Nashville has long been a very guilty pleasure--but one I stuck with. But as most of you know here, my all time fave network tv prime time writers are Herskovitz/Zwick who worked on Family, created and ran thirtysomething, co-created and ran My So-Called Life (a show that meant so much to me as a 13 year old) as well as Once and Again and they were hired by ABC to be Nashville's new showrunners--and then it was canceled. And then picked up by CMT. I just watched the hour "preview" (the full two hour premier airs Jan 5) that aired tonight, and I have high hopes that they take a fun show, but one that moved way too fast and had way too many WTF moments, and make it into a great show.
It's still much more "soapy" than, say, Once and Again was--but that's being true to the show--but their mandate in interviews has been to ground it more in character based drama, and slow it down--and this was an expert example of not dropping plot lines but wrapping some up or adjusting them into a different direction in an organic way. I do wonder how they will deal with writing a soapier show and one that's about people with far more money than even their usual upper middle class characters..
I also was very pleased to see a great tv writer who I've corresponded with, Richard Kramer, who wrote the infamous thirtysomething "gay episodes" as well as the adaptation of the first Tales of the City series and a great novel, as a producer on the show, which I assume means he's part of the writing team. I noticed on Wiki it said that the third episode is written by Winnie Holzman (the main creator of My So-Called Life)'s daughter, who co-created the one year fat-camp series, Huge with her mother. I never watched that, but I wonder how much of the writing team is new.
Nashville has long been a very guilty pleasure--but one I stuck with. But as most of you know here, my all time fave network tv prime time writers are Herskovitz/Zwick who worked on Family, created and ran thirtysomething, co-created and ran My So-Called Life (a show that meant so much to me as a 13 year old) as well as Once and Again and they were hired by ABC to be Nashville's new showrunners--and then it was canceled. And then picked up by CMT. I just watched the hour "preview" (the full two hour premier airs Jan 5) that aired tonight, and I have high hopes that they take a fun show, but one that moved way too fast and had way too many WTF moments, and make it into a great show.
It's still much more "soapy" than, say, Once and Again was--but that's being true to the show--but their mandate in interviews has been to ground it more in character based drama, and slow it down--and this was an expert example of not dropping plot lines but wrapping some up or adjusting them into a different direction in an organic way. I do wonder how they will deal with writing a soapier show and one that's about people with far more money than even their usual upper middle class characters..
I also was very pleased to see a great tv writer who I've corresponded with, Richard Kramer, who wrote the infamous thirtysomething "gay episodes" as well as the adaptation of the first Tales of the City series and a great novel, as a producer on the show, which I assume means he's part of the writing team. I noticed on Wiki it said that the third episode is written by Winnie Holzman (the main creator of My So-Called Life)'s daughter, who co-created the one year fat-camp series, Huge with her mother. I never watched that, but I wonder how much of the writing team is new.
I'm excited to see more--