No flash in the pan

 

With the US fall season continuing to take shape, American drama and comedy once again rank high on C21’s Hot Properties Playlist this month, writes Jonathan Webdale.

The CW scored instant success with superhero action drama The Flash – a spin-off from another one of its DC Comics inspired shows, Arrow.
 
The Flash delivered the network its best series premiere ratings ever, topping The Vampire Diaries five years ago, not surprisingly earning a super-speedy order for 10 additional episodes, taking the full season to 23.
 
Meanwhile, new comedy Jane the Virgin proved another winner for the same channel, garnering widespread critical acclaim and an additional nine-episode-order, taking it to 22.

Based on a Venezuelan telenovela of the same name, Jane the Virgin may have one of the more outlandish premises surely ever pitched to a room full of network executives but it’s outdoing freshman comedies at some of The CW’s bigger rivals.
 
ABC was first to wield the fall season axe, cancelling Manhattan Love Story and using fellow newbie rom-com Selfie to plug the gap, while NBC quickly followed suit, pulling two of its own new laughers, courtroom-set Bad Judge and another rom-com A to Z.
 
But the Alphabet (with Black-ish already one hit in the bank) and the Peacock (faring better in drama with The Mysteries of Laura) still have potential long-term mirth-markers on their hands in the form of Cristela and Marry Me respectively, both beginning well in October.

Cristela, like Jane the Virgin, establishes the place of Latino-Americans firmly in primetime and hands stand-up comic Cristela Alonzo the accolade of first ever Latina to create, write, produce and star in her own show.
 
Marry Me could still go the way of some of this season’s other rom-coms but for the time being it’s being given a chance. Audiences – many of whom will be Happy Endings fans, drawn in by star Casey Wilson – and critics alike appear to be warming to the show.
 
The last and latest fall comedy contender among the US broadcast networks, The McCarthys, fared rather less well over at CBS, despite also drawing on the Happy Endings credentials of writer Brian Gallivan. Centered around a sports-obsessed Irish-American Boston family with one gay, sports-hating son, the show felt too contrived and stereotyped for many critics but could yet prove a slow burner.

Meanwhile, in cable, premium net Starz returned to comedy for the first time in four years with Survivor’s Remorse – a vehicle for basketball star LeBron James, which earned a second season renewal after the debut of its first. Despite far from stellar ratings the number of installments rises from six to 10.
 
Over at USA, courtroom comedy Benched made a promising start, featuring another Happy Endings alum, Eliza Coupe, in her first lead role since the end of the ABC series. Tucked away down the dial, so far it’s looking like the jury might well find in its favour.
 
Back in drama, CBS divided opinions with Stalker, a series from Kevin Williamson, the scribe behind horror movie franchise Scream. A show about a pair of Los Angeles detectives who specialize in tracking down stalkers – a phenomenon disproportionately perpetrated by men against women – it has been accused of being misogynistic terror porn. For the time being, however, ratings are holding up. Make of that what you will.

Over at NBC, another property born out of the DC Comics universe, Constantine, started well enough with three additional scripts ordered before the first episode bowed, but the show suffered a nasty wobble for its second, which happened to coincide with Halloween. Whether the exorcist/occult detective drama is a horror story or happy ending in the making remains to be seen.
 
In cable, there was no such doubt over mixed martial arts drama Kingdom (fka Navy St), a marquee straight-to-series order for DirecTV’s Audience Network – the channel’s third original drama – and one it decided to back for a further two seasons after airing only the second episode of the first.
 
At Showtime, The Affair, a drama exploring the impact of infidelity from different gender perspectives, has met with rave reviews. Starring Dominic West (The Wire), Ruth Wilson (Luther), Maura Tierney (ER) and Joshua Jackson (Fringe), the series comes from House of Cards and In Treatment scribe Sarah Treem, based on a story by the latter’s creator Hagai Levi.

Meanwhile, across the pond, it was The Missing on BBC1 (on Starz in the US in November) winning all the plaudits, with an opening episode setting a high bar for the remaining seven about a child’s disappearance while on holiday in France and the impact it has on his family and the police detectives originally assigned to the investigation.
 
On ITV, clerical detective series Grantchester, made in association with PBS’s Masterpiece strand in the US, harks back to the halcyon days of a post-war picturesque English countryside village and bears all the hallmarks of a gentle drama that is set to run and run.
 
The Great Fire, meanwhile, a four-part take on the 1666 conflagration that engulfed the City of London didn’t quite manage to ignite the critics but still snuffed out competition on rival channels, including the stunning second season of Peaky Blinders on BBC2.

New formats remain few and far between – lesser still since Fox’s recent cancellation of Utopia – but BBC2 served up the only one to make this month’s Hot Properties Playlist, The Kitchen, from Studio Lambert. A 3×60′ fly-on-the-wall factual entertainment gaze into the culinary hub of eight distinct British households, the show had a tough start, up against the aforementioned Grantchester and Gotham over on Channel 5. It’s no Gogglebox as yet but not to be discounted.
 
In documentary, Grayson Perry: Who Are You? on Channel 4 was a fascinating and thoroughly engaging exploration of identity by the Turner Prize-winning artist.
 
C21’s Hot Properties Playlist is published through the C21Screenings portal and aims to uncover the latest and greatest new shows that have scope to be definitive to their genre.
 
You can see this and other playlists in the C21Screen app, which can be downloaded here.
 
If you would like to submit a show for consideration in next month’s C21 Hot Properties Playlist, email [email protected]