It wasn't the swords. It wasn't the sandals. For Rufus Sewell, the tough part was all the stinkin' mud. Playing a 12th-century stonemason in mega miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, premiering tonight on Starz at 10/9c, meant maintaining "a level of grime on my neck consistent with that of your typical farm animal," he says.
A small price, indeed, for what's shaping up to be the armor-clanking, leech-sucking, monks-a-poppin' drama of the summer. Pillars, based on Ken Follett's doorstop of a best-seller (all 973 pages of it), about the quest to build a Gothic cathedral in a fictional England of yore, runs eight hours over six Friday nights...
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CBS was the only network this year to provide screeners for all its new shows, which they presented on Friday. Here's my quick take on them. — Mickey O'ConnorWorst WeekThe premise: Sam (Kyle Bornheimer) tries to impress his future in-laws — with disastrous results.It's like: Meet the Parents — almost exactly like that, in fact, although it's actually based on a British series.My take: I found the pilot to be very funny, and Bornheimer's comic timing to be excellent, but I wonder how enjoyable it will be to watch Sam demoralize himself on a weekly basis.Eleventh HourThe premise: Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) is a special scientific advisor to the FBI who lends his particular skills to criminal investigations.It's like: Well, we know what it's not like. "This is a science fact show, not a science fiction show," says executive producer Ethan Reiff (who also wrote Showtime's Sleeper Cell).My take: Well, Jerry Bruckheimer is involved, which is a good sign, but after watching a...
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Lifetime this summer will premiere Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal, a true-story-inspired movie about a group of out-of-control teen girls who taunt their teachers. Tatum O'Neal plays the principal, Jenna Dewan (Step Up) a young teach who alerts the media to the goings-on.... Rufus Sewell is the lead in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS drama pilot Eleventh Hour, based on a British series about a government adviser who saves people from abuses of science.... Jacqueline Bisset will have An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving in a Hallmark movie airing in November.Related:• Bruckheimer, CBS Eye Big-bucks Eleventh Hour Deal
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Following a fierce bidding war between CBS and ABC, Warner Bros. has cut a massive deal with the Eye for the rights to a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced take on the British thriller Eleventh Hour, says Variety. Sources close to the deal say it is easily the most lucrative pact of the development season, with CBS greenlighting a $4 million pilot and agreeing to produce 13 episodes at a pay-or-play licensing fee of $1.75 mil per.The X-Files-esque Eleventh Hour last year aired as a four-part miniseries in the U.K., with Patrick Stewart starring as a professor called in by the government to investigate mysterious cases involving matters of science, from cloning to global warming.
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