More than 80 new pilots are currently being screened and selected to join returning favorite shows, and here’s a glimpse at a few of the criminally inclined that we’re hoping to see on the boob tube come September:
SISTER ACTS
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
THINK TANK THRILLERS
Touted by many as the smartest script of all the fall prospects, NBC’s REM was created by hot writer Kyle Killen, of last season’s critically praised, but swiftly cancelled, Lone Star and Mel Gibson’s latest movie, The Beaver. It features Jason Isaacs as a cop whose life fractures in two after a tragic accident. In one possible reality, the accident killed his son; in the other, his wife. Living this double life means contending with two therapists, two cop partners and clues to the week’s cases in one universe that help him solve crimes in the other. The question: which world is real? Does he want to find the answer and possibly give one of them up forever? Clearly ambitious. If audiences can wrap their minds around this twisty, almost Inception-like premise, it could be the buzzworthy hit NBC desperately needs. From the co-writer of Inception himself, Jonah Nolan, comes CBS’s Person of Interest. The net is keeping this one under tight wraps, no doubt to preserve the pretzel-y goodness it entails? All we know is that Lost’s chillingly conniving Michael Emerson stars as a crazy billionaire who recruits a former CIA agent, played by Jim Caviezel (movie star and one-time Jesus!), to fight crime in New York City.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
Ensemble dramas are hot as always with crime-fighting task forces and police precincts abounding. One of FOX’s top prospects is said to be Exit Strategy, starring Ethan Hawke as part of a team of CIA agents who are sent in when tricky missions go wrong. Angela Bassett and Orlando Jones star in Identity (ABC) playing members of the FBI’s Identity Crimes division, tackling hacker thiefs and cyber criminals. Crime novelist Richard Price created Rookies (CBS) featuring six new NYC cops, including Leelee Sobieski and Adam Goldberg. This sure-to-be-gritty drama also comes with Robert DeNiro attached as an executive producer. And in a change of coasts, Metro (NBC) features a group of L.A. investigators led by Jimmy Smits who navigate the criminal and political worlds in a tangled drama penned by Crash writer Stephen Gaghan.
VANISHING ACTS
Not every crime show has murder in its heart though. Missing (ABC) sees Ashley Judd and Sean Bean (who’s already delighting weekly as Ned Stark on Game of Thrones for HBO) in a tense drama. Ashley’s a former CIA agent who takes matters into her own hands when her son goes missing while doing a summer internship in Europe. In ABC’s The River, it’s a different kind of search, as the crew of a state-of-the-art research vessel goes on a quest to find a missing TV explorer, their excursion captured by a documentary crew. So, think Lost meets The Blair Witch Project meets the technical parts of Titanic? Over at FOX, J. J. Abrams’ new show Alcatraz is surprisingly being called an iffy prospect, despite stars Jorge Garcia (Lost’s lovable Hurley), Sam Neill and Robert Forster on-board. As you’d expect from Abrams, the drama bends the time-space continuum, following a group of prisoners and guards who magically appear in the present-day prison as well as the FBI team investigating their disappearance… thirty years in the past.
MAGIC AND MAYHEM
For more peeks at this pilot season’s offerings, including sizzling soaps and comic capers, check out Heroes and Heartbreakers.
Tara Gelsomino is a reader, writer, pop culture junkie, and internet addict. You can tweet her at @taragel.
Casting questions: I confess to some doubts about thats harp-featured blonde-blue for Poe, but maybe he’ll act me out of my worries. Leelee Sobieski as a cop? Maybe. Maria Bello’s great, but Helen Mirren is unforgettable in that role. Hmmm.
My own insecurities: Though I like the idea of not wanting to give up either reality (a little Life on Mars-y, too), I think it’s going to be tricky to follow REM if it really lives in both worlds fully. Lost started to get too Byzantine and I was happy to bail. (I suck and am tasteless.)
If Grimm or 17th Precinct could cross paranormal policing with some of the humor of Barney Miller, I’d be a happy girl. Where’s Sam Vines and the Night Watch when you need them?
