Fiction Reboot

A couple of weeks ago I answered a few interview questions from novelist/academic researcher/teacher Brandy Schillace, and the results are now online. I spouted stuff like:

"Through my teens I read classic science fiction and ’60s British thriller writers. Then I had the advantage of a very solid three years of education in English Literature that opened up new avenues to me, from the medieval mindset to the poetry of Thomas Hardy. I think the point is that as a reader I had a big, big net, and a special fascination with popular fiction. I can remember buying Westerns and Romance novels, neither of which were of particular interest to me but I felt driven to find out what was going on in that kind of writing. I looked at William Goldman and Michael Crichton and saw that it was possible to be both a novelist and a screenwriter; Goldman kept the distinction clear and Crichton’s later, less substantial work showed what can happen when you don’t, so I learned from both of them."

and

"Research is nothing more than expanded observation and as such, it’s key to all creation. Art’s about insight, and you can’t offer insight into nothing. Research is about continuing to write with authority after you’ve detected the limits of what you know."

More dazzling autobiography and Secrets of the Universe here.

And while you're visiting, dig around a little. Dr Schillace's interest in the intersection of science, medicine and literature give her obsessions and researches an inevitably Gothic tint. Her published academic work covers areas of psychology, neurology, weird science and reproduction; here's a podcast recorded in the Wellcome Collection's club room, in which she discusses recent work on syphilis and Dracula, while if your imagination isn't piqued by her search across Europe for the Labour Device, an eighteenth-century "mechanical phantom used in the teaching of male midwives", then I don't know what would do it.

The Silence of the Witness

A shout-out to David Richards and the crew who today begin shooting on my two-part Silent Witness story for series 16. It'll air next year.

I was told, "Don't be afraid to make it your own," and I've taken them at their word. It can be tricky, making a contribution to an established and long-running show; it's not your setup and they're not your characters, but you still have to bring your best game. Many of SW's writers seem to be regulars and it can be hard not to feel like some kind of an intruder.

One of the best things about the work has been the access to the top-level consultants and experts that the show has on standby, all of whom are alert to ways to enhance and advance the narrative. They don't just see it as their role to shoot down science flaws. Some viewers will recognise something of an Eleventh Hour vibe in my episode. Which will hardly be a coincidence.

So while we're at it, another shout-out for the people at Planet Hood, unshakeable in their drive to see a return of that show to US TV in some form. My stance all along has been supportive (well, obviously) while my energies have been directed, as they must be, into keeping up a working profile in a fast-moving business.

My feeling from the start has been that if Eleventh Hour should ever return, its optimum form would be that of CBS's one-off Jesse Stone TV movies. It's a form that could work rather well, I reckon, and it wouldn't be impossible to set up. I still have good relations with the Bruckheimer team - a couple of seasons ago we developed another show together, for a pilot that didn't get picked up. The next season I developed a non-Bruckheimer pilot for Fox while writing another for NBCU. I completed my coverage of the networks by working for ABC and this season I've a show that I'm pitching to cable. So if there's ever an opening for a rebooted version of a cancelled show, I'm in a position to chase it; what I can't do, alas, is force one.

But that's the game. As Lynda Obst wrote in her excellent Hollywood memoir Hello, He Lied, it's a business in which you have to ride the horse in the direction it's going. In other words, pursue what you want to achieve through the opportunities that you get.

Science and Sensation

I love this. Under the headline, Experts Warn Over Humanising Apes, the Associated Press has put out a lengthy science piece which has been picked up by, among others, The Independent - in fact it's being reprinted everywhere, from Pravda to The York Advertiser. It begins

Action is needed now to prevent nightmarish "Planet Of The Apes" science ever turning from fiction to fact, according to a group of eminent experts.
Their report calls for a new rules to supervise sensitive research that involves humanising animals.
One area of concern is "Category Three" experiments which may raise "very strong ethical concerns" and should be banned.
An example given is the creation of primates with distinctly human characteristics, such as speech.

