At this early date, it’s hard to get too excited about the fall TV schedule. I’m not what they call "appointment bound" TV viewer anymore, though I sometimes have it on just for the background noise. With Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars gone, The CW has lost me (though I adore Everybody Hates Chris). Even their two genre shows, Smallville and Supernatural have become predictable (along with Smallville just becoming dull).
As of right now, though, I can say the only new show I’m looking forward to is Pushing Daises. And what I’ve read so far from the critics who’ve seen the pilot, this seems to be the best show that anyone of the five networks revealed last week. Created by Bryan Fuller, the series will star Lee Pace as man who discovers he can resurrect the dead with one touch. This is helpful to the police in solving murders, cause if he touches them again, they die for good. But when the brings his dead girlfriend back to life, he realizes that he can never touch her agian.
For the most part, I consider Bryan Fuller to be a genius. As a writer who benefitted from the late Michael Piller’s open door policy for Star Trek spec-scripts (that Berman and Braga quickly abandoned when Piller left the day-to-day workload of Voyager after season two), Fuller penned the fifth season Deep Space Nine creepfest Empok Nor. This lead to him to hired over at Voyager, where he became a producer and story editor. He would also write some of the better episodes, such as Work Force. He went on to write the TV remake of Carrie and then created the Showtime series Dead Like Me. The show followed an 18-year-old girl who dies when a piece of the MIR space station falls from the sky and hits her on the head. Darkly comic and quirky, the show follows George as she helps in catching the souls of people moments before they're destined to die. Fuller departed the series early on, however, working on only the first quarter of the season. "We had creative differences", he told Starlog Magazine in 2005, “about how the series should go. The studio and the network wanted it to be more like Touched by an Angel, and I didn't, so I was replaced. It was bummer, but I would rather have them kill my baby than have me kill my baby.”
His fascination with death and the mystery of the universe would be carried over into his next series attempt, Wonderfalls. Co-created with Emmy winning director Todd Holland (Malcolm in the Middle), Wonderfalls revolves around a Niagara Falls souvenir shop worker, played by Caroline Dhavernas (and co-starred Lee Pace as her brother), whose life is forever changed when she finds that inanimate animal figures--plush toys, ceramic figurines, cartoon characters, etc.--are communicating with her. The cryptic messages she receives from her not-so-furry friends lead her to endeavor to help those in need. Fuller told Starlog that...”They tell her to set little events into motion, which appear to result in catastrophe, but out of that catastrophe, good things happen.” Was she crazy, deranged or is God talking to her? “The basic premise is about this young person who finds out she's a pawn in the universe's plan.”
Originally set to air in the fall of 2004, FOX held the show until March. Its premiere episode aired on a Friday, which as many know, is a death slot. Plus, there was very little promotional material for it. My guess is FOX had no idea what to do with the show, mostly because of its satirical vibe which FOX is not known to support. Predictably, the show failed to score ratings. FOX decided to re-air the pilot the next Thursday, where it actually scored a higher ratings than its Friday slot. Strangely, FOX kept the show on Friday, where they pulled the show after its fourth episode.
But the show had become a cult, and eventually all 13 episodes produced were released on DVD. 20th Century Fox was surprised at its success.
Fuller went o to write the pilot for The Amazing Screw-on Head, which aired on Sci Fi in July 2006.
As he prepared his Pushing Daises pilot in 2006, he was hired by Tim Kring to be the showrunner of NBC’s new fall show Heroes. As executive producer, he help shape the hit series first season, also penning the two most talked about episodes, Collision and Company Man.
He’ll leave Heroes now, to begin work on the first 13 episodes of Pushing Daises. As I’ve said, what I’ve heard about the pilot from reviewers is that its lush and hilarious. And it seems to be in a good part of the schedule on ABC. It’s chances of success are good, but it faces some competition from NBC’s disturbingly popular Deal Or No Deal and The CW’s highest rated show,America’s Next Top Model. FOX will offer the potentially good pairing of Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton in Back to You and the second season of ‘Til Death. Still, FOX’s track record with sitcoms are well known, as they have little patience with anything that seems near to being actually funny.
There are other potential shows this fall, like the mid season show, The Sarah Conner Chronicles. But again, the network that The Simpsons built, has demonstrated it has little forbearance with scifi of late. NBC’s The Bionic Woman has potential, but up against ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Private Practice, has little chance of finding a wider audiencebeyond the cult fanboys and girls. And Reaper seems interesting, if only for the appealing star of the show, Bret Harrison, who played the goofy boyfriend in Grounded For Life and starred in FOX’s underrated sitcom The Loop (which had a 7 episode run last spring and FOX plans to burn off the 10 episode second season starting in June).
