What TV show would you make?

Cafe Society
1

A billionaire has a brain embolism and thinks it’s a good idea to give you ten episodes of whatever on HBO. Your budget is limitless. The only restrictions are that each episode can be no longer than one hour and have to be original - no bring back Firefly for example. And no remakes. So what do you make? It doesn’t even have to be what people want to see, just what you want to see.

Me, I’d do a show about a US mission to Mars set in an alternate present day. The tone would be realistic and pretty technical about existing technology. Believable characters, but not a lot of character arc. The story would be more about the mission and less about the character’s romances or family.

2

For a long time I wanted to see a TV show where any character could die, and there was no guarantee your leads would last the season. Well, now we have shows like that.

I also wanted to see a post-apocalyptic plot where we follow the struggling survivors, rather than see the events leading to the disaster. Well, that’s now happening too.

My televisual desires keep getting fulfilled! So now I have to come up with something new to want to see.

I’d like a steampunk series about a Victorian Era Gentleman and his Lady Wife having kick-ass adventures via airship, pursuing a map of lost ancient artifacts.

3

Something of Heinlein’s, done right. Maybe Friday. Or The Rolling Stones. Hell, with today’s CGI let’s make a mini-series of Glory Road!

4

A “Kingdom Come” 10-episode miniseries.

5

There are a lot of books I would love to see translated into TV. Mostly Urban Fantasy stuff, such as Marc del Franco’s Connor Grey, Kelly Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld, Jennifer Estep’s Spider series, Devon Monk’s Allie Beckstrom series, and probably a few others I can’t remember.

I wouldn’t mind a fantasy series based in Waterdeep, a city in the DND world of Forgotten Realms. Or in Dark Sun. Any DND setting with DND rules as the backdrop. Basically, a fantasy setting with some sort of consistent rules done, RPG or not.

A Shadowrun TV show could be good as well. A cyperpunk like setting set in the near future which has fantasy, magic and technology.

That’s all I got. Apparently, some RPG stuff into TV, fantasy and urban fantasy.

vislor

6

no remakes! :slight_smile:

7

Ten episodes of this.

If that’s not original enough, a cop drama about the Mounties with talking (indeed, foul-mouthed) horses.

8

Well I’ll be hornswoggled. Goes to seek it out

9

My would be story, though at what point in the arc is negotiable.

10

The Shards of Honor, but if that seens stretched out in ten episodes, Barrayar.

11

Ha!

12

Since I have an in with the author, I am thinking [URL=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Ring”]The Spirit Ring. Swords! Sorcery! Murder! Intrigue! Metalwork!

Actually, the book itself is a pretty good read, halfway between young adult and adult. Fairly normal sort of story, just a bit of CGI here and there, not too much to make it too expensive to film. No major sexxor to peeve the fundies who tend to get their panties in a bunch about sex, and there is definitely a good magic supervised by the church vs evil nasty death magic.

13

Climbing For Dollars

14

Let me clarify something. I’m not asking for adaptations of novels - that’s too much like a remake. I want wholly original ideas. Stuff like guanolad’s steampunk show (Though it’s hilarious something remarkably similar has already been made and he didn’t know it. Wasn’t a bad show, either). Anyway, it has to be your idea, not somebody else’s. So no adaptations.

15

Several possibilities:

1.) A multipart adaptation of a Frederick Forsyth thriller, perhaps The Devil’s Alternative.

2.) A science fiction anthology series, with several classic short stories. But I wouldn’t screw it up the way Masters of Science Fiction did. I’d like to see Fredric Brown’s Arena done right, maybe one of the stories from Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore’s Robots Have no Tails, a story by Robert Sheckley*, and maybe something by Eric Frank Roberts, or L. Sprague de Camp, or Frederick Pohl. Or something short by Clarke, Heinlein*, or Asimov.

3.) A Judge Dee miniseries, based on a book by Robet H. Van Gulik, adapting perhaps one novel and a couple of his short stories.