A tip of the hat to Chernin Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox, for happening to launch their advance publicity for Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the very week that the story breaks... what are the chances, eh?

Here's how we did it in 1991.


I know for sure that this kind of sensationalism is an irritant to many working scientists, though maybe not to the extent that you'd think. Apparently there's an entire generation of computer designers inspired to their choice of career by 2001's murderous HAL 9000. How many people working in gene science today had their imaginations fired by the mayhem in Jurassic Park? And I know from my own experience that it's never hard to find a scientist ready to share a beer and speculate in the aid of some extreme worst-case scenario in their chosen field.

(Would that more producers would take advantage of this, instead of regarding such due diligence as, as one critical of my method put it to me, 'letting the tail wag the dog'.)

Science and sensation will always go together, not least because science can be pretty sensational in its own right. But there's more involved than simple awe and the contemplation of wonder; science is our age's way of connecting with myth, with those eternal patterns of human behaviour writ large and lurid in tales designed to captivate.

The coverage inspired by Chimera was, to put it mildly, highly speculative. Not that we didn't encourage it. But nor, in interview, did I ever try to blur the line between actual science and the concerns of the fiction we'd based on it. When the novel first came out I met with John Burke Davies, a reporter from The News of the World, whose editor had sent him to investigate or expose this charlatan who claimed to have inside information on the whereabouts of man-made monsters. Once it was established that I was claiming no such thing, our meeting turned into an eighteen-hour pub crawl around the journalistic haunts of Manchester. I remember drinking with sharply-dressed Sun reporters in a bar panelled with timber salvaged from an R101 airship. But that's all I remember.

The 'eminent experts' quoted in the AP release include Sir Paul Nurse, whose encouragement toward the creation of a pro-science show set me on the path to Eleventh Hour. As far as I can tell from the selected quotes, most of them are talking about the hazards and ethical issues of modifying gene functions at the cellular level, which is where the real science is at.

Dare I suggest that the raising of ape armies and the overthrow of mankind is best left to those of us who deal in that kind of thing.



Now available with added Andy Serkis.

Saturday Event

On Saturday I'm giving a talk-with-clips about my TV career at the Lass O'Gowrie on Charles Street in Manchester, and as the day gets closer I'm growing convinced that no one is going to turn up. If you've an events diary or similar feature and might be interested in giving it a mention, feel free to pass the information on.

I was born in Salford so this is a homecoming for me. I'll be covering ground from my start with Doctor Who through working with Brian Clemens on BUGS in the 90s with side-trips into TV horror and Rosemary & Thyme, right up to the experience of remaking Eleventh Hour in Hollywood for Jerry Bruckheimer (the first version, with Patrick Stewart, was shot in Manchester).

The talk's in an upstairs room of the Lass at 6.30, right after my old friend Bryan Talbot speaking about his Grandville graphic novels. It follows a day of events with Johnny Vegas, who I suspect will have no trouble pulling an audience.

Adding a Character

Searching through some old emails I came across this one, written as part of the to-and-fro when I was finally freed up to be able to contribute to the US version of Eleventh Hour. Just as I started pitching the story that was to become the episode titled Subway, CBS came up with the idea of adding a third character to the team. This was my response. I think there's enough distance now that it won't matter if I share it. Not least because it gives me a chance to air some long-held views on the ways in which characters balance each other in series TV.

I'd urge care over this 'third member' question as it's one of those understandable concerns but with a potential to sabotage the fundamental dynamic of the show... imagine if THE X FILES had featured a 3-person team.

A long time ago I noticed a distinction between the shows I liked best and the ones that I still liked, but which stood in their shadow. The front-rank shows were built around single lead characters or were two-handers. Where a show featured a team of 3, the characters always seemed to fall into the same regular configuration; I called them the Father, the Lad, and the Desirable Tomboy. This applied regardless of gender.

