Pilot Season In The States: The Best And Worst Of The Cable Pitches

Now that we can access TV through clicks, we’re less at the whim of Australia’s lagging release schedule, and more likely to be lapping up fresh overseas offerings the moment they hit the screens in their home of origin, legally or otherwise. (Do it legally though.) This week we’ve been following March Madness in America: a crazy ass scramble of signing talent and selling ideas to execs, where cast lists, creator credits and loglines leak, and we get to pore over the pitches and offer up our premature verdicts.

On Thursday we looked at the safe and sound network offerings; today, we’re checking out the weirder, wilder cable projects that are actually more likely to make it to your screen. Why? Because cable is funded by subscription plans instead of advertising revenue, so they only need you to become invested in the show, not the time schedule. You have the opportunity to watch Girls multiple times on HBO’s cable channel, and you’ll continue to pay for the privilege. Those upfront pennies can go towards producing whole, cohesive seasons of television at once, without the need to insert a cute little cousin into the action if ratings start to slip. So with all that time investment and tinkering, these shows are much more likely to make it to air than the wide net of network programming (although even the failed cable projects sound delightful – Diane Keaton: Blogger, anyone?) In addition, cable shows aren’t held to the same decency standards that networks are – which explains all the sexposition on Game of Thrones, and why we’re more likely to be shocked and hooked by cable product. So click here for the televisual comfort food  of the broadly appealing, episodic network “maybes”. Read below for the almost certain pick-ups that you might be watching by the new year.

CABLE SHOWS

HALT & CATCH FIRE

LOGLINE: The early 1980s personal computing boom seen through the eyes of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy, whose innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time. Their personal and professional partnership will be challenged by greed and ego while charting the changing culture in Texas’ Silicon Prairie.
CAST: Lee Pace, Mackenzie Davis
VERDICT: The first time you heard an odd band name, like Mott The Hoople, or a strangely titled film – Zero Dark Thirty, say – your brain can’t help but try and crack the meaning behind the phrase. Isn’t it fun before strange phrases just become “the name of a thing”? Anyway, we’re looking forward to when the name of this upcoming AMC (home of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead) series simply makes us think of the exciting adventures of ’80s computer programmers, as opposed to bizarre police directives in a world of spontaneous combustion. We very much enjoyed Lee Pace as an asshole New York senator in Lincoln, so we cant wait for him to get his Social Network on. Oh and as it’s a period piece… odds on a hacking genius solving a Rubik’s cube in the first episode? Look out for a lot of computing origin myths in the near future, including an upcoming film starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs.

TURN

LOGLINE: Set in the summer of 1778, New York farmer Abe Woodhull bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence. Based on Alexander Rose’s book Washington Spies.
CAST: Meegan Warner, Daniel Henshall, Seth Numrich, Burn Gorman, Jamie Bell
VERDICT: Before there were computer programmers, there were cabbage farmers… AMC flips back the calendar even further, cashing in on that time they ate too much brandy pudding over Christmas and fell asleep binge watching Homeland, only to hazily awake to the televised ads for Lincoln. This stars Jamie “dancing my feelings away” Bell, and Australia’s own Daniel Henshall, who, having starred in Adelaide muder flick Snowtown, knows a thing or two about the dark secrets of a country’s back-water territories. Hopefully the merchandised Culper Rings TM that accompany the show include whistles, so you can alert your friends of approaching confederates on the playground.

SILICON VALLEY

LOGLINE: Set in the high-tech gold rush of modern Silicon Valley, where the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success.
CAST: TJ Miller, Thomas Middleditch, Josh Brener, Lindsey Broad, Christopher Evan Welch, Amanda Crew, Angela Trimbur, Zach Woods, Kumail Nanjiani
VERDICT: More computing! Writer/producer Mike Judge (Office Space, Idiocracy, King of the Hill, Beavis & Butt-head) would seemingly be the perfect person to skewer the hum drum hypocracy of the new tech era, but advance word on the scripts say it’s all a little broad and obvious. However… things may pick up! Let’s be positive! There’s enough time for rewrites in the upcoming months. We find lead TJ Miller pretty abrasive in almost everything we see/hear him on (sure he brings a lot of energy to a podcast, but he also brings a lot of bad yelling-as-comedy habits), but maybe he’ll channel some of the nuance that’s showcased in this short film from last year, a hilariously heartwrenching tale of alcoholism co-starring Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls, Party Down).

CHOSEN

LOGLINE: A rapper comes out of the joint with a new message and new skills — which he will use in his quest for redemption and domination.
CAST: Grant Dekernion
VERDICT: This animated comedy for FX (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Louie, Justified) comes from the production crew that made Eastbound And Down. So, finally, the rap world can have its very own Kenny Powers: a misogynistic, resolutely offensive, loose cannon with major ego issues. The joke there is that the entire rap world is pretty much Kenny Powers.

TRUE DETECTIVE

LOGLINE: The lives of two detectives collide and entwine during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana. The investigation of a bizarre murder in 1995 is framed and interlaced with testimony from the detectives in 2012, when the case is reopened.
CAST: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin Dunn, Alexandra Daddario, Elizabeth Reaser, Tory Kittles
VERDICT: This sounds great – Harrelson and McConaughey as sun-dried and catfish-fried cops burning out together on a decades old case. We have nothing more to say, accept that we can’t wait to see McConaughey’s all-charm interrogation technique, and whether cinematic technology can accurately chart the toll that time takes on his pecs.

THE MISSIONARY

LOGLINE: A young American missionary in 1960s Berlin becomes involved with the CIA.
CAST: Benjamin Walker, Jesse Plemmons
VERDICT: This series, to be produced at HBO, has a few things going for it. It sounds really fun, like a cross between George Clooney’s underrated Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and the South Park creators’ hit musical The Book of Mormon, or maybe a church-funded remake of ’60s espionage serial The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It has Jesse Plemmons, aka Landry from Friday Night Lights, aka Todd from Breaking Bad, aka Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s outwardly skeptical son from The Master. And lastly, it was produced by Malcolm Gladwell (writer of social sciences books The Tipping Point, The Outliers) and Mark Wahlberg (master of naïve sincerity, fantastic swearer, burger shop owner). Can’t you just picture these two hatching out this TV show?
Wahlberg: Bro, you know you wanna get another vodka! Or should we go Jaegers?
Gladwell: Actually that reminds me of the stories of missionaries, shifting their belief patterns from God to the government during the Cold War…
Wahlberg: Oh snap, imagine a priest kicking a Russian dude in the nuts! GREEN LIGHT IT!

PENNY DREADFUL

LOGLINE: Some of horror literature’s most famous characters — including Dr. Frankenstein and his creature, Dorian Gray and Dracula — become embroiled in Victorian London.
VERDICT: Brought to you by John Lodge and Sam Mendes (the writer/director combo behind the Bond franchise’s very successful Skyfall), the idea behind this series has already been used by a classic movie. Why are they trying to improve on perfection?

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Matt Roden helps kids tell stories by day at the Sydney Story Factory, and by night assists adults in admitting to stupidity by co-running Confession Booth and TOD Talks.