Frank Darabont may have been a bit glum to see the first season of The Walking Dead that he had nothing to do with premiered Sunday to record ratings, but I’m sure he’s feeling better now that his next series, L.A. Noir, has been given a six-episode first-season order from TNT.
Based on John Buntin’s book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, the show stars Dead-expatriate Jon Bernthal as an LAPD cop battling mobsters and department corruption in the late 1940s. Along for the ride are fellow Dead alum Jeffrey DeMunn, Milo Ventimiglia, that chick who had Electro-like lightning powers on Angel, and the never-not-awesome Neal McDonough, last seen dealing with Raylan Givens and a meat cleaver. Oh, and bonus: Simon Pegg is featured in the pilot!
I don’t think I’d call that cast a powerhouse group of players, but it is eclectic enough to make me curious what Frank’s up to. Film noir set in that era has been plenty covered in the movies — I’m up for a Chinatown/L.A. Confidential double feature any time you guys are — but maybe Darabont can breathe new life into the genre through episodic television. (Which is basically what he did with zombies via The Walking Dead.) No series premiere date has been set yet.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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7 comments
So freaking excited.
I’m gonna give it a shot. But Bernthal? Unless he has hidden talents him starring in this troubles me. He was among the least charismatic people in the least charismatic show on cable.
At least Bernthal was TWD’s most entertaining bad actor. Of course, this show also has DeMunn, who was just bad without the entertaining part.
I dunno – I’d argue that DeMunn’s character on Walking Dead was terribly written. He did a respectable job with the very little he had to work with. He had a completely thankless task, trying to give life to some of the worst lines on a show notable for badly written dialog.
NONE of the characters on TWD have been strongly written. Some of the actors managed to rise above (Norman Reedus), some went gonzo (Bernthal) and some just failed to do much of anything (DeMunn, I’d argue). Pick your poison, I guess, but, yeah, it’s probably not fair to gauge anyone’s level of talent based on TWD alone.
I’m looking forward to this one. And TNT doesn’t seem to jerk around its showrunners (or go cheapskate on them) the way that I get the impression AMC does. Admittedly, they also don’t seem to do as much prestige stuff, so I don’t know how applicable that is.
I like Bernthal — he always looks like a bull terrier who made a bad thing on the rug while you were at work. I think he’d make a great old-school cop.
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