marty888

This could be a lot of fun - some heavy hitters involved...



TR!O Launches "Brilliant, But Cancelled™" Strip With Week Of Never-Aired Pilots

New York, July 8, 2003 -- TR!O's "Brilliant, But Cancelled™" nightly strip, which launches on Labor Day, will feature never-aired pilots in its first week including Fargo starring a "pre-Sopranos'" Edie Falco and Beat Cops, it was announced by Lauren Zalaznick, President, TRIO.

"We've found a treasure trove of great television in the form of pilots that never made it to series, but deserve to be seen. By airing these pilots in the first week of our 'Brilliant, But Cancelled™' strip, we're giving them the second chance they deserve," said Ms. Zalaznick.

Kicking off "Brilliant, But Cancelled™" week is the 90-minute World of Wonder documentary Brilliant, But Cancelled™: Pilot Season (previously announced) which examines the pitch process - from idea to show order ‚ and programs that should have, could have and would have, but never did, make it to air. Comments from producers, writers and stars caught up in the trenches of pilot season, plus clips from many of these pilots will be featured in the documentary.

Fargo, based on the hit 1996 film by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring a pre-Carmela Soprano Edie Falco, is among the pilots airing during the week of September 1. Developed by Bruce Paltrow (The White Shadow) and Robert Palm and directed by actress Kathy Bates, the one-hour program features quirky characters in a small Midwestern town and spotlights the investigative prowess of the very pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson.

Also airing within the "Brilliant, But Cancelled™" pilots week is Beat Cops. Filmed in a cinema-verite style and without a laugh-track, this half-hour comedy stars Sam Sedar and Jon Benjamin as two clueless New York City patrolmen who are oblivious to the volatile citizens around them. Sedar co-wrote the pilot with Charles Fisher.

TR!O's pilots week also features Savage, the 1973 Steven Spielberg-directed program starring Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (real-life husband and wife) as an investigative journalist and producer who work for a television news magazine show. The 90-minute pilot guest stars Dabney Coleman and Will Geer.

The new 8:00 p.m., ET/PT "Brilliant, But Cancelled™" strip rounds out TR!O's primetime programming block beginning Monday, September 1.

Decker

I wonder how long they could've kept Marge pregnant before she had a baby and changed the show forever.

...and technicaly, a pilot that is not picked up isn't "Cancelled", it's just not picked up.

djbrown

Never miss a chance to see the great H. Jon Benjamin (Ben Katz, Coach McGuirk, etc...) in action. Thanks.

Geofferson

Awesome - thanks for the heads-up!

BDB

this should be interesting, what is the deal with this channel anyway?

This weekend it was loads of live concerts, all 1 hour snippets.

Groucho

I look forward to their segment on Amelia Earheart.

Tommy_Harn

A cool idea, but perhaps one of the worst writen articles I've ever read. How many times do they have to repeat "Brilliant, but cancelled"?

Dimension X

Thanks! Now I can replace my worn out VHS copy of Lookwell.

I think this is a complete list of the pilots:

littlefuzzy

It seems like CBS did a concept like this a few years back, I saw a show that I thought was interesting, called Infiltrator with Scott Bakula. http://www.imdb.com/Title?0163007

BJacks

It's not an article, it's the show's press release.

Josh Z

Kiefer Sutherland in an LA Confidential TV series? How would they explain that

marty888

Takes place before the movie?

Numanoid

What, no Heat Vision And Jack?


And, is it just me, or do most of those shows sound pretty good?

HistoryProf

what in the hell is "Tr!o?" and why do they keep saying strip?

Jobronie

This was done every now and then decades ago as a summer replacement, usually with sitcoms. There would be an umbrella title like ABC's Summer Comedy Showcase, and they would show unaired pilots that usually featured someone of note....

TeeSeeJay

They're not showing the Fox Force Five pilot? What a rip off.

Numanoid

Catch up.

