Television

The First Episode

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There's been a lot of talk about pilots lately — all of it sparked by TV Guide's list of the Ten Best Pilots of All-Time (which was written by someone who apparently thinks TV has only existed for the last decade or so). Now the Elburn Herald has listed some of the worst, many taken from my book UNSOLD TV PILOTS.

For me, some of the best pilots (which led to series) that are not on the TV Guide list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In the Family, Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, The Rockford Files, Law & Order, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Hawaii Five-O, Monk, St. Elsewhere,  Crime Story, Murphy Brown, Married With Children, Boomtown, Thirtysomething and Cheers.

Become the Next Norman Lear

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This November, Emmy Award winning comedy writer Ken Levine is hosting another one of his phenomenal SITCOM ROOM writing classes:

With all the writing classes and books around, I realized there’s one thing none of them teach – what it’s actually like being in a sitcom writing ro>Practically all sitcoms are “room written” these days (even single camera shows like 30 ROCK). That’s
when a dysfunctional group of funny, creative people somehow manage,
collectively, to craft a brilliantly funny (or at least not
embarrassing) script while suffering from incredible time pressure and
personality clashes.
[…]I found myself imagining a weekend workshop that gives you the hands-on
experience you could only get in a professional writing room […]A cross between a seminar/workshop and comedy writing fantasy camp.

If you want to be a TV comedy writer, you've got to take this class. There are still a few spaces left, so sign up fast.

I’m Fraking Quoted

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Chris Talbott of the Associated Press picked up on my blog post a while back about the subversive power of "Frak"..and quoted me in an article on the topic that is showing up today all over the fraking place.

Lee Goldberg thinks Glen A. Larson is a genius, and not because the prolific
television writer and producer gave us "Knight Rider" and "B.J. and the Bear."

It was Larson who first used the faux curse word "frak" in
the original "Battlestar Galactica." The word was mostly overlooked back in the
'70s series but is working its way into popular vocabulary as SciFi's modern
update winds down production.

"All joking aside, say what you will about what you might
call the lowbrow nature of many of his shows, he did something truly amazing and
subversive, up there with what Steven Bochco gets credit for, with 'frak,' "
Goldberg said.

There's no question what the word stands for and it's used
gleefully, as many as 20 times in some episodes.

[…]Goldberg believes Larson should get more
credit for "frak" and has posted an appreciation on his Web site. He even sought
out Larson to let him know how he feels: "I told him, 'Frak is fraking
brilliant, Glen.' "

The reporter also talked to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA cast members, novelist Robert Crais, and he even  managed (with my help) to track down Glen for a quote or two.

"Our point was to whenever possible make it a departure like
you're visiting somewhere else," Larson said. "And we did coin certain phrases
for use in expletive situations, but we tried to carry that over into a lot of
other stuff, even push brooms and the coin of the realm."

The producers of the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fraking love to use the word, of course.

Co-executive producer and writer Michael Angeli, an Emmy
nominee for the episode "Six of One," said using the word in scripts is
satisfying for anyone who's been censored over the years.

"It's a great way to do something naughty and get away with
it," Angeli said.

That talented motherfraker is frakin' right.

They Love to Blow Up Cars

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The new season of ALARM FOR COBRA 11 is beginning next month in Germany and my friends at Action Concept pack more action into one hour than most U.S. series do in an entire season… and for half the budget. Here are two ads for the season opener:

All that action was just in the first ten minutes.

Is it time to start carving a tombstone for Network Television?

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Wired magazine thinks so. Last season, the three major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) combined attracted their smallest audience since the advent of television. But the cable networks, which target a niche audience rather than aiming for the broadest possible reach, now claim more than half of total viewers.

It may be time to perform an autopsy on network TV, which some have
pronounced officially dead at age 60, the victim of a lifetime of big
spending, hard living, and bad planning. Here's the coroner's report:
The evening newscasts have been mowed down by cable's heat, spin, and
round-the-clock immediacy. In prime time, nobody watches reruns
anymore—and reruns, along with syndication, used to be the only way
comedy and drama series, the heart of a network's prime-time business,
made money. (The way they make money now is…well, the networks will
get back to you as soon as they figure that out.)

