Medium Revels in Place Among Living Dead
Medium
Medium will pay tribute this season to Night of the Living Dead — which couldn't be more appropriate, given the show's recent history.
NBC dropped Patricia Arquette's supernatural crime drama last season, but it was quickly revived by CBS, whose production division produces the show.
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"I'd been told unofficially we were getting picked up," Arquette said at Monday's Television Critics Association fall-TV tour. "I was about to buy a house, then I got told we got dropped. I was unemployed. And then I got a job. It was like, you're hired, you're fired. You're hired!"
Executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron said he tried to leave NBC no choice but to renew the show by writing a cliffhanger finale.
Watch Night of the Living Dead
"I did not know we were going to CBS, but for that matter I wasn't certain that we'd be picked up by NBC," he said. "So what I was trying to do was write an ending that was so provocative it would be impossible to cancel the show. ... It was sort of me being a wiseguy."
Caren said he isn't bitter at NBC, but did take a few jokey swipes at his show's old home.
"CBS has already run more promos than NBC in the whole five years," Medium was on the air, he said. "But I say that with love in my heart."
The show's tribute to Night of the Living Dead, in which Arquette will be inserted into actual footage from the George Romero classic, will air the night before Halloween. It marks a return to horror for Arquette, who made her film debut in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.