With The Good Wife over and the X-Men series replacing him with a newer model of teleporting elf, Alan Cumming is ready to move on to his next big project. According to Deadline, that project will be Dr. Death, a CBS drama series based on an upcoming book of the same name by James Patterson—better known as the guy we should all suspect if Stephen King suddenly turns up murdered. The show will be written by Royal Pains showrunner Michael Rauch, and it centers around Cumming as a “gifted professor and writer” who secretly used to be some kind of ace CIA operative and is now trying to live a murder-free life. Apparently he never saw a Bourne movie, though, because his normal life is eventually interrupted when the NYPD decides that he’s the only guy who can stop a rampaging serial killer for some reason.
The serial killer thing and spooky name make Dr. Death sound like it could be the spiritual successor to Fox’s The Following, but the NYPD angle suggests the perfect setup for a case-of-the-week procedural. At this point, it’s unclear which angle the show will take, but the fact that it’s on CBS means it’s very likely we’ll be seeing Cumming in a high-tech crime lab with a team of varyingly serious/quirky people working under him as they try to solve a new serial killer murder every episode.