The Father is the steady one, the responsible one, maybe older. Finds the cases or receives the orders and is perceived as the head of the team. The Lad is self-assured, impetuous, energetic, a different girlfriend every week. The Desirable Tomboy is intelligent and sexy but she holds herself sexually aloof. She has an unstated thing for the father. The Lad has a barely-concealed interest in her. The Father has relationships outside the team that we only ever get hints about.

(Example: every 'two guys and a gal' team show ever made)

The threesome is stable and it always works but the price of it is a formula-feeling show.

When first working on 11thH I had some ideas about an extended regular cast but always with a view to keeping the Hood/Rachel relationship of equals intact. Add a third corner to the team, and that will go. Hood will be pushed into being the Father.

So a third member needs to be distanced slightly so as not to become the third person in a marriage. I experimented with a senior figure within government, the man who recruited Hood and who protects him politically so that he can get on with what he does. But that was too far offstage and not very interesting.

So my other thought was for a kind of field facilitator, someone who gets sent out to rendezvous with Hood and Rachel in the field and provide them with stuff they may need or make local arrangements - source them a geiger counter, find and rent an aircraft hangar, open a channel of contact with some local activist group. Kind of a cross between Q showing up in Tokyo with a bunch of gadgets for James Bond, and a junior vice-president being sent out to a distant location to crack the studio whip, only to be drawn into the adventure of the shoot. So Hood may manipulate/charm him/her into playing an unwilling part in the week's adventure - a part which forms a separate thread to the Hood/Rachel story. More of a B story running parallel, ending with the supply of some vital piece of the jigsaw for the final act. Avoiding the obligation always to make this character part of the denouement. And used sparingly, to keep them fresh and so their participation doesn't start to feel obligatory and routine.

So what I'm suggesting is; third character fine, but not a fully equal member. A Bickley to their Mork and Mindy.

Here's how it works; what the network asks for, the network tends to get. In this case the outcome was the addition of Omar Benson Miller as Felix Lee. Subway marked his second appearance, so I had some hand in shaping his character. Felix was a hit with viewers and when the show wasn't renewed for a second season, Omar wasn't short of offers. Good for him.

But had we gone into a second season and there had been pressure for more and more of Felix, I'm in no doubt that the show would have grown less like Eleventh Hour, and more like other shows.

Which, at heart, is what networks tend to want.

Jacob Hood - the Firefox Theme

Whenever my Firefox browser auto-updates, it always kicks off by inviting me to choose a 'persona', which is basically a fancy Bergmanesque name for a toolbar graphic.

There's thousands of the buggers, apparently, nearly all user-generated, and usually I skip on by. But someone's just added a Jacob Hood Firefox Persona.

And before you ask... yeah, of course I downloaded it.

It would be rude of me not to.

UPDATE: This option seems to have been removed. Don't know why.

Arise, Sir Hood

Congratulations to Sir Patrick Stewart, knighted today. He used the occasion to give credit to the English teacher who opened his eyes to literature and first encouraged him to perform.

It's no surprise; many a career in the arts can be traced back to the influence of a charismatic and inspiring figure in the classroom.

So Roy Bateman, if there's any slim chance you're reading this - thanks, and if you'll tell me where to send it I really will return the copy of Doctor Faustus that you lent me.

Testing the Audience

We just got back from Las Vegas. It's a long drive through the desert, with nothing but country music on the radio. If you're ever thinking about it, you have been warned.

The last time we did the trip was around 1980, and that was by Greyhound bus. Back then it was essentially still '50s Ratpack and Mafia-style Vegas, where a couple of kids with backpacks could have a cheap time with inexpensive buffets and free champagne. Now it's like they attach a suction pump to your wallet as you arrive, and it keeps on draining money until you finally pull free. But we wouldn't have missed it.

