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.

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.

The Forgotten

ABC have scheduled the two unshown episodes of The Forgotten for back-to-back broadcast on the evening of Saturday, July 3rd. They're called Designer Jane and Living Doe.

I was off the show and in development on another project when the news of cancellation came through, but I saw how the episode order was rejigged so that creator Mark Friedman could give closure to the series-long arc involving the missing daughter of lead character Alex Donovan.

I'm glad that happened. And I'm glad the unaired episodes will get a screening. It's only fair to the audience.

It's easy to forget that even when a show doesn't perform to a network's satisfaction, by any human or historical measure its audience is still enormous. In a statistic that I've just made up, more people watched one episode of The Forgotten (or Pushing Daisies, or Eli Stone, to name two other shows cancelled with episodes unbroadcast) than saw Victorian superstar Sir Henry Irving perform in his lifetime. Okay, maybe that's a bit dodgy. But swap Henry Irving for Edmund Kean and I'll stand my ground.

Most showrunners have a destination in mind so that they can, when the writing's on the wall, plan some kind of closure for their creation. But there are those where it seems that the showrunner deliberately does a bad job in order to spite the network.

Life exited with grace, spoiled only a little by the fact that Sarah Shahi's pregnancy prevented her from playing a greater role in the last few episodes. Pushing Daises bowed out with warmth and charm, when we eventually got to see the finale.

But Deadwood? If that's how you say goodbye, I'd rather you didn't bother.

Patient John

This kind of explains itself... every couple of weeks the Writers' Guild e-bulletin compiles a list called What Members Are Getting Up To and every time I get up to something, I forget to tell anyone until it's too late.

The Forgotten Season 1 Episode 11 Patient John – Press Release

A MAN’S MONEY-MAKING WAY AS A MEDICAL GUINEA PIG LEADS TO HIS MURDER, ON ABC’S “THE FORGOTTEN“

“Patient John” A John Doe found murdered and stuffed inside a seepage pit takes the team into the world of medical trials. The team learns that the Doe was a recently naturalized citizen who needed to supplement his income by becoming a medical guinea pig in order to bring his family to America. But did one of these trials end up killing the Doe? Who covered it up? And are there any other victims?, on “the forgotten,” TUESDAY, JANUARY 12 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET) on ABC.

Starring in “the forgotten” are Christian Slater as Alex Donovan, Michelle Borth as Candace Butler, Heather Stephens as Lindsey Drake, Bob Stephenson as Walter Bailey, Anthony Carrigan as Tyler Davies, and Rochelle Aytes as Grace Russell.

Guest Cast: Susan Ruttan as Horsemama, Alexis Delarosa as Andy Santiago/John Doe, Jesse John Head as Jamie Roscoe, Daniel Travis as Greg Beaudette, Keong Sim as Robert Chung.

“Patient John” is written by Stephen Gallagher and directed by Guy Ferland.

That's this Tuesday, at the risk of being obvious.

What I Learned in 2009

It's been in my mind to write a long post along the lines of "what I learned in 2009", but until I can set some time aside to think-through and process the whole experience of relocating from one country's industry to work in another, it'll have to wait.

It would be simplistic to say that I went from being a paid-off supplier, outside the process of production, to a position of empowered showmaker in a team of hands-on showmakers. The functioning of the American broadcaster/studio/prodco/writing-team system is way more complex and dynamic than that. And just because the American industry is robust and writer-centred, that doesn't mean that we in the UK don't have things they envy. The individual voice, the authored piece, the single play... all the things, I realise as I write them down, that are steadily vanishing from British screens.

A sobering moment for me in the course of the year came from a point made within this article by Peter Jukes - a simple observation, but a blindingly obvious one when you stop and think about it. He writes:

It’s a paradox of our public service broadcasting that soaps are primetime viewing here, while on US television they are a daytime interest.

And he's absolutely right. Where once we could legitimately claim to make the best TV in the world, we've regressed. Suddenly I was embarrassed for my country and my culture, and for our TV channels haunted by the faces of those same tired old clock-punching actors arguing endlessly about their relationships.