Speaking of old-school, half-hour sitcoms: Once, 50 of them were on
the air at a time. Today, they're all but gone. Suddenly, people just
stopped liking them. Prime-time news magazines? Barely holding on.
"Protected" time slots? Viewers accustomed to Web surfing and channel
flipping at hyperspeed aren't going to watch a new show just because
they're too lazy to change the channel after The Biggest Loser.
The audience for daytime soaps, a profitable staple since TV's infancy,
has shrunk so dramatically that the form may vanish within a few years.
This is all very bad news for a medium that hasn't come up with a fresh
format since 2000, when CBS launched Survivor, the gold rush in reality-TV competitions. (P.S.: Survivor isn’t what it used to be either.)

It's unlikely that a broadcast network is ever again going to create a megahit like The Cosby Show,
which at its mid-’80s peak drew as many as 50 million viewers an
episode. For several years now, TV's top event has been Fox's American Idol. Last season, it drew 28.8 million viewers a week.

 

How to Throw the Pitch

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I'm going in to a major studio next week to pitch a TV series.  In advance of the meeting, the studio wants you to send them a very short log line of the concept, sort of the equivalent of a TV Guide listing. Assuming that they like the log-line, a few days before the meeting they will send you the "Drama Series Pitch" format that they expect you to follow for your verbal presentation. Here it is:

THE TEASER—Pitch out a tease that grabs your audience, that is visual, gives a sense of the world, tone and set up of our show.

THE WORLD—After you have grabbed our listener, tell us what the world is and why you want to do a show about it.

THE CHARACTERS-Outline
our characters in order of importance, allowing what makes each one distinct to
shine through (quirks, traits, backstory). Also discuss character dynamics, how each character relates to each other and what their point of views are about each other. Tell us about triangles, rivals, love interests, etc.

THE PILOT—Broad stroke the rest of the pilot. Do not go beat by beat or act by act. This should really just be broad strokes and key plot points which help establish character and set up. Also, your pilot needs to serve as an example of what a typical episode would look like (i.e. an example of a closed-ended story and examples of character conflicts).

THE SERIES—discuss what an episode of your show looks like, where you want to go in series, potential storylines and character arcs and entanglements.

THE TONE—You want to make sure you have clearly established the tone of your show and may want to hit it again in the wrap up at the end. It is often helpful to use shows that people are familiar with.

I've been in the TV business for a while, and I have done hundreds of pitches, but this is the first time anyone has ever given me a required format.  I guess that the studio has been hearing a lot of meandering, unfocused, boring pitches lately.

In general, I have no problem with their format, and would certainly have included most of what they want in my pitch anyway, though perhaps not in that order. 

Doing it their way is fine for me and has actually helped us focus our pitch and tighten it up. But I think there are some cases where rigid adherence to their format could kill a pitch. Not all series ideas are best told with a teaser and the pilot story…nor do all ideas lend themselves to comparisons to previous series ("It's HANNAH MONTANA meets THE SHIELD with a touch of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA").

Also some writers just have a natural, entertaining way of  pitching that suits their personality and thinking that might not follow a template…but still gets the key points across that the studio is looking or. Asking those writers to adjust to a particular template might throw them off and undermine what otherwise would have been a great pitch.

Wither THE MIDDLEMAN?

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My friend Javier Grillo Marxuach gives Star-Ledger reporter Alan Sepinwall the skinny on the past, present, and endangered future of his ABC Family madcap sci-fi/retro-spy series THE MIDDLEMAN, which has been having a hard time ratings-wise.  Javi and the network mutually agreed to cut the show's 13-episode order down to twelve and to pump a few more dollars into the budget of the unintended season finale. The future of the show, at least on ABC Family, is in doubt but Javi remains enthusiastic, optimistic, and realistic.

I waited 11 years to put the show on the air my way, I can wait to get
it to another place, and if I don't, honestly, I have no regrets. It
has been 12 episodes made lovingly, hand-crafted, by people who truly
believe in the product. If at the end of the day, I have to walk away
from it, I won't walk away from it crying in my beer about how I didn't
get to tell my story.

