stuff
I've been fangirling this show (with enthusiasm matched only by my love for Children of Men) for the better part of the last two months - see me raving about it here and here - and now I find out that THE STATE WITHIN will premiere on BBC America on February 17, 2007.
LA Daily News:
In "The State Within," a BBC America miniseries debuting Feb. 17, a terrorist attack apparently carried out by a British citizen in Washington, D.C. initiates a complex series of interconnected events which threatens to level both the U.S. and U.K. governments. Think "24," without the lunatic flights of fancy.
"State Within" asks, "Would you sacrifice the truth for your country or would you sacrifice your country for the truth?" co-writer Lizzie Mickery said Wednesday at the semiannual TV press tour. "We are more cynical about what we're told nowadays. We do not believe automatically what we're told, where we may have a number of years ago."
I don't know how many of you HAVE access to BBC America, but you'd be missing some awesome television if you don't watch this conspiracy thriller. It stars Jason Isaacs, Sharon Gless, and one super-hot Ben Daniels. You think I'm joking? I am totally not joking. Really, have I ever led you wrong? (Don't answer that.)
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The Johnny Depp-produced Litvinenko film is meeting competition from another project planned by Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider). It will be an espionage thriller about the poisoned ex-KGB agent, Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko, "caught between those two colossal forces" of Russia and the west. (Hollywood Elsewhere)
Queen Mirren, I bow at your feet.
David Milch, creator of HBO's ever brilliant and poetic - and now axed - Deadwood, spoke to the TCA about that show and his new one, John from Cincinnati, which appears to be a dysfunctional family drama...about surfing...and with aliens. Other reports of the panel here and here.
The cast of John from Cincinatti features Bruce Greenwood (Capote) and Rebecca De Mornay (Risky Business) as Mitch and Cissy, heads of the Yost family of Imperial Beach, and Brian Van Holt (Black Hawk Down) as their son, Butchie Yost (who comes up with these names, yo). The regular cast will also include Ed O'Neill, Garret Dillahunt (yes!), Luke Perry, Jim Beaver (Deadwood) and Luis Guzman. Austin Nichols (Deadwood) plays John from Cincinnati, a dim but wealthy surfing savant who might not be of this planet, and who comes to take lessons from Mitch. From a HBO press release (via The Deadwood Stage):
"Set in Imperial Beach, California, the last great surf-break before Tijuana, where the U.S. meets Mexico, and water meets land, JOHN FROM CINCINNATI tells the story of the Yosts, a family of surfers whose awesome athletic talents have for generations seemed to come with a curse attached. The gifts of 13-year-old Shaun rival those of Butchie, his addict derelict father, and his now-ascetically-withdrawn grandfather Mitch, both of whom defined the sport in their heydays. In shaping Shaun's career, his grandmother Cissy strives to achieve a commercial and athletic success that will compensate for the frustrations and failures of her life with her husband and son.
Into this world, where even simple joy has been turned into a commodity, steps a mysterious stranger named John. Soon after, things begin to happen to the Yosts, and those whose lives they touch, that test the boundaries of past and present, the mundane and the miraculous, the natural world and what lies beyond it."