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.

Wickered

I came across my old autograph album when I was straightening the study a couple of weeks ago. Back when I was a child I used to study the end credits of my favourite shows and write to the stars at the addresses of the TV studios.

It's not a huge collection. Getting autographs was a very hit and miss affair in those days. Now it’s an entire industry with a lot of fakery involved. But back then you sent your letter and then maybe you’d hear back six months later or maybe you wouldn’t.

My first was Roger Moore, a lovely colour postcard with a genuine signature. It’s got the spit smear where I tested it because I couldn’t quite believe it was real.

Others followed. Flicking through the album now, it's like a mosaic of my dream life at the time. Richard Bradford, Patrick Troughton, Marshall Thompson, Steve Forrest, Lawrence Payne and Roger Foss from Sexton Blake. Christopher Lee. A lovely picture and a typed postcard from Peter Cushing, and a super 8 x 10 and a personal letter from Callan star Edward Woodward.

Callan was possibly the finest popular TV drama of its era, and one of the least well-remembered because it was made on tape, not film. What survives of the show is really just archive material, below what's generally considered to be commercial quality. I know there was a movie, but that isn't the same. Callan nailed the intimacy of the TV medium.

Years later a friend of mine was producing a film in which Woodward was appearing, and I asked if he would do me a favour and pass along a signed copy of Down River with a little note, along the lines of “you won’t remember this, but years ago...” And I think I even included a photocopy of his original letter to me.

My basic message was, “You showed me how a public figure ought to behave, and I’ve tried to follow your example” And I signed the book “To Edward Woodward, still my hero”.

Got another note back from him, saying how delighted he was.

And, you know? I was eleven years old all over again.

I Want it All, and I Want it Now

In today's Independent on Sunday Andrew Johnson writes:

"The Large Hadron Collider, which took 20 years to build and cost £3.6bn, will not be able to unravel the mysteries of the universe for at least another two months, scientists announced yesterday."

His tongue was in his cheek when he wrote it.

I sincerely hope.

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:

The BBC - The New ITV?

In Broadcast, Katherine Rushton reports:

The BBC is to hand network commissioning power to the nations for the first time in what is being hailed as a "radical reshaping" of its structure. Chief operating officer Caroline Thomson is planning to recruit at least five new commissioning executives across BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, over in The Guardian, we read that the BBC is considering dividing up Jane Tranter's drama commissioning responsibilities after she leaves for the US.

Reading the Broadcast report, it looks as if only BBC Scotland's Anne Mensah, with whom I worked on Life Line, is a drama person. Most of the proposed commissioning power appears to lie in the area of factual, daytime, and 'entertainment'.

But am I the only one who sees this as an ideal opportunity to devolve the over-centralised, personality-focused BBC drama commissioning procedure into something more resembling the old, successful, 'federal' system of ITV, before asset-stripping and consolidation turned it from a showbusiness giant into today's dull monoculture?

Jane Tranter's done a fine job but a 'one gatekeeper' system is flawed at heart, whoever the gatekeeper may be.

Behind the Scenes

I was aware that NBC had a crew on the set when we were filming our UK sequences in and around York, and then I heard from Jonathan Lee that they were covering the South Africa shoot as well.

Here's some of what they saw:



Jonathan - seen there in the clip - is the show's production designer and a tireless, inventive and much-travelled professional.

Crusoe really got started when Power TV's Justin Bodle asked him to produce concept sketches, and the series was pretty much financed on the back of them. For several months, Jonathan and his portfolio were the show.


NBC have posted more of the material in the photos section of the show site.

Life in Transit

Chapter 9 of David Mace's unfolding online story is now up and available.

“So,” said Dr Catenary, “there we are.”
There, indeed, they were.
He swivelled from whiteboard to class. “Now we get down to the nitty gritty, the nuts and bolts, the perspiration and even a hint of inspiration. Or rather…” His head turned and his mirror shades moved from face to face as he scanned his students.
Vicky didn’t like being scanned by Dr Catenary. You were never quite sure exactly what lay behind those sunglasses. How icy cold – or altered – were his eyes?

