Time to Watch Some New Shows

I've made a few decisions about the new season and which pilots I'm going to breakdown. I'm going to start with K-Ville. It airs Monday Sept 17, 2007 at 9 pm on E! and Fox if you want to catch it before I post.

Mondays may be a problem night for me, because I also like Chuck, Journeyman and Aliens in America which are all also Monday night shows. Chuck and Journeyman both premier September 24th -- Chuck at 8 on Citytv and NBC and Journeyman at 10 on Global and NBC. I'll post shortly afterwards.

Luckily, Aliens in America doesn't premier till October 1 at 8:30 on SUNTV and CW, so that gives me some time to prepare a post.

I will probably also give you some thoughts on Pushing Daises which airs on Tuesday October 2 on CTV and Wec Oct 3 also at 8 on ABC (what a surprise, no simulcast).

I wrote about the Dirty Sexy Money pilot script, so I may go back and compare script and produced pilot sometime after that airs on CTV. Again, no simulcast here, so DSM has its ABC debut at 10 on Sept 26 and its CTV debut on Sept 30 at 10.

I may hit one or two of the others depending on mood and time, but the above is the current plan. So fluff up those pillows, grab the remote and settle in for some serious viewing.

(Btw, I’m not trying to be geocentric -- I just don't know what the air dates for these shows are outside North America. If you do, leave a comment.)

Do You Really Want to Know?

Will Dixon asks:
Can you elaborate? Are they still teasers anymore or just Act One's with a sexy beginning? And where is the title sequence falling in that opening chunk...pre first image? Or after 18 pages/minutes?

Can I elaborate? I was afraid to, lest you think my obsession with these details a little over the top, but now that you ask…

I can't address the location of the title sequence in these pilot scripts, since I have yet to see the produced versions (but I will and I will keep you posted on that front). However in terms of how nine hour-long pilot scripts are laid out I can give you more detail.

The short answer is there is a lot of variation:

Five of the scripts are divided into six acts:
Reaper, New Amsterdam and K-Ville each have a teaser followed by acts one to five, while The Darlings (a.k.a. Dirty, Sexy, Money) and Pushing Daisies avoid the word Teaser and label the acts one through six.

Four of the scripts are divided into five acts:
Life on Mars and Viva Laughlin call the first of those acts a Teaser but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Babylon Fields call the first act Act One.

The scripts range in length from Life on Mars' wacky 50 pages to 66 for Reaper, but most hovering around the 60 mark.

You can read more about character dramas Viva Laughlin, a drama by Robert Lowry, here and Dirty, Sexy Money by Craig Wright, here.

It looks like K-Ville, written by Jonathan Lisco, is a straight up gritty crime show.

Did I mention that the paranormal is big this coming season? Pushing Daisies, written by Bryan Fuller, Reaper, written Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, written by Josh Friedman, Babylon Fields, by Michael Atkinson and Gerald Cuesta, New Amsterdam written by Allan Loeb and Christian Taylor and Life on Mars written by David E. Kelley (who can get away with a 50 page script) and Stu Moss all have sci fi, horror or fantasy elements.

And while we're on the subject of horror pilots, go out and find a screener of the pilot of the new British series Jekyll written by Steven Moffat. I'm telling you now, you need to see it. Hurry up. What are you waiting for?

Find this. Watch it. Amazing!

Dirty Sexy Money Pilot Script

I spent the morning on another of the scripts that went to pilot and got picked up for the fall season. Dirty Sexy Money by Six Feet Under screenwriter, Craig Wright, is coming to ABC and CTV. This one is much harder to discuss without spoilers because it's very much about character, but I can give you some stats and structure.

The draft I read was labeled "network draft" and it was still titled with its rather bland original name "The Darlings". I kind of love the new name even though the pilot only really delivers on the money and hints at the dirty. We can only assume there's sex to come.

The script is 59 jam-packed pages plus title page. It with Act One (not a Teaser) and presumably the screenwriter believes that once he's got you, he should hold onto you as long as he can. The act runs a full 14 pages. Act Two is nine pages, Act Three 11, Act Four is 14 pages, Act Five is a mere six pages and Act Six is a mere five pages, perhaps qualifying it as a tease.

The act breaks are a good deal less cliffhangerish than you might expect, but they are clearly tent pole moments in the story. Act One ends with the death of the protagonist's father in flashback. Act Two ends with a flashback to the moment when he accepts the job that we already know he has. Act Three, again in flashback, drops the curtain on the job out of control. As Act Four ends, the reporter interviewing him in the present, accuses him of lying and he turns the tables by establishing that he knows she is lying too. At the end of Act Five it becomes clear that the reporter is a player in all of this in a different way and as the episode ends, the lead must decide whether to launch an investigation that will hurt the family his father spent a lifetime protecting.

There are a lot of characters to introduce and a lot of back story to present because this is going to be one of those arcing series in which many characters play out soapy storylines. The screenwriter uses a very clear structure to introduce the world, the people and the storylines that will develop over season one. The main through line has the protagonist (described economically as "pensive in a perfect suit") being interviewed by a sly reporter. We hear what he tells the reporter and flashback to an alternate version of the events. Through the flashbacks we meet everyone we need to know, first in the 1960s and 70s and then over the last few weeks.

Book ending the interview, at the top and tail of the episode are scenes that set up what we can only imagine is an important continuing storyline about the possible murder of the protagonist's father. Have I given away too much?

The stakes are money, fame and integrity. There's very little jeopardy compared to Viva Laughlin and the lead seems to be a straight up good guy who for reasons we don't entirely believe has given up a life of working for food banks and beleaguered nuns in order to keep a bunch of spoiled rich grown ups out of trouble. But there is mystery to the story, who are these people and why is our guy willing to abandon his own life to coddle them? It's the momentum of the narrative that pulled me in and kept me reading. The voice is breezy and the script is full of easily digestible moments: we know what's coming. The characters are familiar too: the political contender, Paris Hilton, the evil priest, the sexy ex and so on. This familiarity, the way the story seems to meet our expectations is part of what makes the script such an easy read. Also the characters are credible and all seem to have a depth of feeling; we might start to care about them.

There's no action and no sex (although all the women are sexy and men good-looking), but there is something compelling about the lives of the rich and famous and the potential juice of the soapy storylines that are set in motion. If we're lucky it will be a hipper, quirkier version of Dallas, if not, then it'll be Dynasty rehashed. But I will be watching and I'm looking forward to seeing how the script lifts to the screen.