Coming to ABC the Fall - The Gospel of Kevin

  Kevin, a down-on-his-luck man who is tasked by God with a mission to save the world. 



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Coming to ABC this Fall - The Crossing

  Refugees from a war-torn country start showing up to seek asylum in an American town. Only the country these people are from is America and the war they are fleeing is 250 years in the future. The local sheriff with a past, a federal agent and a mother in search of her missing refugee daughter drive this allegory with a surprising conspiracy at the center. 

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Coming to ABC this Fall - Deception

Superstar magician Cameron Black is bringing his skill for illusion to the FBI. Using every trick in the book and inventing new ones, he will help the government catch the world’s most elusive criminals while staging the biggest illusions of his career. Starring Jack Cutmore-Scott, Deception is coming soon to ABC.






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Coming to ABC the Fall - Splitting Up Together

The story of a couple whose marriage is reignited by their divorce, coming to ABC. Emily Kapnek writes and serves as executive producer of this new comedy, along with Ellen DeGeneres.




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ABC's Conviction's Integrity Holds Up

Hayley Atwell is sassy enough to entertain, smart witted enough to keep us on our toes and vulnerable enough for us to care. Give Haley a multi-layer character like Haze Morrison and you are creating magic. 

If you cannot tell, I really love ABC’s new show Conviction and it is not just about Hayley. One very talented actress cannot carry an entire show and keep it going. It takes thoughtful and intelligent writing, creative casting, talented actors and a production staff who knows how to tell as story. 

So here is the scoop on Conviction, Haze Morrison is a brilliant young attorney, who is also the daughter of a former U.S. president. Haze, after being picked up for cocaine possession is blackmailed to head up NYC's new Conviction Integrity Unit. She and her team investigate cases where people may have been wrongly convicted.

Sounds like a pretty standard template for a drama, but Conviction is a lot more. Let’s start with the cast, Hayley Atwell, best known for her role as Agent Carter in Marvel’s Agent Carter and Captain America plays Haze Morrison. Her team consists of Merrin Dungey known for her roles on Alias and Once Upon a Time as Maxine Bohen, an ex-NYPD Detective. Emily Kinney best known for her roles on The Walking Dead and Arrow as Tess Larson the Paralegal, Shawn Ashford best known for his role on The Following as Sam Spencer DA appointed liason, and Manny Montana know for his roles on South Beach and Graceland, as forensic investigator Franklin 'Frankie' Cruz. 

The Conviction Integrity Unit chooses a case and has five days to determine one of three resolutions. The first to let the conviction stand, the case needs to go back to trial, and if proven, the conviction reversed. They start from the beginning, interviewing witnesses, reviewing and researching all of the evidence, circumstances and testimony. At the end of the five days a verdict is rendered and the truth comes out. 

The writing is leading and deceiving, mixing and mirroring the struggles of the reviewing case with personal struggles of the characters. Not just Haze Morrison but each member of the team allowing for character depth and laying. Love it!

Also a terrific platform for social commentary as well as the exploration of characterization, and interpersonal relationships. The show has great promise and I am looking forward to the coming year.

Conviction is on ABC, Monday’s at 10/9c, check your local listing for more information.

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New Fall TV - Designated Survivor Blows Us Away!

Designated Survivor – ABC

A low-level Cabinet member becomes President of the United States after a catastrophic attack kills everyone above him in the Presidential line of succession.

Where to begin, let’s start with the cast. The list is long, which is not always a good thing—too many chefs in the kitchen but in this case I am impressed.  We have got Kiefer Sutherland, famously known for his role as Jack Bauer on the television series 24.  Next we have Kal Penn, best known as Kumar in the Harold and Kumar movies, also known as Dr. Lawrence Kutner on House MD and more recently as Fontanelle White on Battle Creek.

Playing Jessica Kirkman is Natascha McElhone, most recently known as Karen on Californication and previously for her roles in the movies Solaris, Ronin, and The Truman Show.  Also popping her head in is Maggie Q as FBI Agent Hannah Wells– loved Stalker, so disappointed it got cancelled- I digress. Maggie Q was recently seen on the big screen in the Divergent movies, she is also the queen of the action drama portraying badass women in Nikita and Stalker.

That is a snip of the cast as there are a lot of moving parts on this show. It is well paced giving you gulps of information and anxiety at a time. Making you empathize and feel for Tom Kirkman the once cabinet member and now President of the United States.

Right off the bat everything happens very quickly which many times is a bad opening. A lot can be lost in translation if it is not paced and scripted diligently. Thankfully this was not the case in the pilot of Designated Survivor. The episode moved flawlessly taking you through the calm, the disappointment, the shock, the awe, the confusion and the nausea of what our government could possibly look like if an event of this magnitude were to take place. At the same moment we are reminded this is television and we settle into our new reality with hope. Hope for the characters, their struggles and their choices. 

Basic premise right of the bat is intriguing, however what is the staying power of such a show? Crisis management can only last so long until you start treading into the weeds of non- reality. We saw it happen in Revolution fairly quickly with no recovery. This was and is my major concern about this show. I will say, upfront the pilot episode did ease my inhibitions a little. Good writing will do that.

