tvN (Korea) green lights: adaptation of Netflix’s Designated Survivor, crime thriller Confessions, romance drama Her Private Life, fantasy drama WWW and historical fantasy drama Asdal Chronicles
Scandinavian TV
YLE (Finland) green lights: series of 1970s Chilean asylum drama Invisible Heroes, with Pelle Heikkilä, Ilkka Villi, Sophia Heikkilä et al
UK TV
Neon Ink developing: adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo
ITV developing: adaptation of Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, Syfy
In the UK: Not yet acquired
As you’ll see tomorrow when I review Showtime’s Black Monday, we are apparently entering a new phase of 80s nostalgia. We’ve already numerous 80s TV shows lapping up the nostalgia value of video games, sport, fashion, hairstyles, high schools, music, film, politics et al of the era (eg Dark, Stranger Things, Halt and Catch Fire, GLOW, The Americans, Deutschland 83). But while The Americans and Dark weren’t exactly a bundle of laughs, they were pretty pro the 80s or at least neutral. Which is odd, because the 80s didn’t exactly feel brilliant when we were living through them.
Now we’re at a time when TV appears to be willing to scrutinise the crappier parts of the Reagan decade. First up, we have Deadly Class, an adaptation by The Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War; Captain America: Winter Soldier; Captain America: Civil War; Community) for Syfy of Image Comics’ comic of the same name. This is explicitly a show that wants to crap on the 80s, as this tagline shows:
There’s a big wonderful decade out there for you to explore. The 80s was more than neon lights, a synth soundtrack, and basement D&D. “Just Say Yes” to the unsanitized 80s.
But does it really know how? Or even what the 80s was really like?
The In Crowd v The Nerds
It stars Benjamin Wadsworth as a homeless street criminal who really hates Reagan, mainly because the Gipper has shut down plenty of hospitals for the mentally ill, resulting in all manner of schizophrenics and the like killing themselves or dying.
I’m not sure why he’s hanging his hate hat on that particular hook so vehemently, but he is.
Then into his life come the pupils of King’s Dominion, a High School for kids run by Benedict Wong (Marco Polo, The Martian, Doctor Strange). King’s Dominion has one central feature of its teaching curriculum: it teaches poor kids to kill. Why? Because Wong’s peasant-descended family has tried to ensure the poor should never be in a position where the rich can run a tyranny over them.
Soon, Wadsworth is having to do a Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You: he’s learning who the in crowd and the out crowd are, what cliques to join and avoid, so he can become a pupil at King’s Dominion. But he has one big motivation to do it – he wants to assassinate Ronald Reagan.
Every week or so, TMINE flags up what new TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
Following on from last week’s February listing, there’s been a quiet announcement this week of an additional February BAFTA event – ie. I had to look on their web site just now to find it. It should be an interesting, too, given it’s a masterclass in TV writing by Matthew Hall – the bloke who wrote the books CBC (Canada)’s Coroner is based on, as well as S4C/BBC1’s Un Bore Mercher (Keeping Faith) and ITV’s Kavanagh QC.
Award Winners Masterclass: Matthew Hall on Writing
Wednesday, 6 February 2019 – 4:00pm
The Atrium, University of South Wales
A chance to hear from the BAFTA Cymru winning writer of Keeping Faith.
Matthew began life as a trial lawyer before landing his first TV writing commission aged 27 on ITV’s Kavanagh QC starring John Thaw. He has written over 50 hours of prime-time TV drama and five novels. He divides his time between his family home in Wales and London.
A TV series of Matthew’s novels called Coroner has just been made for CBC in Canada and is airing in the UK on Universal TV from January 2019 onward. The books are set partially in Wales, and have been adapted by Welsh-born writer, Morwyn Brebner.
The event is part of the University of South Wales’ TV Futures Day.
We have a limited allocation of tickets for members. Email Vicki to reserve your place.
Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
Four acquisitions this week, but only one with a premiere date. Let me elucidate:
Acquisitions
Universal has picked up Global (Canada)’s six-part event mini-series about a vanished aeroplane, Departure, which stars Archie Panjabi, Christopher Plummer and a host of others. However, there’s no premiere date as of yet, probably because it only started production in November and hasn’t aired in Canada.
Alibi has acquired Nine (Australia)’s “so dumb it hurts” serial killer drama Bite Club, featuring Lost’s Dominic Monaghan. That’s likely to air in February, but there’s no exact date yet.
Walter’s bought DR (Denmark)’s adaptation of Jakob Ejersbo’s book of the same name, Liberty, featuring Connie Nielsen, Carsten Bjørnlund and Sofie Gråbøl. No premiere date either, as ‘this year’ is the best information Walter is offering at the moment.
Premiere dates
NEW AMSTERDAM — “Pilot” Episode 101 — Pictured: Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin — (Photo by: Francisco Roman/NBC)
The Black List: Redemption‘s Ryan Eggold playing a newly arrived medical director at New York’s largest, oldest and most famous public hospital, New Amsterdam. He reckons there’s a lot wrong with it, so plans to turn it upside down, ignore all the rules and fire everybody who’s part of ‘the system’, so that doctors can get back to being doctors rather than accountants/golf players. Why, he’s so optimistic and revolutionary, he might even inspire that Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who, Sense8, The Carrie Diaries) to stop touring all the TV talk shows to raise funding and come back to working as a doctor again.
Based on a real-life doctor at the real New York hospital of Bellevue, there is at least a germ of something different in New Amsterdam and it was moderately interesting to see Eggold doing some robust change management, listening to those on the front-line to see what could be changed and then putting it into practice. The show doesn’t make him an all-knowing genius, but one who makes mistakes and is prepared to listen to find out how to fix them. It’s also not entirely populated with pretty people, with nice old doctor Anupam Kher turning out to have almost House-ian diagnostic skills, if a much better bedside manner, thanks to the mystic skill of “taking your time”.
However, the rest of the time, it’s plain old medical procedural melodrama and soap, with Eggold turning out to have cancer, his wife nearly miscarrying their baby, doctors trying to have relationships and dumping their girlfriends for not being black enough and so on. That’s before we get onto the likelihood of random people being injected with Ebola by terrorists in order to destroy New York.
This is clearly not a production team confident in its ability to woo viewers with rigorous MBA framework analyses.
By the end of the first episode, I’d been pleasantly surprised by the show but not interested in it enough to want to watch much more of it. But at the very least, it wasn’t a waste of my time.