My embarrassment was tempered by the discovery that wherever I turned in Los Angeles, I found fellow-Brits in key positions throughout the Hollywood system. It's not just the accent (though I got plenty of mileage out of mine); over there, they like what we can do for them. We bring something to the table. Lead actors, line producers, executives and directors - all, without exception, happy with the thought of never working in the UK again (unless, in the case of the actors, you're talking about a feature or a West End run).

So it's not a talent thing. Our people can do the work at the highest levels, whether it's meeting the commercial needs of network primetime or crafting bespoke product for HBO. They just can't do it here. Not with the likes of Eastenders and Holby sucking up the lion's share of the drama hours, and the remaining time being programmed to reflect the tastes of a tiny handful of admin people. When the BBC Controller of Drama speaks of a 'limited pool of talent', he's describing his own horizons, not the world as it is.

If there is such a pool, I'm not in it; and nor is anyone I know. I thought maybe Tim Firth, whose excellent Flint Street Nativity got a Christmas repeat this year, but a check on his IMDB page and website suggests no new TV work in almost a decade. Dominic Minghella? Chris Chibnall? I'm sure they probably have their own stories of unprofessional treatment. I'll have to tell you the tale of my BBC Dracula sometime. I certainly can't imagine anyone from the Corporation flying across the Atlantic to engage with me in the way that Bruckheimer's people did.

Well, I said this post would have to wait, and then I went ahead and wrote it anyway. The main thing I learned in 2009 is a reinforcement of something I said at the beginning of the year. It's as much a rule of life as of work. Go where you're wanted. Don't hang around where you aren't.

I've no idea what 2010 will hold. All I know is that I've been given the opportunity to do what I do. It doesn't seem much to ask. But I won't kid myself - I'm lucky to be where I am.

All Change

Fun and games here. I've seen the director's cut of my new episode and feel good reason to be happy. Danny Cannon stopped by the office this morning to say nice things about it. It's set to air in January; last I heard was the 12th, but that can change.

It's been part of my arrangement that along the way I'd generate new ideas and pitch them to JBTV under a development deal that pre-dates my involvement with The Forgotten.

Well, two weeks ago, one of my balls landed in the bucket, so to speak. As of Monday I switch from working on the show to full-time pilot development. It's good timing; The Forgotten has hit its stride and has some good material lined up to take it to the end of the season.

No, I don't want to say anything about the new show. Not here, not now. But I do want to say to Mark and my co-workers that the last six months have been a blast.

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.

On the Lot

Well, now it's official. According to my 0-1 visa I'm an Alien of Extraordinary Talent and Ability. Yeah, I know, I know. Even my bank manager thought it was hilarious.

Apparently there's also a category of Alien Crew Member in Transit. Sometimes they go on the run and we aliens of extraordinary ability have to be sent to hunt them down.

I've got my office in the Warner Village section of the Burbank lot and a parking space with my name stencilled on the asphalt, like something permanent. I mean, nothing is, especially in this business, but wow. As a kid in the 'sixties I used to watch the Batmobile draw up outside the Gotham City Police HQ steps, week after week. Adam West and Burt Ward would leap out and run inside. Usually it was the same recycled clip.

The frontage is still here on the lot, still in use. I can go and stand on the steps of Gotham City Police HQ for inspiration. Yonks ago, after a Chimera meeting with the Image Animation people, I took my dog for a walk around the Pinewood backlot and stepped through a doorway to find myself on Anton Furst's Gotham main street for the Tim Burton Batman. Yesterday I took a walk around the standing sets here and, apart from the occasional tour trolley, I had the streets entirely to myself. I'm the oldest member of our writing team and easily the most starstruck.

Here's a weird thing. On the plane coming over, I checked out the in-flight entertainment. When I called up the TV Drama menu I found that it consisted of the first five episodes of Eleventh Hour.


I finally worked it out. I'm living The Truman Show.

The UK Writer in US TV (2)

They don't get rid of me that easily. I've now joined ABC's The Forgotten as co-executive producer, working as part of the team to bring creator Mark Friedman's vision to the screen in the fall schedule.