Speaking of good writing, Designated Survivor has a few aces in the writers room for whom I have faith to pull out the stops. All seasoned pros, as a writer myself I would love to witness the energy of that dynamic. For example, you have the brains of West Wing, Suits and The Unit, the creativeness of No Ordinary Family and Tru Calling, the out of the box mentality of Lost and Cold Case and a gutsy, greenish producer who is looking to conquer the television medium. It will definitely be interesting. 

More to come, Designated Survivor is on ABC, Wednesday nights, check your local listings. Designated survivor is being put to the three episode test so stayed tuned for the results!

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Fall Television is Here - Designated Survivor

Designated Survivor

Kiefer Sutherland stars as Tom Kirkman, a lower-level cabinet member who is suddenly appointed President of the United States after a catastrophic attack on the US Capitol during the State of the Union. Kirkman will struggle to keep the country and his family from falling apart, while navigating the highly-volatile political arena and leading the search to find who is responsible for the attack.

Premieres Wednesday, September 21st on ABC - Check your local listings. Look for the scoop on the new ABC drama and my review of the first episode on Thursday, the 22nd!

ABC’s The Catch a Diabolical Romance

Shonda Rhimes, the ABC Prime Time Queen, has once again given us a rare gem in dramatic entertainment.  The Catch -- ABC’s Mid-Season replacement for ‘How To Get Away with Murder’ – can be seen on Thursday’s right after Scandal. 

Starring Mireille Enos, best known for playing detective Sarah Linden in The Killing and opposite Brad Pitt in World War Z.  

In The Catch, Mireille plays a successful private investigator and co private security firm owner, Alice Vaughn.  In the pilot episode Alice is glowing with happiness about her upcoming nuptials to successful business man, Christopher Hall, played by Peter Krause. Peter is known for such shows as Dirty Sex Money, Six Feet Under and most recently, Parenthood. 

So the twist in The Catch comes when Christopher wakes Alice the day before their wedding and asks her to run away with him. She laughs him off, thinking he is being ridiculous.  When she returns home she discovers he is missing, she goes to his office and finds an empty space. Finally, the 1.5 million dollars she’s given him to purchase their new house is gone. 

Alice has a good cry, a little tantrum and then picks herself up. Resolute on finding this man who has destroyed her heart, hopes and dreams Alice Vaughn goes to work. 

As The Catch plot develops, Christopher’s love for Alice is genuine, and had she said yes to him that fateful morning when he asked her to run away he would have abandoned his con-artist life forever.  But of course, that would make for a boring drama, right?

So why doesn’t he just drop everything and tell her he loves her? Well, the life of a con-artist is complicated. Christopher and his associates owe some very powerful bad guys a lot of money, 15 million to be exact.  When the ‘score’ with Alice tanked, forcing the return all of the money stolen from her and her firm, Christopher’s little con man team was left penniless. 

Christopher wants to put as much distance between Alice and  ruthless associates as possible before they find out the truth about his feelings. The most eminent threat is his dominating lover played by the glorious Sonya Walger, (known for Parenthood, Lost, and even a small 2 episode stint on Scandal).  

Christopher, despite many attempts is unable to let go of Alice, his pull to her is magnetic.  As she gets closer to finding him, he allows it, if only to give into his needs for a short time. Awwww…so sweet. 

Add in The Catch sub-plots of a French Secret Service Agent also looking for Christopher Hall, Alice’s wanting to keep her endeavor secret from her trusted friends, and her regular day-to-day job and you have the mixing of a dramatic masterpiece. To be honest, Alice is just as diabolical as Christopher in many ways and thus making the series so addictive.

Plot twists and high fashion abound in The Catch making is visually and psychologically stimulating. The brilliance of Shonda Rhimes in my opinion is nothing is ever black and white, she loves to dabble in the gray’s of the world.  

I put this new series to the three episode test, and it passed with flying colors, full of intrigue, romance, deception and uniquely flawed characters, The Catch is most definitely worth your time and DVR space!

Episode Recaps

Fall Picks 2015 - Quantico on ABC

Quantico - ABC - Premieres 09/26/15 -“It's Grey's Academy meets How To Get Away With Treason."

A diverse group of recruits has arrived at the FBI Quantico Base for training. They are the best, the brightest and the most vetted, so it seems impossible that one of them is suspected of masterminding the biggest attack on New York City since 9/11.

I am huge ABC fan, they have made of really good choices the past couple of years with How to Get Away with Murder, Scandal, Revenge and Once Upon A Time so I tend to give them a little more credibility when it comes to new ideas. This is a stretch and the writing really needs to be excellent to pull this one off. A plethora of familiar but unknown actors the show centers around FBI recruit Alex Parrish, played by Priyanka Chopra, who is somehow framed for the biggest terrorist attack in American history. Who framed her? Someone from her class at Quantico.

 Starring: Priyanka Chopra, Jake McLaughlin, Aunjanue Ellis, Yasmine Al Massri, Johanna Braddy, Tate Ellington, Graham Rogers

Check out the trailer below and come back on Monday, 09/27 for my review of the pilot.

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