Modesty forbids me from telling you who gets a namecheck along with this episode.

Playing in Starsky's World

According to Variety, Fox Searchlight has arrested production on Brit cop thriller "The Sweeney" following concerns about its international prospects.

Well into pre-production and only weeks away from shooting, the project's been put on hold and the team stood down. Wow. I've been there, I know exactly what that feels like. Mostly in features but a couple of times in TV as well. In a business where managing disappointment is an essential survival skill, there's no greater test of nerve, no torture more exquisite.

DNA reps said Fox execs are believed to have had doubts the $16 million pic, while looking a sure-fire hit in Blighty because it's based on a cult 1970s TV series, would sell elsewhere without a major star.

I wish them well but I wonder whether there isn't a better way to go; the French make their theatrical-quality policiers with no American component at all. And eight million quid is a low budget.

The TV show was deeply British in a way that could only be achieved with no eye for the US market, and it succeeded here for exactly that reason. My mother was working as a switchboard operator for the Manchester police around the time it was going out; she said that all the coppers loved The Sweeney and most of them never missed an episode. It didn't show them as they were, but as they liked to think they were.

The Sweeney's fantasised take on '70s London crime and rule-bending hard-man policing was an obvious springboard for Life on Mars. Gene Hunt presents us with an appalling/attractive picture of what a real-world Jack Regan might be like. The continuous tension between life and art was one of the show's great joys.

I suspect that the reason for the struggle to perfect a US version of the show may lie in an attempt to reference the actual 1970s, rather than a shared cultural memory of them. I've seen the first pilot, the one that got leaked onto the internet, and I thought it wasn't half bad. Well-crafted, well-shot. And the clothes and cars reminded me of the '70s, well enough. But it fell short of the original in that it didn't recreate any of the feel of '70s TV.

I wasn't really looking for history. I was hoping to see our guy in Starsky's world.

NBC Crusoe Promotion

If you've been watching NBC's Olympics coverage, you'll probably have seen this already; it's the Crusoe promo they've been playing throughout.



Or you can go to NBC's own site for a bigger image, but there you have to sit through an ad first.

But hey, this is showbusiness.

Simon just added this to the Comments section of Crusoe Cast:

Just stumbled upon your blog and may I say it's a real pleasure working on the set of Crusoe. (I am playing an extra in a few of the shots) The team is working very hard and all is progressing well. Without giving too much of the plot away I must say this series is going to be a smash hit.

So far I have been privileged to work alongside Philip Winchester, Tongayi Chirisa, Joaquim de Almeida, the lovely Mia Maestro and a few other well known South African actors.

I really can't wait to see the final product, lets hope it doesn't take too long to be screened in South Africa.

A message from the front line, no less!

The internet is cool.

Free Story Download - IN GETHSEMANE

As promised, I'm offering my story In Gethsemane as a free PDF download to tie in with the paperback launch of The Kingdom of Bones in September.

Set in the aftermath of the Great War, it follows the pairing of stage magician Will Goulston and spiritualist Frederick Kelly as they tour the lecture halls of provincial Britain.

In the afterword to Out of His Mind (winner of the British Fantasy Award for best short story collection, with an introduction by Brian Clemens, thangyouverymuch), I wrote this:

It was at Peter Crowther's suggestion or inducement that I wrote In Gethsemane for an angel-themed collection titled Heaven Sent, and although it's hardly right for me to say so it's something of a favourite of mine...

As far as the device at its heart is concerned, that came about when I heard of how, in the late '70s, ideological opponents G Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary partnered up to tour on the debate circuit. I thought of them berating each other's beliefs at every engagement and then checking unto the same hotel afterwards. I'd been looking for a form in which I could do something about the conflict of science and superstition that would allow for the kind of complexity that I felt it needed, and here it was on a plate. It was human, it was absurd, and yet it still made perfect sense.

Help yourself. No charge. One of the best things I ever wrote. Just click here and if you like it, go buy the book and get more of the same.