If you could produce a big budget HBO series, what would it be about?

[jimmy olsen]

HBO gives you a Rome/Band of Brothers sized budget and your choice of book or what have you to make a TV series from, what do you chose?

Sadly, most of what I'd want would probably be unfilmable even with that budget.

I think maybe the Battle of Chosin Reservoir would be a good choice.

[Barrister]

Why a legal drama set in the Canadian north, of course.   

[jimmy olsen]

Why a legal drama set in the Canadian north, of course.   

With a $100 million budget?

[Siege]

My show would be call "The Surge", and in 10 one-hour episodes would cover the surge in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008.

[Barrister]

Why a legal drama set in the Canadian north, of course.   

With a $100 million budget?

Doing 30 seconds of googling, typical HBO shows start t at $1-$2 mil per episode, so that's 13-$26 mil for season one.

But once it gets popular (which it inevitably would) the cost of your stars goes way up so we can start approaching $100 mil per season.

Plus, all that on-location work doesn't come cheap.  There aren't a lot of pre-existing soundstages in Grise Fjord, for example.

[CountDeMoney]

How many ways Timmay could die in various industrial accidents.

[Neil]

Dreadnoughts.

[Neil]

My show would be call "The Surge", and in 10 one-hour episodes would cover the surge in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008.

Wasn't that Generation Kill?  Or was that pre-Surge?

Edit:  Never mind, I think that was the initial invasion.

[Valmy]

Gosh...I don't know...can't think of anything I love that deserves a glorious multiple season drama filled with blood, gore, sex and general antics.



Oh right 

[jimmy olsen]

Why a legal drama set in the Canadian north, of course.   

With a $100 million budget?

Doing 30 seconds of googling, typical HBO shows start t at $1-$2 mil per episode, so that's 13-$26 mil for season one.

I did say a Rome/Band of Brothers type budget.

[Siege]

Dreadnoughts.

That would be cool.
I'll watch it.

[Valmy]

Dreadnoughts.

That would be cool.
I'll watch it.

Nude sailors going at it?  Eh not my thing.

[Barrister]

Why a legal drama set in the Canadian north, of course.   

With a $100 million budget?

Doing 30 seconds of googling, typical HBO shows start t at $1-$2 mil per episode, so that's 13-$26 mil for season one.

I did say a Rome/Band of Brothers type budget.

Well, screw you.

I have precisely one (1) idea for a high-quality cable series.  This is it.

It would be Law and Order meets Northern Exposure meets Sopranos.  The basic structure of the show would, at least at first, be your typical Crime of the Week drama.  Open with a dead body out on the tundra, your plucky RCMP officer quickly makes an arrest, then your rumpled but handsome Crown Prosecutor has to prosecute despite an overworked defence counsel, a bored (and possibly drunk) judge, and the hesitance of witnesses to be seen co-operating with outsiders.

Setting it in the north allows you to have a core cast who then goes out 'on circuit' and can interact in various different towns.

Being on cable though allows you to move beyond just the 'Law and Order: NWT' premise.  You spend more time on the characters.  They're all in the north for a variety of different motivations, looking to fill various personal needs.   Once the show gets established you can have different show structures - instead of straight legal drama you have an episode where the court party is trapped in a mid-January blizzard coming off Hudson's Bay and are stuck in an incredibly tiny hotel for days on end.  In addition to the 'crime of the week' you probably also have an overarching mega crime that unifies the entire season (until it's resolution in the season finale).

I'm not a writer of any particular note, so I couldn't exactly be writing up scripts for this, but that's my one (1) idea.

[Neil]

Rumpled?

[CountDeMoney]

Law & Order: Special Pleated Khakis Unit