"The Forgotten Network" is a group of amateur detectives united in their quest to give names to unnamed victims, and to bring their murderers to justice. Led by Alex, a former detective haunted and driven by the disappearance of his own young daughter, these regular people gather in coffee shops or living rooms to discuss leads and clues and tips, each bringing their own motivations and skills to the table... working against the clock to give each victim a name, and to solve their cases. The Forgotten is produced by Bonanza Productions Inc in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Television and Warner Bros Television.

Alongside my duties on the show I've a deal to develop new material for JBTV, and I'm happy to be continuing the relationship with all the good people there, and at Warners, that began with Eleventh Hour.

And, hey... first NBC, then CBS, now ABC... it's like I'm working my way all around the room.

A bit like swine 'flu.

My Year

Well, every other blogger seems to be doing it... but I'll keep mine short because, frankly, it's been one of those years where you can't run through the best of it without the risk of sounding like a total arse. Let's just say I've had a lot to be grateful for.

But to put that into perspective, here's how I started the year. I was working quietly on a book and my last half dozen screen jobs had included:

Sales to two successful shows created by other people and cancelled by channel controllers for reasons only an insider can know

A BBC commission torpedoed by a rival producer and followed by an ugly battle with Business Affairs over payment due

A project that I’d walked off two weeks before it went to shoot

And then, almost the last straw, an expensive two-parter that I was particularly proud of, hastily rescheduled to run against one of the biggest live football matches of the season. They didn't even waste money on a trailer. Don't ask me what I think of the £45,000 launch party for Merlin unless you've got an hour to spare.

(For the actual last straw, you'll have to look at a piece I wrote at the request of BFS chair Guy Adams for the next issue of Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society. A barefaced plug for the BFS? Whatever next?)

I think I learned two things this year.

1. Nothing ever turns out as you planned. But if you don't make plans, nothing happens at all.

2. The secret of happiness, in work and in all of life, is to go where you're wanted.

Happy New Year!

Separated at Birth?

I was organising the pictures on my hard drive, and here's a conjunction of images that got a smile out of me:

Clearly there's some common DNA in all my protagonists. On the left we've got Rufus Sewell as Eleventh Hour's Jacob Hood, on the right is Stephen Tompkinson as Jim Harper in my Oktober miniseries.

The two were contemporaries at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, old mates and no doubt old rivals too.

I just heard from JBTV that CBS have ordered another five Eleventh Hour shows. As TV Tattle puts it, "The British remake is inching closer to a full season with 18 total episodes."

More on that soon. And in case you hadn't noticed, there's now a free Christmas story available for download - check out the link in the sidebar.

Strange Days Indeed

Well this has been one of the weirdest weeks ever. But I mean that in a good way.

If you've been following the blog you'll be aware that I have my name on a couple of shows airing on US network TV right now. I think I may have let it slip out once or twice.

The beginning of last week found me in Los Angeles for not unrelated reasons... a couple of days of intensive meetings and a day at the studio, meeting the Eleventh Hour creative team and generally bonding with a whole new bunch of people. I'll write more about where that's leading when the time is right.

Eleventh Hour made its debut on CBS a couple of nights before I flew in, so I didn't get to see it go out. But I arrived in the midst of intensive publicity campaigns for both shows; so I drove out from the airport past giant Eleventh Hour roadside billboards, switched on the TV to find a Crusoe trailer every twenty minutes or so, radio spots for the CBC and NBC evening lineups...

I caught the second episode of Eleventh Hour in a motel room in San Luis Obispo, held up on the road and missing all but the last few minutes; caught the whole of Crusoe in another motel, this one in San Juan Bautista (a charming little town, first visited on a research trip in 2003; its Mission was used as a major location in Hitchcock's Vertigo, though the bell tower from which Kim Novak fell was added in a matte painting).

