The Show That Should've Been a Hit

[Mark Jeffries]

In 2009, NBC tried to bring Prestige TV to OTA network television, in "KIngs," a big, sprawling, complicated, expensive, challenging drama with BIblical themes set in modern times.  It was a longshot, but it may've made it--if not for Jeff Zucker.  This is its oral history:

https://www.vulture.com/article/kings-nbc-2009-oral-history.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One%20Great%20Story%20-%20February%2027%2C%202023&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20One%20Great%20Story

[Kevin M.]

I adored this series. It was perfect in every way, except that it was on NBC at a time when NBC could not figure out what to do with it. It was promoted as “What if America had a king?” but that wasn’t what the series was. 

On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 9:02 AM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

In 2009, NBC tried to bring Prestige TV to OTA network television, in "KIngs," a big, sprawling, complicated, expensive, challenging drama with BIblical themes set in modern times.  It was a longshot, but it may've made it--if not for Jeff Zucker.  This is its oral history:

https://www.vulture.com/article/kings-nbc-2009-oral-history.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One%20Great%20Story%20-%20February%2027%2C%202023&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20One%20Great%20Story

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

First, that article was way too good to be in Vulture. What happened?

Second, have I mentioned that Jeff Zucker is an asshole?

Third, while I did not adore Kings as Kevin does, I did like it, and mourned it’s premature loss, especially as I was teaching an Honors class at the time that covered in Part the Hebrew Bible’s story of David. Wow, was that really 14 years ago?

It is interesting to read that the theory was that it would draw a universal audience, both conservative religionists who take the source material literally and secular liberals who just like the drama. That was never likely. 

David is the most human of all the characters in the Hebrew Bible, and even if you stick literally to the authorized text you will alienate a lot of fundamentalists with details of his story. The more seriously you take the character, even when going beyond the text and geo and temporal locations of the story, the more you alienate traditionalists. But also, secularists will have trouble appreciating the complexity of his character if they rule out a priori that he was a man after Gods own heart. 

Kings was a story aimed at a relatively small intersection of liberal theists, large enough to support a show on prestige cable or contemporary streamers, but not broadcast television in the oughts.

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[Tom Wolper]

I also watched Kings back in the day and I couldn’t fully embrace it. I think the critics in the Vulture article reflect my feelings that it wasn’t coherent and that kept me out.

I’ve been meaning to post a thought about Poker Face and put it off. The post-mortem part of the article answers the question I was going to ask: If Poker Face is such a big deal for NBC, why is it on Peacock and not a network prime time show? Now I know the answer is if the show had to depend on an advantageous time slot and have each episode broken up for commercial breaks, there’s no chance the show would succeed.

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[Jon Delfin]

On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 2:57 PM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:

I also watched Kings back in the day and I couldn’t fully embrace it. I think the critics in the Vulture article reflect my feelings that it wasn’t coherent and that kept me out.

I’ve been meaning to post a thought about Poker Face and put it off. The post-mortem part of the article answers the question I was going to ask: If Poker Face is such a big deal for NBC, why is it on Peacock and not a network prime time show? Now I know the answer is if the show had to depend on an advantageous time slot and have each episode broken up for commercial breaks, there’s no chance the show would succeed.

I'll give you the time slot thing, but Peacock has no shortage of commercial breaks. Also, the episodes would have to be edited down to fit a 60-minute slot, and maybe Lyonne and Johnson wouldn't go for that.

[Tom Wolper]

Point taken about there being ad breaks but they’re much shorter and less intrusive on Peacock than on broadcast shows. I noticed when I watched an episode of Night Court that it was 21 minutes long and I just looked up La Brea and an episode is 43 minutes long.

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