FranksAndBeans

movieking

They just did a little feature about this on NBC's Today show, along with some clips of the above mentioned shows. Edie Falco did a dead on Frances McDormand for her role in the TV version of Fargo...

Dimension X

Starts tonight:

8:00 PM Lookwell
8:30 PM Beat Cops
9:00 PM Brilliant, but Cancelled: Pilot Season
10:00 PM L.A. Confidential
11:00 PM Lookwell
11:30 PM Beat Cops
12:00 AM Brilliant, but Cancelled: Pilot Season
1:00 AM L.A. Confidential

Jobronie

Another long piece on Trio, this one from the NYTimes. A good read (and I quote):

Edie Falco in 'Fargo,' and Other Gems You Never Saw
By EMILY NUSSBAUM


Here's the pitch: our hero is Paul Savage, a kind of Mike Wallace crossed with James Bond, played by hunky young Martin Landau. He's a font of integrity, and accompanied by his stylish producer, he uses the power of television news to root out corruption. You've got politics, you've got cocktails, plus the gorgeous real-life Mrs. Landau, Barbara Bain, playing the producer. Oh, and the director? A 28-year-old Steven Spielberg.

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Talk about potential! But sadly, it was not to be. Instead of becoming one of the great series of the 70's, "Savage" (originally titled "Watch Dog") became the opposite of a rerun: it became a never ran. Produced by NBC as a two-hour pilot, "Savage" was relabeled a TV movie, burned off in a syndication package, then effectively banished from the TV landscape. The Watergate-tinged drama was considered too political for the network. In essence, it died from bad timing. But this week, "Savage" rises from the dead, just one of the fascinating TV zombies featured in Trio's series "Brilliant but Cancelled."

The title is a bit of a reach: not every pilot is as successful as "Savage." Some are oddball curiosities: brave but wrongheaded risks, or interesting first drafts for television trends that came later. Watching them, you can't help but calculate using the rebus arithmetic of the Hollywood pitch: "Seinfeld" plus "N.Y.P.D. Blue" equals "Beat Cops"! But a few — like the mordant racial comedy "Bakersfield P.D." — are truly iconoclastic, great shows that never got to strut their stuff. And even the one genuine bowser of the bunch (the 1991 "Moonlighting" wannabe "Rewrite for Murder") is worth a look, if only as a troubling glimpse of George Clooney's early years.

Trio's series begins with a TV 101 documentary called "Pilot Season" (tomorrow, 9 p.m. Eastern), an attempt to answer the question, how did "Suddenly Susan" get green-lighted? Legendary canceled pilots (the sort previously seen only by audiences at L.A.'s hipster cabaret "The Other Network") finally get their day in the sun, from 1999's "Heat Vision and Jack" (a campy Jack Black superhero sitcom) to 1993's "Lookwell" (starring Adam West of "Batman" as a TV detective turned real-life shamus). The juiciest moments come when the creators of failed shows take potshots at their tormentors — and the producers snark back. "With all respect to everybody who worked on it, `L.A. Confidential,' I think, clearly was the wrong idea for Fox," Doug Herzog, the former entertainment president of Fox, says of one doomed pilot, after which he drawls: "And then, beyond that, it wasn't that gooood."

We hear tales of casting roads not taken (Heather Locklear as Murphy Brown?), plus the ins and outs of pitches, pilots and testing. Conan O'Brien succinctly states the problem for the more radical experiments: "It's not a candy, it's not a gum, what is it?"