We got a good deal on a suite in the Palazzo, right on the Strip. Eight floors down and right across the street, two full-sized pirate ships did battle every hour and one of them sank, bobbing back up at the end of the show like the only decent scene in Raise the Titanic. There were working gondolas floating through our hotel's shopping plaza and a volcano in front of the Mirage along the way. Every hotel is like an indoor city, and each has a theme. In one afternoon we walked through crazed fantasy reproductions of Venice, Paris, Ancient Rome and, erm, Atlantis, which I suspect some Americans believe is as real as all the other places. One night we went off the strip to the Rio (theme: 70s Blackpool acid flashback) for Penn and Teller's show. Penn and Teller have a residence there, with the theatre named after them... it was a bare-bones show with no sets, just a jazz piano player and one performing assistant, but we had great seats and saw some neat stuff.

A couple of days of it were enough... at one point I found myself sitting eight floors up with a direct view down on all the madness, communicating with home in real time and running off show reservations on the in-room printer. On one of the suite's three huge flatscreen TVs, one of a dozen rolling news channels was telling of how robots were working to cap an oil well amidst ecological disaster along the coast of Lousiana. Down below my floor-to-ceiling window was a street scene that could have been lifted from Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, while behind the hotel fantasy facades stretched a Ballardian wasteland of concrete, desert lots, and high speed roads. It was as if every SF novel I ever read had come true all at once and in the same place... in the foyer the next morning I even saw a bunch of service people in fatigues and with kitbags checking out to return to duty, with a sense of dislocation straight out of The Forever War.

Note that I say novels, and not movies. Much of the SF literature I was reading decades ago, some of it written decades before that, still stands as an effective imagining of the potential variety of the human context. It wasn't predictive, nor did it ever purport to be. It was exploratory and prophetic, and therein lay the joy of being a science fiction reader; SF as a magnificent rummage-chest of thought-out possibilities.

Whereas the movies did something different. It's the difference between actual science fiction and the theme park ride that is sci-fi. Looking at them now, you can see how the movies reflected their time without ever really moving out of it. There's nothing more dated than a sci-fi movie's idea of futuristic fashion.

But there was a serious purpose to the trip, as well. I went to a demonstration of 3D television, and later spoke to the guy in charge of one of the audience testing centres on the Las Vegas strip. There are two such centres in town, and two more in Florida; the idea is that both locations offer a wide cross-section of the American population (I might also say that I saw more seriously unhealthy people in the first six hours in Vegas than in my first six months in Los Angeles.)

They get people in off the strip, record their reactions during the screening of a show, and ask them a series of detailed questions afterwards. The raw data goes to the networks and the studios. Eleventh Hour was tested here, with Rufus Sewell delivering one of the highest-ever scores of a new series lead. When the results were in, the pilot was recut to remove Rachel's businesslike motel seduction of a local detective; the test audience said they liked the character and didn't want to see or hear anything bad about her.

And did the demonstration change my opinion of 3D television? The technology certainly worked, and worked well, in that the image was diamond-sharp and had depth. As long as you wore the glasses and didn't tilt your head or move from the couch. Therein, I think, lies the genuine drawback. 3D television is like stereo radio. It's OK to have it if it's no extra trouble.

Evolution of an Idea

I've been organising my files and came across this short piece that I wrote about Eleventh Hour for some purpose or other.

With Chimera's impending DVD appearance (news on those features soon, I promise) I thought I'd put it out here. It offers a kind of join-the-dots demonstration of how my thinking went over the sixteen years that separated the two projects.

At the beginning of my career I wrote a miniseries called Chimera, a variant on the Frankenstein story with a cold-hearted scientist as its villain. It made some waves, and through various debates and public events brought me into contact with a lot of real-world science professionals.

I found that these scientists were, almost without exception, sharp, cultured, funny, and great late-night company. They were well-read, they listened to opera, they played musical instruments. Future Nobel prizewinner Paul Nurse was a motorbike nut (and was the guy who first encouraged me to dream up a real-science drama). Biologist Jack Cohen advised sf writers on alien-building and had a daughter who was a dancer. All were genuinely excited to be doing the work they did.

As much as these real scientists shaped my picture of Hood, they also shaped my attitude to science villains. The ruthless, 'playing God' stereotype, arguing that harm can be justified in the name of progress, is a cartoon.

