• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

2011-12 pilots: fairy tales, guy comedies, period dramas & singing

What BSG alums are in The 17th Precinct besides Jamie Bamber and James Callis? Those are the only two I have read about.... :confused:
 
What BSG alums are in The 17th Precinct besides Jamie Bamber and James Callis? Those are the only two I have read about.... :confused:


Tricia Helfer's in it, and it's written by Ron Moore. Additionally, the pilot will be directed by Michael Rymer (who directed many BSG episodes).
 
Ordinarily this isn't my type of show, but Sarah Paulson and Adrian Pasdar as the leads = SOLD! :bolian:

Former Heroes star Adrian Pasdar is back at NBC, this time on the comedy side. In what would be his first regular gig on a half-hour series, Pasdar has been tapped as the male lead opposite Sarah Paulson in NBC's untitled Kari Lizer pilot. The project, from Warner Bros TV, is a workplace comedy about Mary Leahy (Paulson), a relationship-challenged woman who, with the help of her co-workers, guides people through unexpected career transitions and downsizings. Pasdar will play Brad, a super-confident guy who has drunk sex with Mary in a bar bathroom. After seeing how charming he is, Mary and her partner ask him to join their company.
 
17th Precinct has put together a heck of a cast. If it goes to series, I'm definitely gonna check it out. Now if they could just come up with a better title...
 
Pasdar will play Brad, a super-confident guy who has drunk sex with Mary in a bar bathroom. After seeing how charming he is, Mary and her partner ask him to join their company.

A-ha! so that's the secret to finding a new job. Need more drunken bar bathroom sex if you're out of work or looking for another company to work for.
 
"Ringer" reminds me of "The Spy With the Perfect Cover," which starred Robert Lansing (Gary Seven on TOS' "Assignment: Earth").
 
Pasdar will play Brad, a super-confident guy who has drunk sex with Mary in a bar bathroom. After seeing how charming he is, Mary and her partner ask him to join their company.

A-ha! so that's the secret to finding a new job. Need more drunken bar bathroom sex if you're out of work or looking for another company to work for.

If you look like Adrian Pasdar, it might just work. :rommie:
 
What we love about Secret Circle: We'd actually be shocked if The CW didn't pick this one up. Considering that The CW's megahit The Vampire Diaries is based on a series of books by L.J. Smith and that Kevin Williamson brought that one to life on the network, Secret Circle has all the elements going for it. Sprinkle in a pretty and talented young cast and you have The CW's next new hit.

Yeah if the CW doesn't pick it up I will be shocked. :lol:
 
Looks like Wonder Woman, 17th Precinct, and Alcatraz are locks. The River sounds very intriguing and Bruce Greenwood could give the pilot a huge boost. Locke & Key is also another strong contender in my opinion.
 
Looks like Wonder Woman, 17th Precinct, and Alcatraz are locks. The River sounds very intriguing and Bruce Greenwood could give the pilot a huge boost. Locke & Key is also another strong contender in my opinion.
Are you getting that from the rumor mill? (I haven seen strong, credible rumors popping up yet - seems a bit early, maybe later this month?) I'd particularly like to believe that Locke & Key is a strong contender. That's my favorite of the whole crop.

Sometimes there are early indications at the zap2it forum. FWIW, here's what I've gleaned, but I'm not sure to what degree it represents someone's wishful thinking...

Likely:
Georgetown
Damage Control
Charlie's Angels
Hallelujah
The River
Pan Am
Brave New World
(genuinely funny)
Alpha Mom
Whitney
Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
Free Agents
Prime Suspect
(this one is back?)
Metro
REM
(this sounds fun)
17th Precinct

I keep hearing that Wonder Woman is bad, and the costume is the least of it. Of course this will not prevent it from going to series, being heavily promoted in a key timeslot, and getting a big premiere followed by ratings swan dive.

I ran across this godawful description of Poe that makes it top of my list of shows I hope don't get anywhere near a series order. :rommie:
Its 1840 and Boston is in the grips of a series of mysterious murders. When dark forces threaten, the only man who can protect the city is one who has spent his life chasing shadows – the legendary writer Edgar Allan Poe (Chris Egan).

The authorities don't like Poe's cocky, devil-may-care attitude, but they need him. His brilliant and unorthodox methods offer the only hope of solving the eerie crimes sweeping the city. While many people fear for their lives – and souls – Poe and his unlikely partner in crime, Celeste Chevalier (Natalie Dormer), are ready to meet evil head on. Celeste is a beautiful and intelligent reporter who's way ahead of her time. Where Poe looks for possible supernatural forces at work, Celeste will stop at nothing to uncover more logical explanations.
Yeah, that cocky, devil-may care Edgar Allan Poe. :rofl: And apparently Fox Mulder is one of his direct descendants, with his partner being the precursor to a certain Dana Scully. Beats even Jennifer Garner as Miss Marple for sheer idiocy.

