My initial reaction THE NINE, the new ABC drama about the lives of hostage seige survivors, is very strong. A good ensemble cast, a tense aftermath scene, very light on the precious faux tough dialogue, very strong on the little moments that seem genuinely human and an excellent cast (particularly Tim Daly, who has really matured and aged well). There are a thousand ways the producers could fumble this ball, but with this pilot they've managed a great snap.

There was a lot I liked about the pilot, as I wrote in this previous post, but I wonder where the show can go from here. Can you do 22 episodes about nine stressed-out citizens before viewers start to ask, "Would you just get on with your lives?" And what happens in Season Four?

I liked it but also wonder where it can go. It struck me as sort of LOST in reverse, imagine a show where the LOST cast gets rescued in the premiere and the story plays out in backstories and flashbacks. It seems like the premise would have been terrifc for a 4 hour telefilm, while the subject matter seems more suited for a stronger, R rated theatrical feature.
Some of the characters were very interesting ( the bank manager, the suicide guy ) while others seem headed for cliche city ( the cop, the teenage daughter visiting one of the criminals in jail ).
I know it would never happen, but why can't a network plan out a one season show and make it good? I can't see how this could go past one season and not turn into pure soap.

They could always go the DIE HARD route and have all the characters get involved in a new hostage situation at the start of each season. One of the original robbers has to have a vengeful sibling or something.

That's not exactly what happened, though. Daly walks out of the situation and punches a negotiator we don't see, then has a face-off with a pencil-pushing superior (the venal District Attorney from MEDIUM) that I have to say was pretty evenly balanced in terms of who I agreed with (not having seen the particulars of the seige). Although the suit is coded to be hateful, I can't say he did or said anything cliche or unreasonable, leading me to believe Daly could just be wrong, his whole tell-the-truth arc could be wrong. Wouldn't that be great? An ostensible hero who's just wrong?

They do this on British tv all the time, with even shorter runs [six or seven episodes, usually]. I wish we had more of this kind of programming on US tv. For one thing, if all the episodes were in the can before they aired, we wouldn't end up with an unresolved cliffhanger that will never be resolved. I'd still like to see where they were going with JOHN DOE, a Fox show that was cancelled several years ago.

I never saw the whole thing, but was the Stephen King adaptation of Lars Von Trier's THE KINGDOM meant to be a limited run series? It was longer than a traditional miniseries but shorter than a regular episodic tv show. Of course that might have been because it was cancelled mid-stream.

Didn't they do something like that (limited run) for King's 'The Golden Years'. It was only, what, five or six one hour eps. Has that seen dvd yet?

According to Dominic Purcell, he was Jesus Christ!

maybe the cancellation was for the best, then.

I don't know. That might have made for some pretty interesting television.

For an example of the UK doing it right, I just heard that LIFE ON MARS second series will be its last. The show was a hit, but there is no way they could stretch the premise for a third season. I just wish I'd caught the first two episodes on the on-demand channel. BBC-A snipped a lot to fit the timeslot.

Not a chance of that happening for the US do-over. The first season would have more eps than the entire UK run. Unless I'm pleasantly proved wrong (Ha!).