NY college, comes from HOMICIDE & ST. ELSEWHERE writer/producer Tom Fontana.
You can find the complete schedule, as reported by TVTracker, on the jump.
There have been a lot of final episodes this season — NYPD BLUE, JAG, ENTERPRISE and EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND — and they have all shared several things in common: they were boring, bland, and truly anti-climactic. It was as if the writers were making a conscious effort not to tie things up in a meaningful and emotionally-resonant way. Or simply didn’t want to make the effort. None of these finales came even close to matching the impact of the last episodes of shows like THE FUGITIVE, LARRY SANDERS, MARY TYLER MOORE, MASH, CHEERS, NEWHART, STAR TREK: TNG, ST. ELSEWHERE, THE FUGITIVE, DALLAS, WHO’S THE BOSS, THIRTYSOMETHING, BUFFY, HOMICIDE, THE ODD COUPLE, or even FRIENDS.
Granted, there have been stinker finales before (MIAMI VICE, HILL STREET BLUES, MacGYVER, DESIGNING WOMEN, HAWAII FIVE -O, COSBY, MAGNUM PI, SEX AND THE CITY, SEINFELD, QUANTUM LEAP, MURPHY BROWN, NORTHERN EXPOSURE, etc), but at least they made an effort at leaving viewers with something special.
If the writer/producers aren’t going to bother doing something really terrific with their final episodes, then how about this: Don’t do one.
Maybe we should go back to the way things used to be, when most shows didn’t do final episodes, even if they knew the ax was about to fall.
GUNSMOKE never had one. Neither did BONANZA, STAR TREK, MURDER SHE
WROTE, MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, LOST IN SPACE, THE ROCKFORD FILES,
MAVERICK, THE BRADY BUNCH, MANNIX, I LOVE LUCY, to name a few.
In a way, not doing a wrap-up episode makes sense. Most series are designed to be open-ended, to go on forever. Isn’t that how we really want to remember our TV characters, living on as we remember them best?
Do we really need, when the time comes, "Final Episodes" of LAW AND ORDER, ER, ACCORDING TO JIM, CSI, GROUNDED FOR LIFE, CROSSING JORDAN and TWO AND A HALF MEN?
TVTracker reports that ABC has announced their fall schedule. BLIND JUSTICE and EYES are among the notable, though not surprising, cancellations. Hitmaker JJ Abrams two pilots, THE CATCH and PROS AND CONS failed to make the sked, despite the success of LOST and ALIAS. But the influence of LOST is certainly reflected on the new schedule. Like NBC’s new roster, there’s quite a few new "speculative" fiction shows on tap, including a reimagining of THE NIGHT STALKER (from X FILE’s alum Frank Spotnitz) and INVASION, a Shaun Cassidy-produced series about aliens who secretly arrive in the Everglades in the midst of a terrible storm and a Park Ranger’s efforts to unlock the mystery. Other new series include COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, about the first female President, from writer-director Rod Lurie.
In addition to the new fall series, Zap2it reports that ABC has picked up several series for midseason: Additional Series
Orders: CRUMBS, THE EVIDENCE, IN JUSTICE, LESS THAN PERFECT, THE MIRACLE
WORKERS, SONS & DAUGHTERS.
Both "The Evidence" and "In Justice" reflect ABC’s aspirations to land a
strictly procedural hit, the network’s equivalent of a "CSI" or "Law &
Order." In "The Evidence," an eclectic cast — featuring Orlando Jones, Martin
Landau and Nicky Katt — solves crimes by putting together an assortment of
evidence that the audience has already seen. "In Justice" follows a lawyer (Kyle
MacLachlan) and an investigator (Jason O’Mara) struggling to get innocent people
out of prison.On the comedy side, Fred Savage ("The Wonder Years") is back in "Crumbs,"
about two estranged brothers forced to reunite to take care of their deranged
mother and run the family business. Things remain in the family on "Sons &
Daughters," a semi-improvised look at grown-up siblings, executive produced by
Lorne Michaels ("Saturday Night Live").Following in the footsteps of this season’s alternative programming successes
like "Supernanny" and "Wife Swap" and the emergence of "Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition," ABC will also have "Miracle Workers," a reality show about doctors who
perform revolutionary procedures on regular people, ready for midseason.
