Cinemax and the BBC’s Hunted tries to do viral

2 October 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Hunted is a relatively new thing: a shiny British-American action co-production. Like its predecessor, Sky’s Strike Back: Project Dawn, it’s co-produced by Cinemax and showrun by Frank Spotnitz, but in this case, it’s going to be on BBC1 and it’s made by Kudos, the people behind Spooks. It stars Melissa George as a sort-of spy, starts this Thursday at 9pm on BBC1 and on October 19 at 10pm on Cinemax in the US. Also like Strike Back: Project Dawn, it looks great but with a plot that is ‘muchos bobbins’. Here’s a trailer:

Over in the US, Cinemax is trying to raise interest in the show by viral marketing. They’ve set up a web site, Byzantium Tests, that ostensibly claims to be a personality test to see if you are suitable – i.e. disturbed and sociopathic enough – to join Byzantium Security, which is the company (I’m guessing) that Melissa George works for/used to work for in Hunted.

Here’s one of the tests. It features George doing her absolute level best attempt at an English accent.

Unfortunately, I simply don’t have the time to go through the estimated 1.6×10^10 questions in the test to see if it’s any good, but I’m told there’s a good pay-off at the end. Let me know if you make it all the way through…

What to do when your pilot doesn’t get picked up? Get even with your own web series

2 October 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Not all pilots get picked up. That, after all, is the point of pilots – to see which shows work in practice and which don’t. There’d be no point picking up all of them.

But behind every unaired pilot there’s a dozen stories. People meet, people make friends – or enemies – they come up with ideas for new and better shows.

Take Downwardly Mobile, a pilot for NBC starring Roseanne Barr. That didn’t get picked up, although given the NBC comedies that did get picked up, you have to wonder either how good it was or how bad it was.

Some of the actors from that pilot – Jason Antoon, Mary Birdsong, Greg Cromer, Tricia O’Kelley and Romy Rosemont – became friends. And even though Downwardly Mobile never became a series, they’ve decided to stick together and even make their own series – Bitter, Party of 5.

Here they are, ringing up NBC to find out whether Downwardly Mobile got picked up. You can guess the rest, but how will the next episode go?

[via]

Tuesday’s “Murder Bitches, cable up, network down ratings, and dead Munsters” news

2 October 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Film

  • Longmire‘s Bailey Chase joins Ashley Scott and Cuba Gooding Jr in Summoned

Trailers

  • TV spot for Alex Cross, with Tyler Perry, Mathew Fox, Rachel Nichols and Jean Reno

Canadian TV

UK TV

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV Shows

  • Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane ironically probably dead
  • ABC buys Dakota, CBS buys The Centurion
  • Ryan Murphy to produce drama Montauk for Fox, comedy for NBC
  • Shonda Rhimes sells I Hate LA Dudes and The Mix to ABC
  • CBS buys single-camera family comedy
  • The Mentalist producers sells Murder Bitches to CBS
  • Fox buys two couples comedies
  • The CW developing supernatural ‘fixer’ drama Abaddon’s Journal
  • The SHIELD characters [minor spoilers]