@clare2e Many folks have dubbed Poe a “period Castle” so I think the blonde blue-eyed charmer thing might work for ABC. It’s not like anyone ever said “No, they’re tooo pretty!” anyway I guess. 😉 I share your reservations about Leelee and Maria. We’ll have to see maybe…
There’s a lot of fantastic buzz for REM but I worry that it’s a little TOO thinky and slightly slow paced. Especially the first act of script which has him in both therapy sessions switching back and forth. You have to lay out a lot of info in that pilot episode. But Jason Isaacs is pretty excellent so hopefully that’ll be compelling.
Hee. There wasn’t much humor in Grimm or 17thP scripts, although Stockard Channing had one or two good one-liners. Overall, with both the network and cable scripts I’ve read this season, all the dramas felt pretty dark and profanity-laden. And in fact, Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story (for FX) was super-twisted and I couldn’t believe they got Connie Britton to sign on or that half of what’s in the pilot will make it to air. But…who knows… it is cable!
FOX just announced its early pickups and ALCATRAZ is on the list! I guess they didn’t want to mess with J.J. Abrams, though NBC had no problem canceling the dull UNDERCOVERS last year.
HUMAN TARGET & BREAKING IN were canceled. Anyone watching them?
I have reservations about PRIME TARGET because Mirren is irreplaceable but Bello is very good so I’m open to sampling it.
I thought HUMAN TARGET was still a strong show, even though I wasn’t fully satisifed with the way they tried to expand the core in the second season. I was willing to give them time to refine the character dynamics in exchange for the inventive (for network TV) action sequences. Sorry to see it go.
I think that people go to television to relax and escape after a hard day working. Someone said, you could never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. In a reverse sense, can you devise a show for television that is too cerebral to survive, and yet for our community, we would enjoy it completely. I think that is the trouble with many television shows today. They work for those who want to think, but in the majority of our country, do they want to sit down at 9 or 10 o’clock at night and be mentally challenged with a significant mystery or with questions about Einstein’s time-space continuum?
Such shows flame out quickly because of commercial failure, while being an artistic success.
Good luck to two separate worlds operating at the same time. Good luck to the Philadelphia Story clone (a battleship that was transported through time with its crew during an experiment in the second world war.) Alcatraz.
We need simple story with good twist and characters who make us want to know them and root for them. It’s just like writing a book, which by the by, is probably the medium through which some of these arcane story concepts could be communicated in a superior manner.
Oh well, I’ll just get back to my copy of War and Peace.
Mad Mutt- You may have a point, but you made me laugh, too. Philadephia Story was Hepburn and Cary Grant. Philadelphia Experiment was the dislocated battleship. We may have to compare notes on Alcatraz once it launches and see what we think.
Our CE blogger Julie Summerell wrote a great, impassioned plea to save HUMAN TARGET a little over a week ago, because she smelled the coffee.
[url=http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/05/save-a-human-target]http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/05/save-a-human-target[/url]
Sounds like some interesting risks, some rehash I’m not really interested in.
Sad about HUMAN TARGET, I liked it and the core cast. BREAKING IN, wow, wasn’t even given a chance. Perhaps they realized they cast Christian Slater and knew it was doomed. Loved the guy back in the day, but every year they bring out another series with him in the lead and boom goes the dynamite.
LeeLee Sobieski and Adam Goldberg? What kind of pairing is that?
Sadly, there’s not much listed that sounds like a keeper or will be given the chance to succeed.
Did the networks finally get tired of serial killers?
I’m curious to see if 17th Precint is given a chance to find its footing (meaning it stays on more than 3 episodes!)
I was underwhelmed by “The Finder” episode of Bones, to the point where I fast-forwarded to the end just to see what happened, and definitely not interested in watching if they go to series with it.
And I like Christian Slater, but not Breaking In. I may have been in the rare handful of people who watched “the forgotten” a couple years ago, and was rather surprised it wasn’t picked up for a second season… wish I knew the full story on why it ended.
Loved the first season of Human Target, but I have no idea why it went off the rails so badly for second season. It also looks like Fox may be cutting Lie to Me, which I was still enjoying.
And hadn’t they said that TNT’s “The Closer” was an homage to or inspired by Prime Suspect? I could have sworn I’d read that someplace, on more than one occassion.