Science's villains are the same recognisably human people as those regular scientists. But they become villains through regular human flaws, not by Nazi logic. They sell out, or screw up. They can bend the truth to suit their paymasters or the policymakers, and call it 'being realistic'. They can be reckless, they can underestimate danger, they can lie to cover their mistakes, they can take desperate measures to cover their lies. But science's villains are characterised by their human failings, not by single-minded immoral intent.

And often they won't even be scientists, but people who co-opt science to their own purposes. CEOs, charlatans, toxic waste dumpers, politicians, lobbyists, thieves, counterfeiters, scammers, conspiracy theorists, drug lords, mobsters.

People like the international hustler and would-be breakthrough human cloner who provided the model for the bad guy in my very first story.

Bootleg Corner

One of the bootleg Eleventh Hour boxed sets has come my way. I won’t say how – it’s not a trade I’m here to encourage – but it wasn’t difficult to get hold of. At first glance the Chinese DVD packaging is way more attractive than the 'official' version, though on closer inspection it's hilarious. There are logos for CBS, Paramount Studios and the Showtime cable network, a long rambling blurb than conflates the stories from three different episodes, small print in Engrish, and a copyright notice that reads DEXTER (TM). They just cut and paste this stuff so it looks right from a distance, the way that the aliens put together Dave Bowman’s apartment in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 novel.

(In the novel, Bowman takes down a book from the shelf and the pages are all slightly out of focus. Brilliant detail.)

When I put any one of the discs in my player, it rattles like a saucepan lid. Still works, though. After two separate copyright theft warnings, from Interpol and the FBI (nice touch!), up comes... the Twentieth Century Fox movie logo and fanfare.

Which means that one way or another they seem to name-check almost every random studio except for Warner Bros, the studio that actually made the show.

The box, which has a nice matt finish with classy part-laminated images, also promises Dolby sound (no) and a Spanish language track (there isn’t). The menus on the discs have a home-made look, but they’re kind of pleasing.

And what of the episodes? I assumed that they’d be ripped and stolen from the Warner Archive release, but they aren’t. All the shows are recorded straight from TV.

In fact they’re probably the torrented versions that appeared online within hours of the original broadcasts. They’re widescreen but they’re heavily compressed and nowhere near Hi Def. When you play an episode, it has the CBS ‘eye’ logo in the corner of the screen – the ad breaks have been cut out but midway through you get flashed-up promos for other shows. Someone’s added switchable subtitle tracks in English and two forms of Chinese.

Worth having? Nah. Keep your money and stay legal. It’s barely a step up from a movie stolen by camcorder and if you’re stupid enough to sit through one of those, consider yourself banned from the blog. You probably think that date-expired seafood is a great bargain. I inadvertently bought something like this once before, when I bid on the first season of Carnivale on eBay, thinking it was the real thing. All it did was persuade me to go to Amazon and pay all over again.

But that box, though – love that box.

WTF?

No, don't get excited. That isn't the cover of a genuine Eleventh Hour mass-market edition. It's the Chinese bootleg - at least, I'm assuming it's a bootleg, unless fractured English and a Showtime logo on the back of the sleeve are the mark of an official release.

A couple of days ago I got an email from Amazon to tell me that the Eleventh Hour DVD set - the official set, the Warner Bros one - was now available. Fine, I thought, a couple of months late, but better than never. I clicked on the link, and... "This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer".

You'd think I'd be in the loop on all this stuff, but I'm not. So I don't know why Amazon advertised and then pulled the product (it's still available from the Warner Bros online store), or why they've deleted about 20 five-star reviews.

Maybe Warners couldn't cope with the demand - the discs are DVD-R, and they burn them to order.

But the Chinese are having no such problem; wholesalers are stacking them high and shifting them for about ten US dollars a set, all regions.

I'm not recommending them - these are pirated copies, and along with the ethical issues you run the risk of getting poor goods. But I've always held that the most effective way to beat piracy is to outmarket the pirates.