The new schedule is on the jump.
TVTracker reports that FOX has picked up a series version of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels… in a way. The series is actually a blend of the books and the true story of Reichs herself who, like her heroine, as a forensic anthropologist. There have also been a few other creative tweaks made by writer/producer Hart Hanson. Here’s the logline from TVTracker:
Network: FOX
Genre: Drama
Title: BONES
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Television
Commitment: Series Pick Up (13 Episodes)
Auspices: Hart Hanson
(EP, W-Pilot), Barry Josephson (EP N/W), Kathy Reichs (EP N/W), Greg Yaitanes
(D-Pilot)
Cast: Jonathan Adams, David Boreanaz, Michaela Conlin, Emily
Deschanel, Eric Millegan, TJ Thyne
Logline: When law enforcement calls upon Dr. Temperance Brennan and her team of scientists to assist with murder investigations, she often finds herself teamed with Special Agent Seeley Booth, a former Army sniper whose mistrust of science and scientists leads them to clash both professionally and personally while solving the toughest cases in the
new one-hour drama BONES.
Here’s the new NBC schedule, as circulated by TVTracker. CROSSING JORDAN continues to hang-on, against all odds, but you’ll notice the schedule doesn’t include LAW AND ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY. Maybe three branded spin-offs is all viewers can handle. Other cancellations include MEDICAL INVESTIGATIONS (which started out hot but faded fast), LAX, THIRD WATCH, HAWAII and AMERICAN DREAMS. SCRUBS and FEAR FACTOR have been held back until midseason. For more details on the new shows, check out Zap2it.
UPDATE: Dick Wolf isn’t very happy about L&O:TBJ getting the ax. He tells Variety that he’s
"extremely upset and disappointed."
"I
find the decision inexplicable, and frankly, inconceivable," Wolf said
Friday, working on the assumption that the fourth flavor of his
"L&O" brand was dead.Peacock brass still weren’t saying anything about the show Sunday.
Wolf
said he was "enormously proud" of "TBJ," noting that the casting of
thesps such as Candice Bergen, Annabella Sciorra and Lorraine Bracco
made the skein "A-level television.""It was a good show. It was the exact formula that made the brand so valuable," he said.
While
there’s no doubt "TBJ" was far from an instant hit, it’s worth noting
that all of the "L&O"-branded skeins have been relatively slow
starters.
The schedule follows on the jump.
ABC has announced their fall schedule and one of the shows they picked up is Frank Spotnitz’s new version of THE NIGHT STALKER. The original starred Darren McGavin as a down-on-his-luck wire service reporter who inevitably stumbled on stories involving the supernatural. It was a very funny series with its share of scares. Think ROCKFORD FILES with ghosts. But Spotnitz is seemingly going in a much, much darker direction…at least according to this report from TVTracker.
Network: ABC
Genre: Drama
Title: NIGHT STALKER
Studio: Touchstone
Television
Commitment: Series Pick Up (13 Episodes)
Auspices: Frank
Spotnitz (EP, W-Pilot), Daniel Sackheim (D-Pilot, EP N/W)
Cast: Eric
Jungmann, Cotter Smith, Stuart Townsend, Gabrielle Union
Logline: There are things in the dark, things adults deny but children are right to fear… When a pregnant woman is snatched from her home, the shocked citizens of L.A. believe it’s an act of domestic violence. But crime reporter Carl Kolchak
suspects that the truth is far more complicated. That’s because 18 months ago, Kolchak’s wife was killed in a bizarre fashion and he has been the FBI’s #1 suspect ever since. Kolchak’s determination to find out the truth behind his wife’s mysterious murder has led him to investigate other crimes that seem to have some kind of supernatural component. But he’s trying to piece together a puzzle that keeps changing its shape. Who or what is committing these crimes? How are they all related? And why do some victims end up with a strange red mark on their hands in the shape of a snake? With sidekick Perri Reed, a sexy if skeptical fellow reporter in tow, Kolchak will go to any lengths to answer these questions. But when he does discover the truth – will anyone believe him?
This, by the way, is one of two new series on ABC (the other is John Wells THE EVIDENCE) involving heroes haunted by the unsolved murders of their wives. This is a popular theme on series television these days (MONK is another example that comes to mind).