Lewis: Series One and Two

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching the first two seasons of LEWIS, the sequel series to INSPECTOR MORSE, one of my all-time favorite mystery series.

Lewis was Morse’s long-suffering sidekick in the original series. Now Lewis is the Inspector and he has a suffering side-kick of his own, former seminary student Sgt. Hathaway. The series features many of the same production team as MORSE, as well as the same Oxford locations and the Hitchcockian cameos by author Colin Dexter, who wrote the books that the series was based on. The commonalities end there.

The MORSE mysteries were rich, complex, surprising and intelligent…and were enlivened by Morse’s wonderfully irascible, embittered and brilliant bachelor and his strained, father-son relationship with Lewis, a simple-minded family man.  The writer/directors of MORSE included Danny Boyle and Anthony Minghella…there are no comparable talents on the new show.

The mysteries in LEWIS are plodding, padded and obvious…and worst of all, they are mostly the same story told again and again (a group of current students or former classmates share a dark secret that sparks a series of killings). Lewis and Hathaway end up solving the crime through coincidence and luck rather than deduction or cleverness. The suspects are all one-dimensional cliches.

The absence of John Thaw’s Morse is keenly felt…even more so by the unnecessary references to his character that are sprinkled heavy-handedly and awkwardly through many of the episodes. One of the biggest mistakes was trying to turn Lewis into Morse…by
killing off his wife and sending away his kids. So now he is the lonely
bachelor butting heads with his bosses…almost forcing the audience to compare him to Morse. Unfortunately, his loneliness isn’t nearly as interesting and revealing as Morse’s. It’s just dull.

And while Morse’s ill-fated crushes were sad reminders of his lonely life…and his inability to fit in…the gimmick in LEWIS of having a female suspect in just about every episode wanting to drag him into bed is ridiculous and embarrassing.

And yet…I enjoy the show and pretty much devoured the episodes. I find it oddly soothing…like a cup of hot tea. The primary attraction of LEWIS is the relationship between Lewis and Hathaway (who is, by far, the more interesting character of the two) which sort of plays like “MORSE light.” Hathaway is a fascinating character and actor Lawrence Fox brings far more depth to his performance than there appears to be on the page. Their gentle banter lacks the bite of MORSE, but it has its pleasures all the same.

Maybe it’s more nostalgia for MORSE than any real love of LEWIS that keeps me watching…

LEWIS would clearly like to be the successor to MORSE…and if ratings in the UK are any indication, they’ve achieved their goal…but in my mind, REBUS wins that honor hands-down.

Loving REBUS

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Rebus-Set-2
I've been enjoying a REBUS marathon over the last few days — not the Ian Rankin books, but the terrific TV movie adaptations starring Ken Stott as D.I. John Rebus, taking the role from the woefully miss-cast John Hannah. They are simply terrific…and in some cases, even better than the novels they are based on (in that respect they are akin to the JESSE STONE movies based on the Robert B. Parker novels). Stott is pitch-perfect as Rebus, and the writing is tight, sharp, and  true to the spirit, if not every plot move, of the books. Some of the movies, in fact, could serve as a lesson in adaptation for aspiring screenwriters — the writers get to the heart of what makes each novel work, cutting away the fat, focusing the plot, and amping up the character conflicts. REBUS is the best new traditional British detective series since the late, great INSPECTOR MORSE (though I've got a couple seasons worth of LEWIS, the sequel series with Morse's sidekick, to watch so I may have to revise that opinion). I've got two more movies to watch and then it's over…apparently for good, since Stott doesn't want to do any more of them and, without him, neither does the network. I hope they can lure him back to do an adaption of "Exit Music," the final Rebus novel.

Inside THE MIDDLEMAN

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Slice of SciFi has a lengthy and very entertaining Q&A interview with my friend Javier Grillo Marxuach about the development and production of his new ABC Family series THE MIDDLEMAN. Warning: his enthusiasm and glee for TV is infectious.

Actually, the best day was when they had the Harrier jet here. They had
like half a jet in the stage and we were climbing in it and doing all
that. Yes, it was good. I’m sure that there are other shows where
people have a ton of fun and all that, but I’m sure that they don’t
have this kind of fun on Law & Order, you know; I can tell you that
right now.