By the look of it, we've some catching up to do.

Where Are They Now?

Congratulations to Sir Patrick Stewart on his knighthood and to Marley Shelton on the birth of her daughter.

Safe to say that I can claim no credit for either.

Happy Holidays

Most years I've just about managed to get all my Christmas cards out by now, but this isn't most years.

Instead of my usual last-minute scramble I'm facing a scramble of another kind - my ticket home is for a British Airways flight, and right now I can't say whether I'll be spending Christmas in my own house, in the air, in an airport lounge, or stranded while awaiting some nonexistent connection in Nome, Alaska.

Where at least I suppose a white Christmas can be more or less guaranteed.

My artist friend Dave Windett is way more organised than I am, so instead of sending out cards this year, I've asked his permission to share this one with you.

Ain't it cute? You can see more of Dave's work at Davewindett.com.

(Btw, when my family flew out to LA with Virgin Atlantic a couple of weeks ago, Eleventh Hour was again part of the in-flight entertainment. Go, Virgin!)

Questions from Planet Hood

It was quiet on the lot yesterday. Apart from the crews on the stages, most people seemed to have left early to travel for Thanksgiving. I went for a wander and found my way onto the giant set for Miami Trauma, Jeffrey Lieber's show for Bruckheimer which is now shooting. I don't think I'm giving any secrets away if I say that it's pretty spectacular, and resembles a space station in a big-budget science fiction movie.

My medical thriller episode for The Forgotten had completed its filming over on Stage 6 the day before. It'll move into post-production next week and I'm really happy with the way it's been turning out. Director Guy Ferland nailed and enhanced every scene; now I know why Medea turned out as it did. This episode is a nice blend of creator Mark Friedman's vision for the series and the things I'm best at. And as we move toward production on the show's 'back five' they've been letting us be more adventurous, more character-driven, funnier when we need to be.

As with my earlier episode, many of the crew from just about every department had previously worked on Eleventh Hour. Over the days of shooting I got into numerous conversations about the series, with everyone expressing dismay at its cancellation. Many made the point that shows with lower numbers are being hailed as this season's successes.

When we wrapped and all shook hands after the final shot of the day - the 'Martini' - I told DP David Stockton that I looked forward to working with him again. His parting response was, "On Eleventh Hour, the Movie!"

Which brings me to the Resurrection Campaign, a fan-driven movement which instantly grew out of the Renewal Campaign on the day the cancellation was announced. While I'm entirely sympathetic to what these guys are doing, they're completely independent of me. They're working to their own honest agenda, not some devious one of mine.

When I heard that there was a feeling of disappointment at the lack of response to their approaches, I contacted one of their number, Kellie, and said that if she wanted to collate some questions from the participants in the Planet Hood forums I'd do my best to answer them here.

What are your thoughts on our continuing this campaign...is there hope?

I'd rule nothing out. I thought the British show was dead in the water until I got an email that said, 'Congratulations on the American sale'. But at this stage we'd be talking about a rebirth rather than a renewal. Normally I'd be a pragmatist and think, okay, that was good while it lasted, dust yourself off and move on. But what keeps me attached to it, even while I'm working on The Forgotten and developing other shows, is that the appetite for the material is proven but nothing else is filling its niche. It's an action show with hard science. The science may be dramatized - its processes shortened, its effects exaggerated - but the audience can sense that those processes are grounded in a reality. You didn't get that from The X Files, you don't get that from Fringe. They go the fantasy route. Which is entirely valid, but those are different worlds.

What are you and the producers willing/able to do to help bring the show back? Are Bruckheimer and Warner Bros interested in trying again with another network?

For my part, I could be up and running overnight. Cyrus and Ethan have moved on to other things but for the past six months I've effectively been in training for the gig. As far as Bruckheimer TV and Warner Bros are concerned, I'm on great terms with everyone there but they play their cards close to their chests. I'm not aware that reviving Eleventh Hour is high on anyone's agenda right now. Not because they don't believe in the show, but because all their energies are deployed elsewhere. A cancelled show doesn't normally stay in the portfolio until something unexpectedly puts it there.

