Fall Preview: CBS' Hostages

Hostages

Mondays at 10 PM Eastern/9 PM Central,

Premiering September 23

With its similarly intense mix of political intrigue and personal drama, Hostages is obviously harboring hopes of becoming the next Homeland.  After all, the two series have more in common than merely the cleverness of their blonde heroines; both action thrillers have origins in Israel, which is fast becoming fertile ground for growing America’s future TV hits.

Showtime’s series, adapted from the Israeli Hatufim, captured critical raves and swept the Emmy Awards in 2012.  Now, CBS’ high-concept Hostages, based on a previously unproduced script out of Tel Aviv, has nabbed both a top-notch cast and one of TV’s highest-profile launching pads for a drama, the network’s Mondays at 10.

Hostages stars Toni Collette in the juicy lead role of Ellen Sanders, a Washington, DC surgeon whose family is taken captive by team of rogue FBI agents on the eve of her operation on the President of the United States.  Commanded to kill her political patient, Sanders is tested in her resolve as a medical professional, as a wife and mother, and as a patriotic citizen.  The scope of the story, says producer Alon Aranya, who teamed with writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff to tailor the original script for an American audience, reaches beyond that of the typical television procedural.  The intricately-plotted, surprise-rigged Hostages “will be like a feature film designed for TV.”

In another way that Hostages will be notable for the network, the series will, following its September premiere, run for 15 straight episodes with few repeats or interruptions, before ceding its timeslot in early 2014 to another hotly anticipated drama. (Intelligence, which stars Lost’s Josh Holloway as a government intelligence operative whose brain has been implanted with a supercomputer microchip and CSI’s Marg Helgenberger as his agency boss, is scheduled to debut February 24.)  Such shorter seasons have long been the norm on cable, but as network president Nina Tassler explains, this is a first for CBS:  “We’re normally in the 22-episode business, because our fans don’t want less of their favorite shows – they want more.”  But Tassler and her team were soon won over by the Hostages producers’ detailed plans for a nailbiting first season, which she describes as “fifteen really terrific episodes, jampacked with big events and plot twists.”

The twists were what lured actors like Collette, who remembers that “when I read the pilot script, it was unlike any other show.  I loved that I didn’t know what was happening -- although I thought I did.  It really was a page-turner, where I couldn’t put it down.”  Collette is joined by Tate Donovan as Ellen’s less successful – and less-than-faithful – husband Brian, Dylan McDermott as Duncan Carlisle, the erstwhile Fed turned conspirator and kidnapper, and James Naughton as the President targeted for assassination.

But both Hostages’ producer and leading lady warn not to blindly accept these simplified descriptions of the show’s characters.  “The show is a conspiracy thriller – and as such, all is not what it seems.  There’s always another layer,” Aranya teases.

“People keep asking Dylan, ‘How is it to play the bad guy?’” Collette adds.  “But he may not be entirely bad.  All of these characters have their reasons for doing what they do.  And those reasons will slowly be revealed.”

Lost Hearing About Lost?

Good news for people like me who didn't catch Lost from the beginning, and by the time the buzz built, felt it was too late to catch up. Today at the TCA, one of the show's executive producers Carlton Cuse announced that, preceding the debut of the show's 6th and final season on February 2, ABC will air a one-hour special recapping the show's first 5 seasons. The thought of that elicited giggles from critics, who could not imagine summing all of the show's legendary twists and turns so succinctly. "It's all in 43 minutes, and it's really done pretty well," Cuse enthused.

The show's upcoming ending is something which co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof says includes a "final image" which they've had in mind for years. And, once ABC "allowed" them, as he worded it, to work towards an end date, the writers have been able to concoct a final season which crafts a satisfying story, rather than staying a few seasons past the show's welcome.

As Evangeline Lilly, aka Kate, admitted from the stage, filming the show's finale will be bittersweet, because the cast has spent six years "in the jungle, growing up together, and growing up in front of all of you." But, as the cast really does spend its time trapped together on an island, where, she explains, you can't just run off to Vegas for a weekend escape, she does also feel like the end of the show may be a big "golden horizon" of opportunity.

In either case, before the actors go their separate ways, Lost's final season will be a reunion of sorts, Lindelof announced, as some of the show's departed stars like Harold Perrineau and Cynthia Watros return. Also on today's panel were Emilie de Ravin, Michael Emerson, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim and Terry O'Quinn -- but not Matthew Fox, who of course will return as Jack. Perhaps he's off somewhere, living out the actions he read in Faraday's journal to keep flight 815 from crashing in the first place.

Lost airs its recap special on February 2 at 8 PM, followed by the 2-hour season premiere at 9 on ABC.

V is for NoVember

In answer to your question, Philip from Atlanta, from today's Must Hear TV segment on The Frank DeCaro Show on Sirius XM OutQ, V is coming to ABC, starting November 3.

According to the network's press release, "'V' is a re-imagining of the 1980s miniseries about the world's first encounter with an alien race. Simultaneously appearing over every major city in the world, the Visitors (or V's) promote a message of peace. Through their generous offer to share advanced technology, the V's build a following that may actually hide a more malevolent agenda, one that twists a very deep component of human nature -- devotion."

The original show's baddies -- led by the vixenish, appropriately named Jane Badler -- were a bunch of rodent-gobbling lizard people covered in fake human skin, here to harvest us for food. And so the series was not, I learned with some disappointment back in 1982, about my strict 8th grade math teacher Mrs. Vastola, as had been widely rumored around Schuyler-Colfax Junior High School in Wayne, NJ.

The cast of this new remake boasts quite a few viewer favorites, including Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell as resistance leader Erica Evans, and Scott Wolf (formerly of Party of Five, and not to be confused his costar from that show, Lost's Matthew Fox -- got that?) as journalist Chad Decker.

I'm excited for the remake -- if only to see the concept executed better this time around. Because let's face it -- if you're around my age, you may have nostalgia for the original, but if you think back on it, it was pretty bad. But meanwhile, these days, remakes of sci-fi -- witness Battlestar Galactica -- are smarter, deeper, and lavished with impressive special effects. So will this new V delve deeper into the allegory of fascism as depicted in our relationship with our new alien overlords?

And more importantly, will Morena Baccarin, as the Visitors' leader Anna, unhinge her jaw a la the original alien baddie Diana to swallow a rat whole? Come to think of it, even if this new V is spectacular, a part of me will always miss the cheesy special effects (and Mrs. Vastola, who turned out to be an amazing teacher.)

PS -- I know she was on Falcon Crest afterwards, but whatever happened to Jane Badler? Anyone?