NBC decided to get into the sexy supernatural business last fall, ordering an adaptation of True Blood author Charlaine Harris’ other sexy supernatural series Midnight, Texas. Harris is two books into a planned trilogy about a small town that isn’t what it appears to be and is inhabited by secretive, probably paranormal beings, so NBC should have enough material to get a pilot rolling soon. The network has also just landed its lead, as Deadline reports that The Borgias’ François Arnaud has joined the cast.
Arnaud, who’s popped up in NBC’s Blindspot, has been cast as Manfred Bernardo, a traveling psychic who decides to take his dead grandmother’s advice (communing with the dead is clearly Mediums 101) and settle down among the non-clairvoyant beings in the titular town. His dead grandmother turns out to be wrong and/or a prankster in the great beyond, as Manfred soon “realizes that he has much more in common with the locals than he originally thought.” He’s also stumbled upon “more evil than he left, so he’ll have to bond with his supernatural neighbors to figure out what’s going on.”
Midnight, Texas is being described as “Twin Peaks meets True Blood,” possibly because it makes for a nice, almost-alliterative phrase. The series will be written by Monica Owusu-Breen (Fringe, Brothers & Sisters) and directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who’s also taking on the Flatliners reboot.