Thursday, November 7, 2013
If I Were a Television Producer
This is something like playing if I were king for a day, and making proclamations about what you would do to make things better. In this instance, I'm going to pretend I am a TV producer who has been given a pot of money and lots of artistic freedom to develop TV programs I believe the viewing audiences would appreciate watching as much as I would. Since I like to read, I'd start looking at acquiring the film rights to crime fiction authors I admire and enjoy reading. Michael Connelly comes to mind. But I believe I read where Amazon has already grabbed him to make a TV series. Now that was a smart business move. Walter Mosley is another one. Why didn't more Easy Rawlins movies get made? Well, let's make him into a TV series instead. Speaking of cop shows, the other night I saw The Streets of San Francisco (starring Michael Douglas and Karl Malden) and Cannon (starring William Conrad) on a retro TV channel. It was pretty cool. I ended up liking Cannon more than I did the SF show. But maybe it is because I'm more partial to the private eye premise. Anyway, let's hope some good TV cop programs will be coming out soon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I grew up a fan of Cannon, Mannix, the original Kojak and Adam-12.
ReplyDeleteI remember the 3 year series Spenser For Hire starring Robert Urich, based on Robert B. Parker's well known character. I always felt that Urich was a little too nice as the lead. Sandford's Lucas Davenport also appeared on television a couple of times. I've only seen the Mark Harmon version, and found it not much more than o.k. PBS could probably do a pretty good job with Donna Leon's Commisario Guido Brunetti.
Hi Gregg, I saw a rerun with Urich in it, and he just looks too clean-cut to me. I expect Spenser to be a craggy-faced type. I was a big Kojak fan, too. PBS could do Donna Leon's Brunetti well as they do the more exotic kind of crime shows. Thanks for the comments. I enjoyed them.
Delete