By: Jaclyn Cascio (@jaclynator)
True Blood ended three years ago. The Vampire Diaries reached its end just recently. If you’re worried about the supernatural void left in your heart after the vampires’ reign ended, NBC has just the thing to fill it. Keep reading to find out more about their upcoming new series called Midnight, Texas.
Charlaine Harris wrote the True Blood book series, on which the wildly successful television show was based. It turns out that television isn’t done with Harris just yet, as NBC brings her Midnight, Texas trilogy to life on the small screen with a new series by the same name. Commissioned in May 2016, the supernatural drama television show is executively produced by Agents of SHIELD alum Monica Owusu-Breen and Six Feet Under producer David Janollari. (You might remember that True Blood was also the baby of Six Feet Under alum Alan Ball.) Niels Arden Oplev and Mark Hentermann are also executive producers of the new show.
Filmed in New Mexico, Midnight, Texas promises to bring the weird in what has been described as a mix of True Blood and Twin Peaks. If you’re wondering how the show compares to Harris’ original book series, it has been assured that the show only adds to and expands upon the original material, but doesn’t take away from it. When producer Owusu-Breen was asked about the author’s involvement with the project, she stated, “She came to set, but she understands the novel had a very small-town pace to it, which is different than what a network requires.” While that doesn’t sound like it bodes well for die-hard book fans, Owusu-Breen also said of the show during a studio press tour, “Like all of [Harris’] novels, it’s very character driven. It’s also got this wild creativity. Like, it goes all over the place. You know, her characters are very three-dimensional. So they are funny, and they fall in love, and there’s passion. And so I do like to describe this show as all my favorite things in a blender. So I think we ride the tones of horror and action and romance and humor, and we don’t shy away from any of them… It’s a little bit like her books on steroids.”
So what does a wildly creative book on steroids look like played out on television? Midnight, a small town in rural Texas, is a safe haven for those who are different. The town actually sits on a veil between the living and hell, and as all supernatural shows promise, nothing is what it appears to be. The town is home to outsiders of all kinds. Residents include Fiji Cavanaugh (Parisa Fitz-Henley of Luke Cage), a powerful witch who owns a Wiccan shop; Lemuel (Peter Mensah of True Blood), a unique vampire with a long history in Midnight; Joe Strong (Jason Lewis of Charmed), an immortal angel who knows all the town’s secrets; and Reverend Emilio Sheehan (Magic City’s Yul Vazquez), as a were-tiger. (No. That’s not a typo or a joke. Owusu-Breen let that little factoid slip during an interview with Blast Magazine.) The town also has its own freelance hitwoman, Olivia (Arielle Kebbel of Gilmore Girls), who might have some powers of her own…and a love affair with vampire Lemuel.
The town also boasts some human (so far) residents. Bobo Winthrop (Orphan Black’s Dylan Bruce) is the town’s premiere pawn shop owner. He is joined by Creek (Sarah Ramos of American Dreams), a waitress and aspiring writer whose overprotective family has a deep dark secret, and the Sheriff (Sean Bridgers of Deadwood).
Manfred Bernardo (François Arnaud from Blindspot) is a psychic running from some trouble who heads to Midnight at the behest of his deceased grandmother. He joins the strange residents as they struggle with suspicious county police, killer biker gangs, and their own mysterious pasts. The struggles bring the citizens of Midnight together into a strange but strong family. And with a prophecy of a medium leading the town against the darkness of their hell-mouth they live on, they’re sure to have their hands full! There’s also a talking cat, for whatever that’s worth.
Check out a trailer for the show, and see the otherworldly folks for yourself!
Midnight, Texas is keen to advertise the kind of supernatural creatures and people living in the town, which might sound like a buzzkill for some viewers. Those who are fans of mystery might be worried that the preview told them everything they need to know. On that subject, Owusu-Breen reported at WonderCon 2017 (where the pilot of the show was screened), “We let the audience know who they are and ask questions about that. It’s not their powers that make them interesting. They’re interesting AND they have powers.” The key thing she noted is that we may know what and who they are right off the bat, but each of them has a dark past and their own stories that we will learn about along the way. Take the angel, Joe, for example. Lewis has said of his character, “Joe is not like a Hallmark angel. He’s not some cherubic icon on the front of a greeting card. He’s an immortal creature who has lived through a lot of different circumstances. I think one of the hardest fights in life is to move through your experiences and life’s struggles and hold onto a sense of hope and discovery…”
Has the show caught your fancy yet? Are you ready to fill the hole in your heart left by True Blood and The Vampire Diaries? Follow the show’s official Twitter and mark your calendar for the NBC premiere of the ten-episode first season of Midnight, Texas on Tuesday, July 25. And if you’re in the UK, you’re in luck as SyFy UK got the UK broadcast rights for the show, so you won’t be left out of the loop!
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via The Nerd Machine
http://www.nerdhq.com/what-we-know-midnight-texas/
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