Tom Fontana

Birth Name:

Tom Fontana

Birth Place:

Buffalo, New York, United States

Profession

Producer, Writer

BBC America Renews Period Drama Copper for Second Season

BBC America has given the green light to a second season of its first original drama, Copper, the network announced Thursday. There is no airdate yet for the 13-episode second season. The period drama, set in 1864, wraps its first 10-episode season on Sunday. Check out photos from Copper Copper, from...

Fri, Oct 19, 2012

BBC America Renews Period Drama Copper for Second Season

Weekend TV in Review: Comings (Boss, Strike Back) and Goings (Political Animals)

Following, some thoughts on another very busy weekend of summer TV. (At this point, I'm almost looking forward to the fall season starting, so I can catch my breath.) CHI-TOWN CHICANERY: Corruption, mendacity, a thick smog of cynicism. Ain't we got fun? And so the audaciously downbeat political drama Boss returns to Starz (Friday, 9/8c), anchored and dominated yet again by Kelsey Grammer's tremendous performance as Chicago mayor (aka "boss" man) Tom Kane. A self-righteous bastard and unrepentant bully, this Machiavellian manipulator is notorious for "sacrificing that which is most precious for his political survival" (including sending his own daughter to prison and having his once-trusted turncoat adviser killed). Juggling more baggage than O'Hare during a blizzard, Kane is also beset by demons, manifesting as visions and hallucinations and ghosts, all symptoms of a debilitating brain disease — or maybe it's just good old guilt.

Fri, Aug 17, 2012

Weekend TV in Review: Comings (Boss, Strike Back) and Goings (Political Animals)

The Reporter: David Simon Creates Commentary Disguised as a Cop Drama on The Wire

  David Simon started out as a reporter, not a screenwriter. His street's-eye view of Baltimore inspired two successful books, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner. Both became TV shows focused on cops and the violence of the drug world. Simon's HBO series The Wire was even more ambitious. A social critique disguised as a cop drama, it offered a bleak picture of the American city, and Simon's views on how to save it. He was still reporting, but in a different way than ever before. We talked with Simon, one of the influential television industry players interviewed for TVGuide.com's Best of the Decade section, about different ways of breaking stories — those that are true, those that are fiction, and those that are both.

Mon, Dec 7, 2009

The Reporter: David Simon Creates Commentary Disguised as a Cop Drama on The Wire

New TV: Mark Burnett's Dueling Dads, and More

Mark Burnett has set up at NBC My Dad is Better than Your Dad, a game show in which fathers face off in stunt-driven challenges, Variety reports.... FX has given Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy a series commitment for Queen B, a workplace drama centered on a female CEO who grooms a young girl in her ruthless image.... Homicide's Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson are reteaming for the NBC pilot The Philanthropist, a series that sound a bit like The Equalizer.... After a fierce bidding war, ABC has ordered six episodes of Section 8, a drama penned by X-Men 3's Zak Penn and described as a blend of House, X-Men and The X-Files. OK.... ABC is teaming with hip-hop producer Pharrell Williams and filmmaker McG on Limelight, a drama set at a performing arts-school.

Thu, Sep 27, 2007

Pilot Talk: NBC Says Show Me the M.O.N.Y.

 NBC has greenlit M.O.N.Y., a drama pilot about the mayor of New York (M.O.N.Y., get it?) from Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere), and Area 52, which is described as a kind of Roswell with punch lines. ABC has picked up two pilots: American Family, a comedy about a dysfunctional (see title), and an as-yet-untitled fish-out-of-water laffer about a big-city lawyer relocated to a small town. Rina Mimoun (Everwood) is behind that one.  Fox has OK'd The Rules for Starting Over, a 60-minute comedy about a middle-aged divorced man who must learn how to date in the Match.com era.

Thu, Jan 18, 2007

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