Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Category: pilots

  • Abroad Thoughts from Home

    This is probably the most niche blog post ever, but I wish I’d had access to something like it when the need first arose. It’s the Idiots’ Guide for a British writer joining the staff of a US TV show. How you land the gig is up to you. This is just about the admin.…

  • Process and Procedure

    Which ought to be the title of Jane Austen’s unpublished crime novel… It’s the network pitching season in LA, and I just got back after an intense week with results that I should be able to tell you about sometime soon. After nine hours plus of breathing buggy plane air on the way home, I…

  • Behind the Scenes

    I was aware that NBC had a crew on the set when we were filming our UK sequences in and around York, and then I heard from Jonathan Lee that they were covering the South Africa shoot as well. Here’s some of what they saw: Jonathan – seen there in the clip – is the…

  • Man in a Suitcase

    I just finished working my way through the boxed set of the 1967-68 ITC series Man in a Suitcase. It’s taken me longer than I expected it to, and it’s provoked some mixed feelings. It’s a show that I was enormously impressed by, the first time around. And I still am, but in a qualified…

  • Dumping Miss Daisy

    I saw the first Pushing Daisies when it was leaked pre-air in 2007. I thought it made a great mini-movie but couldn’t see the long-running series potential in it. Series tend to follow formula and spread their invention, and this did neither. The second episode surprised and convinced me. It was the second episode that…

  • Lost, in Transition

    You know where I came across the pilot episode of Lost? The one with the graphic plane crash and everything? It was part of the in-flight entertainment on a Virgin Atlantic service to the US. I mean, it didn’t bother me, but, you know… Apparently eight episodes of the new season were shot before the…

  • Because we’re all out of Piano Players

    Did you hear the story about the British director Mike Figgis? He arrived at Los Angeles airport on his way to take up a TV job for Fox/Sony. When asked the purpose of his visit, he supposedly said, “I’m here to shoot a pilot.” As the story goes, it then took him five hours to…

  • Spoilers? Really?

    The networks seem pretty sanguine about the online appearance of the two opening episodes of DEXTER’s second season along with the pilots for several as-yet unaired series, leading some people to speculate that they were let out on purpose. Next season, why not go for it for real? Get a sponsor to underwrite the show…