And I've just been told that Eleventh Hour's ratings increased in its second week, and Crusoe "topped NBC's season-to-date average in the Friday 8-10 p.m. slot by 23% in 18-49 (1.6 vs. 1.3) and 50% in total viewers (7.3 million vs. 4.8 million)."

Whatever that means.

But hey, maybe now I can get a meeting at the BBC...

Eleventh Hour USA

The show debuts tonight on CBS in the slot right after CSI, and I'm holding my breath, crossing my fingers, and wishing 'em luck.

I talked about the show concept, and influences, and the whole issue of adapted formats, in an interview with Tom Green for the Writers' Guild newsletter a few weeks ago.

Tom asked,

Did producers/commissioners consider Eleventh Hour to be sci-fi? Is it a genre they worry might put people off?

And I said,

When I sold Eleventh Hour I pushed it as the Prime Suspect of science – a pro-science procedural with today's Bad Science in its sights, grounded entirely in the current state of technology. So no, it was never meant to be science fiction. Although I’d have been happy to see sf writers involved, because they tend to know where the line between actual science and speculation lies. Most arts-background people are far more ignorant of science than professional scientists are of culture. What I wanted for Eleventh Hour was the same kind of probity that you’d apply without question in a legal drama or a medical show. The last thing I wanted was a pasting from the Government’s chief scientific advisor.

If you want to see the full interview, you can find it here.

Next Friday on NBC: Crusoe.

A Word from the Showrunners

I hope he'll forgive me for such a shameless piece of recycling, but I wanted to give more prominence to this addition by Eleventh Hour showrunner Ethan Reiff to the comments section of the previous post.

There's a reference here to an earlier entry titled The Brimstone Boys in which I wrote:

The latest coverage suggests that the creator/producers of the short-lived but influential series Brimstone are being brought in to serve as (Eleventh Hour) series showrunners.

Brimstone starred Peter Horton as a dead cop earning his ticket out of Hell by hunting down each of 113 escaped souls. It had texture and energy and was probably too dark for US mainstream TV. Reaper pretty much steals the premise and, being more lightweight fare, has survived better. But Brimstone was the superior show.

And so it came to be! Anyway, move on a few months and here we are.

In that same post I moaned a bit about how press coverage in these cases always manages to name everyone who had a hand in making the deal while overlooking the originator of the material. As time's gone by, my outlook's changed. The buzz for the new show probably isn't helped by dutiful references to what went before. And I'd much prefer to see the show succeed than stress about a namecheck in Variety.

Hi Stephen,

My name's Ethan Reiff and my partner Cyrus Voris and I are the guys running the American version of your show, here in Los Angeles. We do our best to mention your name as the original creator whenever we talk to the press -- though unfortunately they don't always deem that bit of info worthy of inclusion in whatever they write.

It's great to learn you are a fan of BRIMSTONE and thanks for your kind words about the show. It was our first project in television and we remain very proud of it. If you get a chance, check out "SLEEPER CELL" - the terrorism drama we did for SHOWTIME, which aired on cable and then also on broadcast TV in the UK.

"Eleventh Hour" is proving to be a herculean bitch of a show - but well worth all the effort. We are in the midst of shooting our 6th episode and I'm happy to say that so far EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF SCIENCE COMES FROM THE REAL WORLD.

Whether or not the audience will find this as compelling as we do has yet to be seen - but we're hoping for the best!

One last thing: I think you'll be happy to know there are a lot of British subjects employed in the cast and crew of ELEVENTH HOUR - from English producer-director and line producer to Scots-Irish writer-producer to Scottish editor to English stunt coordinator -- and of course, our Welsh star. Around our offices it sometimes feels like Washington surrendered to Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Still, there's always room to entertain another Limey - so please look us up the next time you're in LA!

I couldn't find a picture of Ethan so here's another one of Marley Shelton.

Well, it's an excuse.

Eleventh Hour USA

Don Kaplan writes in The New York Post:

JUST when TV networks are shopping for new shows at the budget store, CBS has made a $30-million bet on a new series that sounds like "The X-Files" but looks like "CSI."