As of right now, though, I can say the only new show I’m looking forward to is Pushing Daises. And what I’ve read so far from the critics who’ve seen the pilot, this seems to be the best show that anyone of the five networks revealed last week. Created by Bryan Fuller, the series will star Lee Pace as man who discovers he can resurrect the dead with one touch. This is helpful to the police in solving murders, cause if he touches them again, they die for good. But when the brings his dead girlfriend back to life, he realizes that he can never touch her agian.
For the most part, I consider Bryan Fuller to be a genius. As a writer who benefitted from the late Michael Piller’s open door policy for Star Trek spec-scripts (that Berman and Braga quickly abandoned when Piller left the day-to-day workload of Voyager after season two), Fuller penned the fifth season Deep Space Nine creepfest Empok Nor. This lead to him to hired over at Voyager, where he became a producer and story editor. He would also write some of the better episodes, such as Work Force. He went on to write the TV remake of Carrie and then created the Showtime series Dead Like Me. The show followed an 18-year-old girl who dies when a piece of the MIR space station falls from the sky and hits her on the head. Darkly comic and quirky, the show follows George as she helps in catching the souls of people moments before they're destined to die. Fuller departed the series early on, however, working on only the first quarter of the season. "We had creative differences", he told Starlog Magazine in 2005, “about how the series should go. The studio and the network wanted it to be more like Touched by an Angel, and I didn't, so I was replaced. It was bummer, but I would rather have them kill my baby than have me kill my baby.”
His fascination with death and the mystery of the universe would be carried over into his next series attempt, Wonderfalls. Co-created with Emmy winning director Todd Holland (Malcolm in the Middle), Wonderfalls revolves around a Niagara Falls souvenir shop worker, played by Caroline Dhavernas (and co-starred Lee Pace as her brother), whose life is forever changed when she finds that inanimate animal figures--plush toys, ceramic figurines, cartoon characters, etc.--are communicating with her. The cryptic messages she receives from her not-so-furry friends lead her to endeavor to help those in need. Fuller told Starlog that...”They tell her to set little events into motion, which appear to result in catastrophe, but out of that catastrophe, good things happen.” Was she crazy, deranged or is God talking to her? “The basic premise is about this young person who finds out she's a pawn in the universe's plan.”
Originally set to air in the fall of 2004, FOX held the show until March. Its premiere episode aired on a Friday, which as many know, is a death slot. Plus, there was very little promotional material for it. My guess is FOX had no idea what to do with the show, mostly because of its satirical vibe which FOX is not known to support. Predictably, the show failed to score ratings. FOX decided to re-air the pilot the next Thursday, where it actually scored a higher ratings than its Friday slot. Strangely, FOX kept the show on Friday, where they pulled the show after its fourth episode.
But the show had become a cult, and eventually all 13 episodes produced were released on DVD. 20th Century Fox was surprised at its success.
Fuller went o to write the pilot for The Amazing Screw-on Head, which aired on Sci Fi in July 2006.
As he prepared his Pushing Daises pilot in 2006, he was hired by Tim Kring to be the showrunner of NBC’s new fall show Heroes. As executive producer, he help shape the hit series first season, also penning the two most talked about episodes, Collision and Company Man.
He’ll leave Heroes now, to begin work on the first 13 episodes of Pushing Daises. As I’ve said, what I’ve heard about the pilot from reviewers is that its lush and hilarious. And it seems to be in a good part of the schedule on ABC. It’s chances of success are good, but it faces some competition from NBC’s disturbingly popular Deal Or No Deal and The CW’s highest rated show,America’s Next Top Model. FOX will offer the potentially good pairing of Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton in Back to You and the second season of ‘Til Death. Still, FOX’s track record with sitcoms are well known, as they have little patience with anything that seems near to being actually funny.
There are other potential shows this fall, like the mid season show, The Sarah Conner Chronicles. But again, the network that The Simpsons built, has demonstrated it has little forbearance with scifi of late. NBC’s The Bionic Woman has potential, but up against ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Private Practice, has little chance of finding a wider audiencebeyond the cult fanboys and girls. And Reaper seems interesting, if only for the appealing star of the show, Bret Harrison, who played the goofy boyfriend in Grounded For Life and starred in FOX’s underrated sitcom The Loop (which had a 7 episode run last spring and FOX plans to burn off the 10 episode second season starting in June).
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I love your background knowledge of TV shows and the people behind them.
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