Turn on that TV

January 16, 2006 | Justin

I love TV. I watch a lot of it and what I can’t watch I tape so that I’m able to watch it later. In a given week I watch the West Wing, Las Vegas, Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, E-Ring, Lost, Alias, My Name is Earl and The Office and if Arrested Development, The Apprentice or Prison Break were still on I’d watch them too. Like I said I watch a lot of TV. Good TV is a combination of good acting, very good writing, and a good story line. Whether is it’s being stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere and trying to figure out just what in the hell is going on or making the most of selling paper products, I just enjoy good TV.

This past weekend I was wondering the streets of Universal Studios Orlando when a man asked if I would like to take part in a survey. Knowing that you usually get something out of these surveys I said yes. Much to my surprise the survey consisted of rating two new NBC television shows (NBC now owns Universal hence the NBC Universal logo). The shows are both pilots which are going through some sort of focus group study like the one I participated in to determine if they will see a network broadcast or be doomed before it even gets started. They showed about a two minute trailer for each show twice and gave us these buttons to push if we liked what we were seeing or if we hated it. Afterwards there were various “what did you think about this” questions and some demographic stuff. Surprisingly though, the shows were pretty interesting and should NBC actually put them on the air I’d probably turn them on.

The first was a show called Heist, which TV.com already has a page for. Here is their description of the show:

From NBC Universal Television Studio, Hypnotic and Sony Pictures TV, “Heist” is about a group of thieves who plan to rob three jewelry stores on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills simultaneously. Dougray Scott will play the mastermind of the scheme.

Basically, from the preview the show will follow the planning of the big ‘heist’ from week to week and the robbery will be at the end of the season. The preview also shows that there will be a focus on the cops who are evidently already onto the guys and there will probably be some sexual tension deal between the robber and the lead detective. All in all the show looked pretty interesting and actually very funny. There were a few lines in the preview that I laughed out loud at–which was probably a site to see considering I was sitting at a computer terminal wearing oversized headphones holding these “like” and “dislike” buttons in my lap.

The second show had a much more serious tone. It’s called Kidnapped and is kind of like Man on Fire meets 24. Zap2it’s description of Kidnapped:

The series will aim to blend elements of family drama and thriller as it shuttles between the FBI agents working the case, the victim’s family and those involved in the abduction.

This show looked pretty interesting, although very dark. The guy hired by the family to work the case–not the FBI, some private sector guy–was very interesting and seems like he would be the driving force of the show. The head FBI agent was played by Delroy Lindo which I found pretty cool.

According to the guy conducting the survey NBC is using our testing data to determine what works in the show and what doesn’t. If all goes well one or both of the shows could make it in as a midseason replacement this Spring or perhaps even get a shot at a run in the Fall season. It was a pretty fun experience to see how they test these pilots before going to air. It’ll be pretty cool if one or both of these makes it to air–I’ll feel like I had a part in getting it there.

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Alias, Arrested Development, LOST, reviews, Scrubs, The Office, TV, West Wing