"Eleventh Hour," which will debut in October, is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer - the producer of all three "CSI" series, "Cold Case" and "Without a Trace," making him arguably TV's most successful producer of dramas of the last decade.

Based on a hit British series, it follows a pair of investigators, a hunky scientist and an attractive female FBI agent assigned to keep him out of trouble, as they attempt to save the world from cutting-edge experiments gone wrong.

Shooting's been under way for some weeks now and for me it's been weird, like having a kid brought up by someone else. You don't want to interfere, but you want to know they're okay...

If Marley Shelton looks familiar in the photo, here's how you may have seen her last:

Eleventh Hour USA

I was encouraged to hear that Eleventh Hour Executive Producer Cyrus Voris told the Television Critics Association last week that "We're trying very hard to ground our show in the real world. There was a CBS press release that described the show as 'five minutes in the future.' I don't even know if it's even five minutes in the future. I think it is sort of happening now."

Executive Producer Ethan Reiff added, "Our lives have been directly touched in one form or another over the last decade by these endless cutting-edge breakthroughs in genetics, in biochemistry and [in] miniaturization and nanotechnology. Speaking for myself, I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic, and the insulin that keeps me alive now is manufactured by genetically engineered bacteria. So that's where this show lives and breathes... the science that's really here. And we think that's really cool."

That's good news for me; I always argued that straight scientific probity was the show's USP. Not science fiction, but thrillers about headline science.

You can read the rest of the piece on SciFiWire.

Eleventh Hour USA

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reuters, and other sources, Planet Terror's Marley Shelton is the latest addition to the Eleventh Hour lineup.

Marley Shelton has been tapped as the female lead opposite Rufus Sewell in Jerry Bruckheimer's new CBS drama "Eleventh Hour."

The project, based on the limited British sci-fi series, centers on Jacob Hood (Sewell), a special science adviser to the government who, with his feisty female bodyguard Rachel (Shelton) in tow, saves people from the worst abuses of science.

In the original series, the roles were played by Patrick Stewart and "Ugly Betty's" Ashley Jensen.

The CBS version, which is set in the U.S., was penned by Mick Davis and will be directed by Danny Cannon.

Davis, Cannon, Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and a Granada executive are executive producing for Jerry Bruckheimer TV, Granada International Media and Warner Bros. TV.

Shelton most recently starred in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse." The actress, repped by Endevor and Untitled Entertainment, next appears in the indie "Our Lady of Victory."

Teddy Alexander

Most of what follows is from an afterword that I wrote to accompany a short story titled Modus Operandi; I got the story from a childhood memory, and writing it triggered a few more of them.

My childhood home was a terraced house in Monton, just outside Manchester. Each street was a row of brick houses, each with a garden behind it and a ten-foot cobbled alleyway behind that. According to my memory the gardens were huge, but I've been back for a recent look and they weren't. My dad built a garage on ours (the comedy subject of my first film, hand-drawn on polythene strips and projected on the wall by a torch in a shoebox. . . find that one if you can, Kevin Brownlow). The garage eliminated a good two-thirds of the garden.

Every back garden had a washing line. Someone began stealing women's underwear from them. The police were called, backyard security was stepped up, the thief grew bolder. . . one neighbour grew most affronted when her enormous bloomers gave rise to a return visit. My mother couldn't stop laughing when she repeated how said neighbour had told her, grim-faced and displeased, D'you know, he came again the next day and threw them back!

There was no shortage of theories. Some even suspected our next-door neighbour, an entertainer who worked the holiday camps in summer and kept the house as his winter base. The grounds for suspicion? They were show folk, no other reason. He and his wife lived on the lower floor and let the upstairs rooms to a xylophone player named Frank.

I don't suppose it helped that he was unable to take the whole situation too seriously. When the phone rang he'd snatch it up and, without even waiting to identify the caller, say loudly and brightly, "Is that the knicker-snatcher?"