What more can we do as fans to help bring the show back?

Stay visible. I can't say that any specific thing that you're doing will lead to success, but the fact that you're doing it proves there's a continuing audience for the show.

Have you had any contact with any of the actors about the possibility of the show's return?

Rufus and Marley had already moved on when I got out here. But that's a conversation we'd start when there was a real possibility of making it happen, and it would take place in the context of their other prospects and commitments. Most things are negotiable.

Have you had any feedback/interest from any of the networks we have contacted?

Not personally, no.

Did CBS ever give you a reason for canceling the series?

My understanding is that they believed they had a strong development slate for the next fall season, and also that they could profit more from shows that their studio division, rather than Warner Bros, owned, even if those shows drew smaller audiences. Which explains why they picked up Medium. I know that Nina Tassler was a strong supporter of Eleventh Hour, and for that I thank her. But there was another CBS executive who let slip a few injudicious remarks when talking to a class of film students, which appeared later in one student's blog; we knew then that there was a faction within CBS that was less receptive to arguments for the show's renewal.

Did Warner Bros ever give a reason for their choice to release the DVD as manufacture-on-demand and in the US only?

I've tried to find out. All I know is that if it wasn't for the personal interest of Danny Cannon and the good graces of Peter Roth, there wouldn't have been a DVD release at all. Which to me seems mad. I can walk into any video store in LA and buy the British version. You can't tell me there's less of a market for a Bruckheimer show.

What made the show so expensive... and will this affect someone picking it up?

Sets, locations, dressing, and crew moves. Most shows have a 'precinct' - a series of regular locations where a significant proportion of each week's story can take place. It's already built and dressed, and in some cases is pre-lit. By always setting a certain number of pages in your precinct sets, you can get a lot of your material shot efficiently and at basic cost. Hood and Rachel were always on the road, and a big part of the appeal of their stories was that they'd show up in a new place every week. In production terms, every story was like a pilot.

Some shows reduce their costs by leaving LA, taking advantage of tax breaks in other states and using local labour. Leverage, which I love, shoots in Portland. Battlestar Galactica shot in Vancouver. Mental shot in Bogota (to unhappy effect, I'm told) while in The Starter Wife Australia's Gold Coast doubled as Miami. But...

But a top LA crew is a phenomenal thing to watch in action, and Eleventh Hour's production team were integral to its success.

I go back to what I said at the beginning. Rebirth rather than renewal. I need to gain more ground here, and somewhere along the line I'd need to meet someone who's interested in working with me, who has the power to greenlight shows, and who feels the spark when I pitch the idea of reuniting Rufus and Marley for a feature-length special or miniseries. I'd need to get the production company and the studio onside, since they own the property, but two things would work in my favour; a killer story, and a noisy fanbase. I can't now see a network picking it up, and I'm not even sure that network TV is the best place for Eleventh Hour stories - anything with any edge to it makes the networks very nervous. I can imagine doing the special as a piece of 'event' TV for one of the more quality-minded cable channels, where the prospect of snagging even a fraction of the show's 12m network viewers could have an appeal. We'd have to make it to a budget. But if the special proved enough of a draw, there would be an argument to go on and make episodes.

Thre's a saying in Hollywood, that I picked up from Lynda Obst's book Hello, He Lied - ride the horse in the direction it's going. I can't force it to happen, but I can stay prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that may come up while I pursue those things I can make happen.

Scripts Online

Over at his Complications Ensue blog, Alex Epstein provides a handy link to a site called Pilot School where downloadable scripts for a host of pilot shows can be found.

I don't know where they're sourced from, but they include one of my drafts for the British pilot of Eleventh Hour along with Mick Davis's take on the same story for the US.

I've been told that the script for the feature-length Crusoe series opener is somewhere out there as well, but I've never seen it. If you should fall across it anytime, let me know.