Also tomorrow night, Trio begins showing never-before-televised pilots and episodes. The best make you weep for what might have been, especially three series developed from popular movies: the unfairly maligned "L.A. Confidential," "Diner" and "Fargo." Maybe it's because these class-act films already had fully developed characters, but the spinoff pilots are utterly watchable, especially the intriguing "L.A. Confidential," with Kiefer Sutherland in the Kevin Spacey role. If there's a tiny bit of TV-ification — was it really necessary to provide a sexed-up love interest? — the pilot nicely replicates the movie's lurid (and tragically expensive to produce) period atmosphere. "Diner" (1983) similarly captures the original's smart-sad banter, with an ensemble featuring Paul Reiser, Michael Madsen (in the Mickey Rourke role), James Spader and Michael Binder of "Mind of the Married Man" in an earlier spin on his weasel-spouse role. And while 1997's "Fargo" is a stranger adaptation — it's got a quirky, "Northern Exposure" flavor mingled with a morbid vibe that presages "Six Feet Under" — it's a blend that might have found its way, over time. (On the other hand, a pre-"Sopranos" Edie Falco plays the lead, so perhaps it's a blessing that the show never made the cut.)

Another standout: "Bakersfield P.D.," a raucous fish-out-of-water tale about a black cop (Giancarlo Esposito) forced to move to a hick town. Produced in 1993, "Bakersfield P.D." is your classic candy/gum — a little bit meta, a little bit straight-comedy — but the racial humor and black hero are breakout stuff. (Black cops in small towns are apparently an eternal ingredient for never-ran shows: Trio is also showing "Black Bart," a 1975 spinoff of the movie "Blazing Saddles.")

Other pilots are odder fish. "Beat Cops" (2002) features Woody Allen-ish neurotics as neophyte police partners. "Sick in the Head" (1999) is more promising: "Seinfeld" meets "Frasier," with David Krumholtz as a newbie shrink and Kevin Corrigan as his horndog roommate. The pilot was the creation of the "Freaks and Geeks" creator Judd Apatow, and while some of the plot twists are creaky, you've got to admire the script's dark chutzpah. In one scene, a patient (played by the brilliant comedian Amy Poehler) locks eyes with her new psychiatrist and delivers this ultimatum: "I'm gonna see you five times, and if I don't feel better, I'm going to kill myself."

"Dear Diary" is another ambiguous coulda-shoulda. The lushly cinematic 1996 Bebe Neuwirth pilot was dropped by Fox, then went on to win an Oscar for best short film. Ms. Neuwirth, that slinky queen of the raised eyebrow, plays a married New York magazine designer about to hit 40. After a fight with her boss, she falls down a rabbit's hole of strange New York incidents, peppered with dream sequences and acid commentary. The show is like a petri dish for television trends: Ally McBeal's compulsive fantasizing, plus Molly Dodd's girlish angst, plus the cynical élan of "Sex and the City." But could such a self-involved heroine win an audience? In the age of Larry David, perhaps; in 1996, probably not.

As fascinating as these artifacts are, the sad truth is that a pilot is a pretty lousy way to judge a TV show — even one that never got a chance to exist. Some of the best series ("Seinfeld," most famously) had weak first episodes. Television's strengths are in the long haul: the season-long plot arc, the character continuity, the running joke. The most interesting shows can take a season or more to find their voice. But the TV business can't afford that kind of slow courtship. By its very nature, a pilot is like the most pressured first date of all time, one followed immediately by a breakup or a proposal. Is it any wonder Hollywood is full of broken hearts?

Jobronie

BTW, for the TRIO-less, if you go to triotv.com, you can grab a sneak peak at tonights pilots.....

mediabear

Originally posted by Numanoid
What, no Heat Vision And Jack?


They did talk about this show during the one hour documentary. It will repeat tonight at 8 PM EST.

BizRodian

Wow, never really crossed my mind, but Fargo really would have made a cool TV show.

"Lookwell" is a pilot I've always wanted to see...

JJE-187

too bad they're not airing the 90 minute Justice League Live Action pilot. I would also like to see the 30 minute pilot to Darkman.

Hopefully TRIO will air alot of shows that only lasted a half season. There are quite a few series based on Movies that I would like to check out (I liked the movie, so a TV series might not be half bad)
Shaft
Delta House (Animal House)
Ferris Bueller
Dirty Dancing
Logan's Run