sf/f TV development news - 2013

[Enterprise is Great]

The CW Finds Its Beauty: ‘Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk To Star In ‘Beauty & The Beast’ Pilot

Smallville star Kristin Kreuk is back at the CW in one of the most talked-about roles this pilot season: the female lead in the CW’s drama pilot Beauty And The Beast. Loosely based on the 1980s CBS series starring Linda Hamilton, CW’s Beauty And The Beast is described as a modern-day romantic love story with a procedural twist. It centers on Catherine (Kreuk), a tough-minded NYPD homicide detective haunted by witnessing her mother’s murder nine years ago and the killers’ quick demise at the hands of a Beast. After years of searching, Catherine finally finds the Beast, Vincent Koslow, the survivor of a military experiment that went disastrously wrong, and becomes the protector of his secret life as a superhero.

[Christopher]

^Oh, dang, now I may have to watch this if it goes to series...

Well, they certainly got the "beauty" part right, anyway.

[Caliburn24]

Well, that certainly covers the beauty part, but Kreuk playing a tough NYPD detective? Uh huh, sure. She could not pull off tough/dark convincingly on Smallville, I have my doubts she's changed that much as an actress.

However, with Kreuk and Stana Katic both playing NYC detectives I obviously need to move to that city and start a life of crime.

I wasn't interested in CW's Beauty & The Beast at all...but now Kristin Kreuk is involved I am gonna follow it's progress. I LOVED KK as Lana on SMALLVILLE.

[Icemizer]

Well shes good at unfullfilled romance thats for sure.

[Temis the Vorta]

WOW! Great news about Terry O'Quinn!!!

RJDiogenes wrote:

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The quality of individual series or stories doesn't impact the validity of a particular format. The difference between episodic and serialized television is the same difference as short stories and novels; neither one is inherently superior to the other.

There are more really good shows on now with a serialized format vs episodic. This could be because cable = better quality and cable = serialized format rather than quality = serialized format, but the correlation is unmistakable.

btw: I think Justified's first season is an excellent example of how to do a "case of the week" show right.

If Justified had stuck with that format, it wouldn't have progressed to being the brilliant show it is now.

[Temis the Vorta]

PS, I can't stand Kristen Kreuk, but I wasn't planning on watching that CW series anyhoo...

[jefferiestubes8]

A television adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels is in the works.

Buffalo Soldiers producer Ilene Kahn Power and Elizabeth Stanley have secured the rights to the fantasy series

The Darkover series consists of several novels and short stories, all set on the fictional, far-flung world of Darkover.

Bradley's 1983 novel The Mists of Avalon - a retelling of the Arthurian legends - was adapted as a TNT mini-series in 2001, earning three Emmy nominations

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a3...tv-series.html

According to the novels, Darkover is the only human-habitable of seven planets orbiting a fictional red giant star called Cottman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkover

Has anyone who has read the books comment on the series?

[RJDiogenes]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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There are more really good shows on now with a serialized format vs episodic. This could be because cable = better quality and cable = serialized format rather than quality = serialized format, but the correlation is unmistakable.

Well, the key word is "now." The serialized format is fashionable, so the odds are skewed. Throughout the history of television, most shows have been episodic, so that skews the odds over the long term. But in terms of storytelling in general, there is no qualitative difference between the short form and the serialized form.

[Temis the Vorta]

I doubt we'll ever return to a TV environment where the episodic format predominates. All the trends are towards greater niche-ization of TV (and whatever you call it when "TV" is predominantly streamed thru the internet), which favors serialized formats for being better able to grab niche audiences while the episodic format is better for the casual viewer/mass audience environment. This isn't "fashion," it's a long-term trend being driven largely by technology.

But in terms of storytelling in general, there is no qualitative difference between the short form and the serialized form.

Not in the abstract, no. But in reality, yeah.

[Christopher]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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There are more really good shows on now with a serialized format vs episodic. This could be because cable = better quality and cable = serialized format rather than quality = serialized format, but the correlation is unmistakable.

