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Canwest News Service
It's U.S. Thanksgiving week in Tinseltown, which means production is on hold for most TV series, and the big movie studios are as quiet as the day after the plague hit in I Am Legend.
Even so, word earlier this week that ABC had halted production on FlashForward for an extra six days came as a bit of a shock.
An ABC rep reportedly told The Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva that the shutdown was built into the show's schedule, explaining, "They want to maintain the high quality of the show, and this gives the writers the opportunity to do so."
The timing is telling, though.
FlashForward fell to a series low in the ratings last week, just nine weeks after its debut as one of the most eagerly anticipated – and widely watched – of the fall's new series, in what's turning out to be a surprisingly robust season.
Original co-executive producer/head writer and showrunner Marc Guggenheim has reportedly "left the . . . series," as Hollywood types say, and the writer of The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, David S. Goyer, has been handed sole responsibility for running the show.
FlashForward has struggled of late in Canada, as well, where it airs on CTV- owned A channel on Thursday nights. FlashForward has been averaging between 500, 000 and 700,000 viewers, despite the hype, and despite being tailor-made to suit the Lost/Heroes crowd. Thursday is TV's most crowded and competitive – and potentially profitable – night of the week, thanks to all those movie ads for weekend openings.
FlashForward is not headed for the memory bank just yet. ABC and Goyer will try to pick up the pieces over the Christmas break.
Lost, ABC's other sci-fi serial thriller, returns Feb. 2, and could give FlashForward a much-needed boost.
V, the lizard-people-taking-over-the-Earth thriller, will return in March. FlashForward is guaranteed to air through April, at least.
Still, as persistent problems with Heroes have proved, it's one thing for producers and a network to promise they're going to turn a series around, and quite another to actually do it.
This isn't the way the future was supposed to work out. ABC always intended FlashForward to inherit Lost's legacy as network TV's big, glossy sci-fi serial thriller. Now it looks as if FlashForward's very future might be in jeopardy.
Could it be a case of one-season-and-out for TV's most expensive new drama? Only two months ago, you would've needed a crystal ball – or a vision of the future -to predict that.
astrachan@canwest.com
blog: www.canada.com/tvguy
