Little Virgil Webster and his posable action figures.

June 25, 2006 2:44 PM

All the scripts to The Inside.Tim Minear, an altogether rather talented producer/writer/director behind Firefly, Angel, and Wonderfalls, created a serial killer show with a difference back in 2005. It was interesting, weird, critically acclaimed, and on FOX, so of course it got cancelled after 13 episodes. Luckily, Mr. Minear has posted on his own site the draft scripts to every episode, as written by himself and his talented friends. They make for fun reading, for those who don't mind reading scripts and would like some tightly-written, throughline-having, serial killery goodness without that funny CSI aftertaste. [via]
posted by Sticherbeast (11 comments total)

Actually, it got cancelled after 7 episodes. The other ones never aired. Fox was burning off the series during the summer and no one watched it, so they gave up and showed reruns of something else.

I guess people just weren't interested in yet another procedural crime drama. Apparently it was the 14th one at the time.
posted by smackfu at 3:04 PM on June 25, 2006

Also cancelled by Fox: Minear's Wonderfalls, a great quirky comedy. Only four episodes made it to air, but 13 episodes are on the "complete series" DVD.
posted by Galvatron at 3:13 PM on June 25, 2006

smackfu: Whoops! Yeah. You're right. Cancelled after 7 episodes. They made all 13, and I know they all aired in some foreign markets, but yes, cancelled after 7. It's a pity, despite the perfectly understandable reasoning that there's a hyperglut of crime procedurals, especially rather profitable franchises of self-contained mysteries such as the various CSI series.

FWIW, the only other procedural I've ever followed is The Wire, which is fantastic in its own right. If it weren't for HBO's faith and business plan, probably never would have been made at all.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:22 PM on June 25, 2006

Minear definitely contributed greatly to Wonderfalls, but it was created by Bryan Fuller, just as Firefly and Angel were created by Joss Whedon. Nothing against the very talented Minear, who produced and wrote great scripts for all three, but saying that he was "behind" those shows makes it sound as though he was the creator.
posted by OolooKitty at 4:28 PM on June 25, 2006

man, but this show was AWFUL. gore for the sake of gore. it was like "silence of the lambs" turned up to 11. just a miserable, absolutely worthless show.

whoever created it -- bryan fuller, tim minear -- shouldn't be let near another television show. ever.
posted by jimmy at 4:46 PM on June 25, 2006

The other six aired in the UK (and subsequently "aired" on BitTorrent) and were disappointing for the most part. Peter Coyote's mysterious motives were the most interesting part of the show, and they never went anywhere with it.
posted by aaronetc at 4:48 PM on June 25, 2006

Sticherbeast, The Wire is coming back for another season in September. HBO showed a promo for the new season before the Deadwood premiere a couple weeks ago, I think.
posted by emelenjr at 5:05 PM on June 25, 2006

i watched this show. it sucked.

wonderfalls was wonderful, though. they shoulda played the rest of the episodes of that series, and none of the inside.
posted by lapolla at 6:21 PM on June 25, 2006

I would love if some of the cancelled shows released a story outline, so we could at least find out what they had planned. Like that of Dead Like Me. Some shows were allowed to finish, Farscape, Arrested Development, so that's something.
posted by lundman at 7:06 PM on June 25, 2006

I watched the whole series of Wonderfalls. I really liked that and it looked like it had a lot options for a second season. I guess this is somewhat off topic, but I heard they were trying to make what would have been season 2 plots into a movie. Is this true? If so, what is the status on it?
posted by Hypharse at 7:20 PM on June 25, 2006

I actually liked this show (although Rachel Nichols may be the worst actress in the world). Peter Coyote was a bad ass, though, and I thought they were setting up some interesting conflict between Virgil Webster and Jay Harrington's Agent Ryan. Oh, well ... always the danger with getting sucked into TV shows.

Thanks alot for the post, Sticherbeast. I wouldn't have seen this otherwise.
posted by pardonyou? at 6:48 AM on June 26, 2006