Believe [NBC]

New series by JJ Abrams and Alfonso Cuaron. I have no idea what JJ has to do with it, but Alfonso at least directed the pilot and came up with the very high concept of the series.

It seems as if the series, which NBC is already promoting for midseason and which will likely get promoted to death during the Sochi Olympics, is already having problems as they just replaced the showrunner for a second time and went on an early Xmas hiatus to "retool". Word on the street is that NBC bought into this very high concept series but have since then been micromanaging it to death with bajillions of notes. This seems to be the trend anymore, buy a pilot based on a very high concept and then have either no actual story to tell (Terra Nova) or become so bogged down in network micromanaging that you can't actually tell the story you intended.

http://www.nbc.com/believe/video/sne...believe/n43871

I keep hoping that someone will make a show like this, and that instead of going the "ho hum" episodic route they just slam the audience in the face and continue to escalate the concept until it reaches an apocalyptic breaking point and that's it. Design it as a fixed duration miniseries but market and bill it as a traditional "pray for a new season" show and let the sheer surprise factor of it turn into crazy word of mouth on social media.