4.) A series, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, using not only Lovecraft, but stories by others, with good special effects, and played straight. For some reason, even when people start adapting Lovecraft they end up getting punchy and start throwing in jokes. Lovecraft doesn’t work unless it’s played straight.

5.) Tales from the Arabian Nights, adapting several of the lesser-known stories (there are literally a thousand and one nights. Actually, even more, considering the six volumes of Burton’s Supplemental Night. There’s a helluva lot more than flying carpwets, magic lamps, and sindbad.) I’d definitely include some of the adult-rated stories, to show people what the stories were really about.

6.) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. There has been a score of adaptations of this, not one of which has been remotely close to Twain’s original. And not one of which has shown Twain’s WIT. This has to be the greatest crime. Twain was a supremely humorous author. (And to all you naysayers out there, a faithful adaptation doesn’t have to include every damned svcene, so don’t complain that nobody’s going to sit still through “13th century political economy”, Okay? Nobody adapted the dull parts of Mody Dick, you know.)

  • God knows why they took Sheckley’s short story Watchbird with its logical progression punchy ending and completely threw it out the window. Or why they changed the ending to Heinlein’s story.
16

Wait, not adaptations, so I can’t work with Vislor to make Kelly Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld into a show? Aww.

Original stuff only, huh? Oh yay, I get to make my novels-in-progress into a TV show! :slight_smile: Because TV doesn’t have enough urban fantasy murder mystery shows. And by enough, I mean any. Do I get to cast it too? Because I have ideas…

I’d like to see a fantasy film noir series as well. Something far better than the lame attempt to adapt the Dresden Files. Grimm looks like it might be somewhat of what I have in mind, but it looks more Law and Order: Fantasy Unit than Gumshoe PI meets Fantasy. I think there’s room on the dial for both ideas anyway, though.

17

Missed the part about no adaptations (though I’d really like to do those).
My first thought would be similar to the OP’s – a show about realistic space travel within the solar system that breaks no physical laws. There already was a show like that – Man Into Space back in 1959, which I vaguely remember. For some reason, the show has been practically erased from public memory. To my knowledge it’s never been syndicated, released on any video format, and histories of SF television usually ignored its existence. Even books devoted to listing individual episodes of series didn’t list the episodes. It wasn’t until the internet showed up that information about the show started to circulate. The idea could do with an upgrade, anbd there’s lots of stuff besides Mars – lunar exploration, O’Neill-style space colonies, solar sailing, laser propulsion. There’s plenty that could be addressed, and lots of human drama about how it gets done.

18

Vampires.

Not the current crop of whiney angsty vampires appealing to teen girls. I want all my vampires to be truly nasty, inhuman, undead monsters. There wouldn’t even be that one vampire who turns and works with the good guys. My vampires would be sexually alluring (more a power than just using sexy people), but unable to actually have sex. And I would keep religion out of it. And just vampires.

I would focus the shows on both the hunters and the vampires, 50/50. Delve into what it is like to be a vampire - the power, the depravity, but also the fear and paranoia that comes with knowing that you are being hunted both day and night (especially the day part). Show how hunters are recruited, trained, and how they are essentially being sent to die at the hands of a vampire sooner or later. Lastly, I would set it in a world similar to our own…maybe even referencing the sexy vampires of TV and movies. But people wouldn’t believe in vampires, and we could show the fallout of a vampire infestation in a town and what happens when the hunters come in and get through doing their work.

Don’t get attached to any of the characters, though. Expect high body counts on both sides.

19

So you think you can fuck? Daa da da da da da!

20

Titanic: The Series

Every week the ship sinks. There’s a regular cast playing the major roles like Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay. But the real focus is on the guest stars. Each week you follow a new group of passengers as they try to survive the sinking. Sometimes the viewpoint characters live and sometimes they die, but you never know when you start watching if this week’s crop will make it or not.

Sometimes the viewpoint characters cross paths with one of the major characters. And sometimes a seemingly minor character from an earlier episode will turn out to be a viewpoint character in a later one, or vice versa.