Fall Picks for 2015 - Minority Report on FOX

It's my favorite time of year, new TV! I do get excited, and sometimes scared about the new Fall television series. Television is such a versatile medium and every year there are marvels of greatness and oh-god-what-were-they-thinking? My DVR is already full of shows I LOVE to watch, how can I possible make room for more? Well I am hoping to at least off some guidance in the ‘what should I try’ category.

Here is how it works, I have chosen shows I think are good bets, I put them to the three episode test and then decide whether to click ‘Series Record’ or Delete. There are A LOT of new shows his year so I am going to list them as they premiere.

Minority Report the Series - Premiering on Monday, Sept 21st on FOX, yes this show is based on the 2002 Tom Cruise/Stephen Spielberg film. Did anyone else remember Colin Farrell was in that film? I digress…

Per FOX television, The series is set in Washington, D.C., it is 10 years after the demise of Precrime, a law enforcement agency tasked with identifying and eliminating criminals… before their crimes were committed. To carry out this brand of justice, the agency used three precogs – “precognitives” Dash, Arthur and Agatha – who were able to see the future. Now, in 2065, crime-solving is different, and justice leans more on sophisticated and trusted technology than on the instincts of the precogs. During the Minority Report panel for the Television Critics Association, producers Borenstein and Falls explained Fox’s Minority Report TV series shows that there were complications the film didn’t explore.

This is intriguing to me, a platform to address current social issues in a future state, sounds like a political fantasy dream. Now that the precogs are free, Dash (Stark Sands) is trying to save people from his psychic visions of their death, but he never gets there in time. So Precrime was only 100% effective under Anderton (Tom Cruise’s character in the original film). Other people aren’t as reliable. It also suggests that telling someone you’re going to catch them won’t necessarily stop them from perpetrating a crime.

In an interview with the pair after the panel, as posted by Slash Film.com Producer Max Borenstein states “our characters deal with ethical dilemmas in every episode because unlike in the movie, they don’t have an institutional ability, an infrastructure to intervene. Instead, they have to do kind of living room precrime and they have to be judge, jury and arbiter of these people’s lives. Now, sometimes that may mean giving a person another chance. Sometimes it may mean someone is so bad and they absolutely believe this person needs to be put away because they’re evil, maybe they make a decision and they don’t have actual evidence. Maybe they would consider planting it. These kind of moral dilemmas are right at the heart of what our show is about and putting our characters to the test.”

This will be the chief writers of 2014’s Godzilla’s first stab at television, while Kevin Falls has a plethora of production work ranging from NBC’s The West Wing to TNT’s Franklin & Bash.

Putting Minority Report to the three episode test and I will report back on Wednesday my thoughts on the pilot. Here is the pilot trailer if you are enticed.

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