So, the long and tortured course of this mini-series is finally over. I was out of the country for a few weeks earlier in the summer, when I got home I saw episode 3 and 4 (I think) were burned off on a Saturday night, and then the rest were, even worse, discarded over a couple of Sunday afternoons. Quite a fall for a show that started out in the "Scandal" slot on Thursday at 10:00 back in January, then cancelled after just two episodes. I read that its first episodes has maybe the lowest rating of any network show in that time slot - .8.
I would like to know about this project. Obviously they thought they had something in the source material (the book by the two female spy-catchers who got Ames), in the wake of Homeland and The Americans. But they seemed to do little or no marketing of the show, and gave up on it very quickly. Also, as Adam noted, it had quite a good cast on the one hand, but not a very good script. The narrative went from "Do we have a spy?" to "We must have a spy - but who? for the first 4 hours, and then, with really no background or explanation, the lead character locks on to one suspect, and the last 3 hours are mostly how she convinces her colleagues. But we never get the explanation of how she first locked on to him. The book had to be CIA authorized and approved (I have read a couple of books about Ames, including "Betrayal", but not "Circle of Treason"). I assume the holes in the story are CIA-induced, not so much to protect any secrets, but to de-emphasize the culture of mediocrity and incompetence at The Company during this period. I wonder if ABC pulled the trigger so fast because they knew it was not going to get any better? n Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 12:20 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Justified is probably my favourite US TV show, and I'm both happy and sad >> at this news. Sad it's going to end, but happy that it's another example of >> a network giving the producers and writers the right amount of time to >> fashion something good. Just one more Carla (Karen Sisco) Gugino guest >> appearance please! >> >> Compare and contrast with ABC's Assets, which may have bombed, but >> doesn't even seem to be getting any kind of burn-off. I'm interested in >> seeing the rest of these because it seems to be a largely British cast >> doing US/Russian accents (for better or worse), and the lead - Jodie >> Whittaker - is actually a really good actress. I saw her a year or so ago >> alongside Christopher (Doctor Who) Ecclestone a year or so ago in a play at >> the National Theatre that she was excellent in. But I digress... >> > > Wait, are you saying that they are not going to air all of the originally > scheduled episodes of *Assets"? I watched the first episode, and I think I > have the second on my DVR. I had planned to let a few more accumulate > before watching the rest together - I thought it was intended to be a > limited mini-series? It is no in the same league as Homeland or The > Americans, but still not a bad take on a fascinating and important episode. > I will be bummed if unable to watch the entire arc. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
