TV GUIDE: Ask Matt: Broadchurch, The Killing, NCIS and Ziva, Reality Judges
Jul 15, 2013
by Matt Roush
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow on Twitter!
... Question: I've been reading your items on tvguide.com for over a year (yeah, I caught on late, sorry) but I'm writing to you for the very first time. I have several comments/questions. I enjoy good sci-fi and just finished watching the first season of Defiance. I thoroughly enjoy that show but I am supremely dismayed with the announcement at the end of the season finale that we will have to wait until June 2014 — in other words, 11 months, for the start of their second season. Why the long wait? It's one thing to tease an audience but I find this just plain mean to all of us fans of the show!
Re the Once Upon a Time spin-off: Seems to me the folks in charge of the original Once Upon a Time, upon seeing how many folks like the original, have just gotten greedy with the spin-off. I'm no expert, but I believe that unless the new Once is simply awesome, it will not carry the same appeal of the original. Your thoughts? And I came upon TNT's Falling Skies very late in what I now see was its third season and I am hooked. I loved Noah Wyle back in the old days of ER and I think he and the rest of the show are superb! I see it has been picked up for a fourth season and I am on pins and needles waiting to see how this show moves forward. What is your opinion of Falling Skies? — Richard
Matt Roush: You're not the only one who wrote in annoyed that Defiance will be absent for so long, and others complained about the short duration of its 13-episode premiere season. But this isn't all that unusual in the world of cable, where relatively short orders are the norm (and it's a trend the networks are beginning to pick up on as well) — and this is an expensive show by Syfy's standards, so it doesn't appear that its order will be "super sized" in year two, and rushing it back on the air won't be an option. Like TNT's Falling Skies, a sci-fi show I tend to enjoy more than Defiance (better acting and more strongly defined characters for the most part, a more propulsive and dynamic story, less pretension), this series is apparently now being seen by Syfy as a future summer tentpole, which makes sense to me from a programming point of view. It will have a better chance of standing out when it has less network programming to compete against during the regular season. And regarding the Once Upon a Time in Wonderland spin-off, it definitely has its work cut out for it — a tough Thursday time period, for starters — but the Alice legend is pretty powerful in its own right, so maybe it will pop in its first year the way Once did. Although the real challenge here is that the mothership lost some of its mojo in its second year, which makes the timing of juggling a spin-off even more of a risk than usual...
Defiance season two premieres June 2014 on Syfy.
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