A DVD Competition and a Trailer

Over at the Are You Screening blog, reviewer Marc Eastman writes about the Eleventh Hour DVDs and offers the chance for readers in the US and Canada to win a set simply by adding to the comments section.

"Starring Rufus Sewell, on the short list of most underrated actors, as one of the world’s leading scientists who works for the government tracking down criminals who abuse science in ways few other people would understand, Eleventh Hour is an order of magnitude beyond your typical crime show. There’s investigating using science, and then there’s investigating using science, and this show is simply off in another world. Whether it’s cloning, bizarre viruses, or people with two hearts, if Dr. Hood gets sent in, we’ve moved into realms no one else wants to be involved with."

Read the entry in full here.

Meanwhile Warner Bros has (have?) put out an online trailer for the release. I saw this on the Spike TV website, where the clip was preceded by a condom ad.

See, I told you it was a sexy show.



Don't worry if you happen to get the condom ad, it's quite tasteful. Although if you ask me, the mime has a rather exaggerated opinion of himself.

Eleventh Hour on UK Freeview

The show starts a run on the UK's Virgin 1 Freeview channel on October 28th.

Click here for screening times and details.

Look What Ships Today

All eighteen episodes, from Resurrection to Medea.


Here's the blurb:

Acclaimed film and television producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean, CSI) is back again in the nick of time with… ELEVENTH HOUR. Starring Rufus Sewell as Dr. Jacob Hood, a brilliant biophysicist and special science advisor to the government, the series follows the enigmatic doctor as he investigates scientific crises and oddities - everything from cloning to cryogenics. With absolute jurisdiction and a resolute pursuit of those who would abuse and misuse scientific discoveries and breakthroughs for their own gain, (Hood) is called in at the eleventh hour as the last line of defense. Marley Shelton co-stars as Special Agent Rachel Young, the decorated FBI protection officer assigned to watch his back. Based on the British miniseries by acclaimed writer Stephen Gallagher, the series follows this unlikely pair as they crusade to protect the substance of science from those with nefarious motives.

Available only from WBShop.com, the online store of Warner Bros Studios. If you do buy the set, why not go back to the site and give it a review and some stars?

Can't hurt.

Eleventh Hour on DVD

Danny Cannon dropped by my office this morning and mentioned that the Eleventh Hour DVD boxed set is now scheduled for October 2009 release.

Danny's had a hand in the presentation and the quality specs, so technically the set should be well up to snuff.

I Googled to see if any public announcement had been made before mentioning it here, as I'm not in the business of breaking confidences, only to find that it's been on Warners' own DVD site for a few days already. According to TV Shows on DVD, pre-orders will ship on October 20th but here's an odd thing... if their information's accurate, the discs won't be available in stores but sold online-only as 'manufacture-on-demand' under the Warners Archive program.

Make of that what you will. In the course of the day it's been suggested to me that healthy sales may lead to a wider release with extras, commentaries and the like. Warners know that I'm up for a contribution if they want to call on me.

But how you achieve healthy sales with a product that has no retail presence is another question altogether...

Can't Let This One Pass

In a press release following the release of Thursday night's viewing figures, CBS announced:

The second season premiere of THE MENTALIST on its new night improved the 10:00-11:00 PM year ago time period premiere of ”Eleventh Hour”

which is hardly comparing like with like... Eleventh Hour's number was for a new show and was the beginning of a rise, while The Mentalist's figure shows a fall in numbers from its previous season.

I'm not going to knock The Mentalist. I think it's a successful, light-touch entry in the 'brilliant amateur' detective genre, at its best with straight cases, on less certain ground when it addresses its 'Red John' mythology. Creator Bruno Heller was responsible for Rome, one of my favourite shows of recent years. And their writers' building is just across the street from here, so their people can easily find me.

But why use The Mentalist to knock Eleventh Hour? Especially when the argument doesn't really stick.

And if you could only have seen the Eleventh Hour story we had lined up for that night...