A bit on The River, which throws some cold water on my enthusiasm. :( A "mystery of the week" interspersed with soapy antics? Uhhhh...another source describes it as genuinely scary and good, but questions whether the premise can be extended into an indefinite run.

In the search for Dr. Cole, they will encounter a scary new mystery each week, while struggling with their own personal jealousies, insecurities, secrets and desires. As they venture further into the Amazon, away from the world they know, the crew of The Magus will discover a place where one bad decision can be fatal, and where powerful magic is as real as science.
Grimm, which I was kinda hopeful about, sounds like an inept police procedural with werewolves.

17th Precinct sounds like a magical, fully-realized world filled with imaginative stuff that would be fun to see, regardless of what the stories are about. Wonder what kind of ratings will be required, to support the SFX budget, though.

Once Upon a Time: confusing, and the real-world scenes drag.

Locke & Key:

Here's a project with a very visual, mythology-laden story about people. About a family. About pain and grief and the different ways we handle it. And it's told in a way that keeps you wanting more as it peels the layers back, eventually exposing the inner demons of its key characters while simultaneously and continuously expanding the world.
Awakenings (the CW zombie show):
Depending on how you look at it, it's wildly imaginative or completely inane.
Here's the inane part (spoiler coded even though it's part of the premise):

The two sisters who are the lead characters are both zombies! The zombies are not mindless corpses, but more like vampires except they eat human flesh instead of drink human blood and have all that vampire angst stuff. So, basically they're vampires except not sexy and just gross.

Okay. This I gotta see, if only to point fingers and laugh. Plus it has Titus Welliver as the zombie hunter!!!

The Secret Circle
- just what we expect: The Vampire Diaries with witches.

Reconstruction:

No audience in the world is gonna sit through [act one] to get to the slightly more interesting sections.

...

I sincerely hope this was a foiler script and whatever the hell NBC is spending money on is something much, much better / different.
The interesting news is that there appear to be supernatural elements in what I was thinking was a straight-up historical drama. However, the whole thing just sounds utterly off-kilter and frankly distasteful.

Georgetown - the writers get obvious details about political procedure wrong.

Pan Am
- languid; includes an odd espionage angle. I guess they need something to make airplane travel exciting.

Playboy - seedy, a bit violent, sounds intriguing.

REM - Ambitious, complex, confusing. Rather than Inception on TV, it's more psychologically based. Could be great if it finds an audience that values creativity over having everything spelled out for them. But please, won't they change the name?!?

Grace - It should be a biting look at the nasty, competitive NY dance world, centered on the egomaniacal main character/choreographer/father of three daughters by different mothers but it sounds a lot more lightweight than I was hoping for. Still, it's a milieu that hasn't been overexposed on TV. And the dance numbers should be fun.
 
Last edited:
I was just making some guesswork based on the amount of buzz each pilot has received and the names attached.
 
Analysis of what each network is looking for, seems pretty accurate:

FOX

FOX has 6 hour long dramas and half hour comedies in development for 2011-2012. My guess is that at best they will be looking for 3-4 hours of programming depending on how much X Factor is scheduled, and 1 of those hours will be Terra Nova.

Of the dramas, Alcatraz, Exit Strategy and Locke & Key (all from producers of Fringe) seem the most promising.

That makes sense to me; none of those three overlap too much with each other or with anything else on the FOX schedule. Sounds like Touch is the biggest threat to Locke & Key. A spooky supernatural show sounds more the FOX style but Sutherland has a lot of clout at FOX...

CW

CW only has 6 hour long dramas in development for 2011-2012. They have two hours to fill currently. My guess is that they will go for three.

Unsurprisingly, Secret Circle gets a nod. We may be spared Awakening.

CBS
CBS has 7 hour long dramas and 8 half hour comedies in development for 2011-2012. If the development is strong I think they will look for 3-4 hours of new programming. If it turns out as weak as it looks, then they will go for 2-3 hours.

Of the dramas, only Ringer and the untitled Susannah Grant medical drama look promising to me.

If the dramas perk little in the imagination, the comedies are worse. I am only really interested in How to Be a Gentleman from one of the writers/actors of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia David Hornby (Rickety Cricket). He looks to Kevin Dillon (Entourage) for advice on how to live his life. Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, Newsradio) and Mary Lyn Rajskub (24) also star

I'd watch How to Be a Gentleman if it makes it onto CBS's schedule.

The most interesting cases, ABC and NBC, are apparently still to come...
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top