Tuesday, April 06, 2004
another new tv series bites the dust
In a message dated 4/06/2004 12:13:25 Eastern Daylight Time, craigg@ writes:
Century City Abandoned
CBS has canceled its SF legal series Century City, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The show lasted just four episodes.
Century City, which starred Hector Elizondo, Nestor Carbonell, Eric Schaeffer and Viola Davis, followed the goings-on at a major Los Angeles law film in the year 2030. The show debuted to dismal ratings and was routinely trounced by timeslot competitor American Idol. Its last episode, which aired March 30, attracted only 7.7 million viewers, finishing fourth for the hour. The Hollywood Reporter noted that CBS will replace Century City with The Guardian, the show the network displaced to make room for Century City.
figures. the demise of tv quality (including cable) is significant. i was just about to post a full week's schedule recently, 24x7, then thought, nah, what's the point, it's obvious almost everything is crap. and series get introduced and yanked so quickly these days one never knows what's coming or going.
at least this news notice came to my attention this time. most changes are just done with no apparent warning. tv has become like my life - no dependability or reliability, so no sense in looking forward beyond the immediate.
ah well. but century city was clearly more form than content. the light, airy - and variety- and detail-less - set seemed like something out of a high-budget high school play. the acting wasn't quite up to snuff either, and most characters were looking to develop pretty one-dimensionally, with the exception of some hastily introduced angst with little apparent justification.
although the concept was interesting, the reality fell short of the visions (hell, the _vision_ seems to have fallen short of the vision). and their handling of complex ethical issues was immature, innaccurate and amateurish.
so they had second-rate scripts, production, acting - pretty much doomed to failure. which is too bad, because it was much better than most of the stuff that survives. what this says about the television industry and its audience: things are going to get much worse before they get any better - if ever.
my random links feed pays off with an old mars exploration link
here's a somewhat topical link that popped up on my random golden oldies links:
Romance to Reality: Moon & Mars mission plans.
sounds like some slow, kick-back reading to do.
(see earlier post lost in space)