I thought that was hilarious. But then again I was only a kid and so, I now realise, was he. He had a hamster that he named Abie. He built Abie a hamster paradise out of interlinked tubes and cages. The design was more ambitious than it was well-engineered; Abie got out and disappeared forever under the floorboards. His owner poked sunflower seeds down through the cracks so the hamster wouldn't starve. This was around the same time that he bought a complete Punch and Judy rig – booth, puppets, whistle, routines, everything but the dog – from another performer who was either retiring from the business or had gone broke. He'd invite me around to test-run the show. My job was to shout in all the right places.

Joni Mitchell was right. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

I don't believe that the case of the missing underwear was ever solved, but our washing line was one of the targets and we did get a visit from the CID. That was the first time I ever heard the term Modus Operandi. I'd drawn a crayon map of the gardens to explain my theory of how the thieves got access (climbing onto the dustbin and then over the garden fence... brilliant stuff, I tell you), and I showed it to the officer. But I didn't have all the underwear stowed in a case under my bed. That was a twist I added to turn life into narrative, when refashioning the memories for Maxim Jakubowski's New Crimes collection.

Our neighbour took his comedy routine onto Opportunity Knocks one week in October 1966 and won the show, and a season or so later he and his wife and their new baby moved on. I've been able to glean a few more details from the net: he continued to make his living as an entertainments director and later as a children's entertainer before retiring and devoting himself to charity work following the death of his son Karl at the age of forty. His name is Teddy Alexander and I believe that performers like him are the backbone of all showbusiness.

I promise to write some more on the CBS/Bruckheimer/Eleventh Hour deal as soon as I can. So much of it's in the air and my role in it, if any, is yet to be defined. But it's the biggest deal of its kind in American TV this decade, according to the people I'm working with. It's weird for me because I'd already let the show go, and this news came out of nowhere. More than anything, I'm curious to see how it'll develop in the hands of the very people whose methods I studied in order to create it.

Second Variety (2)

Right now I can't do much more than pass along what's appearing in the trades - here's an extract from the fullest piece I've seen so far, in The Hollywood Reporter.

There's also an expanded version of the Variety coverage now online. Reuters, Hollywood News and Movieweb all carry versions of the story, none of which mention the creator credit. But it's not like I'm sensitive, or anything. Not complaining. Just, y'know. Pointing it out.


From The Hollywood Reporter:

The "CSI" trio of CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer TV and director Danny Cannon are reuniting for a new drama project based on the British limited sci-fi series "Eleventh Hour."

CBS has ordered a pilot with a hefty penalty for the untitled project, which Jerry Bruckheimer TV is producing with Granada International Media and Warner Bros. TV. The penalty is rumored to amount to a 13-episode production commitment, and WBTV is said to be proceeding with making the series, which is expected to net strong international sales given the Bruckheimer brand's popularity worldwide. CBS would neither confirm nor deny the deal Tuesday.

The drama centers on a special science adviser to the government who, with his feisty female bodyguard in tow, saves people from the worst abuses of science.

The four-hour original series, which aired last year on ITV, starred Patrick Stewart.

Feature writer-director Mick Davis will pen the script for the U.S. version. "CSI" executive producer Cannon, who directed the pilot for "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and is credited with creating the hit franchise's distinct look, is set to helm the pilot.

Davis and Cannon are executive producing with Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and an executive from Granada to be named later.

Second Variety

Well, it's out now. Here's the stop-press email from Variety.com:

Following a fierce bidding war, CBS has beat out ABC for the rights to a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced adaptation of Brit thriller Eleventh Hour.

Eye has committed to at least a pilot, with a hefty seven-figure penalty attached if the Warner Bros/Granada project - which remains untitled in the States - doesn't move forward. Reports from people familiar with the situation suggest that CBS may have agreed to as much as a 13-episode on-air commitment, but the Eye is denying it's stepped up to that level.

Bruckheimer and Jonathan Littman are set to exec produce the untitled adaptation of Eleventh Hour.

Eleventh Hour aired as a four-part miniseries in Blighty last year, with Patrick Stewart starring. Thesp played Professor Alan Hood, who's called in by the government to investigate mysterious cases that involve matters of science - from cloning to global warming. U.S. adaptation is said to have a tone similar to The X-Files.