I'd call it a classic example of a spurious correlation. There are more good serialized shows today because there are more serialized shows today period. Serialized shows are more commonly made today, more fashionable, so naturally there will be more good serialized shows, more bad serialized shows, and more mediocre serialized shows. So it's a useless thing to point out unless you can show that the ratio of good serialized shows to good episodic shows is high.

But I don't see how it's possible to prove that, given that it's hard to find any show that's purely serialized or purely episodic. Most of the shows that are actually on television today are a mix of episodic and serialized elements, combining weekly "client stories" with ongoing character or mythology arcs tying a given season together into an overarching tale, and having consequences carry forward serially from season to season. Indeed, the closest thing I've seen in the past decade to a pure episodic format was Law & Order -- a generally acclaimed franchise, by the way -- and even that had increasing amounts of serialization mixed in as it went on. So it's a dichotomy that doesn't really exist.

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't need to "prove" anything. It's obvious to me that looking at serialized shows, I see a lot of stuff like The Wire and Breaking Bad, while I can't think of a single wholly or chiefly episodic show of similar quality. It's just a bunch of boring cop show shit.

If it's not obvious to you, so be it. I'm just using this debate to keep my thread bumped anyway.

Indeed, the closest thing I've seen in the past decade to a pure episodic format was Law & Order -- a generally acclaimed franchise, by the way

It doesn't matter if a show is "generally acclaimed" if it puts me to sleep.

[Caliburn24]

Many individual TV critics put together top ten lists every year. And Metacritic has taken the trouble to tally them together.

1. Breaking Bad
2. Homeland
3. Downton Abbey
4. Parks and Recreation
5. Game of Thrones
6. Louie
7. Justified
8. Community
9. The Good Wife
10. Modern Family

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/tv...page_comment=3

If you set aside the half hour comedies, every show on that list is fairly heavily serialized. Heck even the comedies are more heavily serialized than almost anything before the late 1990s. You might disagree with the critics, but there is more or less agreement in the field that serialized is better.

[Christopher]

Caliburn24 wrote:

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If you set aside the half hour comedies, every show on that list is fairly heavily serialized. Heck even the comedies are more heavily serialized than almost anything before the late 1990s. You might disagree with the critics, but there is more or less agreement in the field that serialized is better.

Statistics are meaningless when taken out of context. In order to reach that conclusion, you'd have to show not only that the top-ranked shows are serialized, but that the lowest-ranked shows aren't. Otherwise you haven't demonstrated a meaningful correlation at all.

And that's definitely not the case, since there have been plenty of serialized shows that were just awful, such as Heroes seasons 2-4 and the V remake, or that audiences haven't found interesting enough to keep on the air for more than a few weeks, like Threshold or DayBreak. Serialization is preferred among most shows these days, so it's just as prevalent among the duds and disasters as it is among the hits.

Serialization isn't a magic bullet; like any other storytelling technique, it works when it's done well and fails when it's done badly. Too often, serialization is an excuse for lazy, unfocused storytelling with no direction in mind, or for dragging out a finite amount of story with huge amounts of padding, or for constantly baiting the audience with mysteries and questions but never giving them any satisfying answers. Format doesn't determine quality; execution does.

[Caliburn24]

Christopher wrote:

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Serialization isn't a magic bullet; like any other storytelling technique, it works when it's done well and fails when it's done badly. Too often, serialization is an excuse for lazy, unfocused storytelling with no direction in mind, or for dragging out a finite amount of story with huge amounts of padding, or for constantly baiting the audience with mysteries and questions but never giving them any satisfying answers. Format doesn't determine quality; execution does.

Agreed, a hundred percent.

But here is where we disagree. I could care less if on average episodic shows are as good as serialized shows. Because I am not watching every show on television. I only want to watch the best stuff. And episodic shows aren't even trying to be the best, they are rarely ambitious at all. Serialized shows are often disasters, but when they work, they are better than anything in the episodic format.

The comedy genre is excluded mind you that is a different beast, I'm just talking dramas.

I don't want to spend twenty hours a week watching shows that are good. I want to speed four or five hours a week watching shows that are superb.

I think it would be really hard for me to find a single friend who if pressed to list their top five TV dramas of all time would include any purely episodic shows.