Apparently it’s theme week in TV land—yesterday’s theme, of course, being, “Let’s kill everything you love”—with NBC doing kind of a “clock” thing at the moment, picking up Timeless and Midnight, Texas to series. The former is the latest show from The Shield’s Shawn Ryan, and is actually one of three time travel-based series that have been snatched up by networks this year. (Make way, magical police detectives, time travel’s here to stay!)
The series—which also comes from Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, and some of the producers of The Blacklist—will center on a trio of do-gooders who have to track a mysterious criminal through time, without changing history themselves. In other words, it sounds pulpy as hell, suggesting we’ll be getting less of the (relatively) restrained Ryan of The Shield, and more of the high-concept guy who brought the world the nuclear shenanigans of Last Resort.
Meanwhile, Midnight, Texas is based on a book series by True Blood author Charlaine Harris, about yet another small town filled to the brim by magically-inclined weirdos. (And to be fair, some of those magic weirdos are probably cops, so we’re not throwing the wizard detective baby out with the bathwater, here.) Described as being like a Texan, more overtly supernatural version of Twin Peaks, the series pilot will be directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the pilots for Mr. Robot and the just-canceled Game Of Silence.