Where once the goal was to launch a show that would parlay a full 22 episode season into a multi-year presence, “Red Widow” and “Zero Hour” – the two new dramas on ABC’s midseason schedule – revel in their short runs. In doing so they echo the European model of limited dramatic seasons.
Producers of “Red Widow,” which has an eight-episode run this spring, and the 13-episode “Zero Hour,” both say the finite seasons aid the storytelling in keeping a taut narrative shape.
“Red Widow” stars Radha Mitchell (Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda”), above, as a San Franciscan mother who must fight her way through the Russian mob after her husband takes a hit in a drug-related crime.
“Maria Walraven is pretty much my dream character to play,” Mitchell told a morning panel Thursday at the ABC portion of the TV Critics winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif., describing her as a woman “suddenly dragged into a world that she’s been trying to avoid pretty much her whole life.”
Melissa Rosenberg, the “Twilight” series screenwriter who was also a head writer on “Dexter” for a period, says Maria is the rare flawed female character on TV. Fighting to protect her children as she goes deeper into her family’s mob connection, “as played by Rahda, you have compassion for her, you are with her, and her experience is universal.”
“Red Widow” is based on the Dutch series “Penoza,” which Rosenberg says was “very cableesque in tone and its edge in terms of the characters and the moves that they make.” When she met with ABC to develop it, she says, “I was wary; I didn’t want to pull back on the edge.”
She said she didn’t have to — and its limited run was part of the reason.
“Because this is a very character driven show, it doesn’t lend itself to 22 episodes,” Rosenberg says. “The one advantage cable has over network — and it’s nothing to do with censors or violence or sex or any of that … it’s time. If you have time to write a good show and you have time to develop it, you get good storytelling.”
Having just eight episodes in midseason she said, was “exactly what I wanted.” The lead time gave her what she called “as much time to write and develop a show as I did on Dexter, which is three months going in, whereas a lot of network shows have maybe seven weeks. I don’t know how you find a show in seven weeks.”
Doing that, she says, helps her ultimate goal. “For me, it’s all about building characters and relationships that you want to stay with for five years or seven.”
Anthony Edwards, who spent eight years on “ER” returns to series TV in “Zero Hour,” as a professional skeptic who is drawn into a mysterious world of ancient beliefs and rites, a la the “Da Vinci Code” when he picks up a rare clock at an antiques fair. When it leads to the kidnapping of his wife (played by Jacinda Barrett), the action starts ratcheting up, moving from New York to different parts of the globe — or what looks like different parts of the globe.
Edwards, who said he enjoyed his break from television since he left “ER,” said “if I was coming back to TV, it would have to be something that was as exciting to me as that was.” The script was “a great surprise,” he said. “And I just said: If these guys are crazy enough to tell this story I want to do it with them.”
Producer Paul Scheuring (“Prison Break”) said the key is to start big and know where you’re going. Referring to creators of other serialized shows, “I’ve really been kind of blown away by the fact that they create a big spectacle at the beginning, in the pilot, and they don’t ultimately know where they’re going. And that’s terrifying to me and creatively disingenuous.”
So he says one of the things he tries to figure out is “What are the last frames of this series?”
Not only does he know where the clock mystery will lead in the first season of “Zero Hour,” the current mystery will be solved in time to rewind it and reset a new story for upcoming seasons.
“One of the things I learned from “Prison Break,” Scheuring says, “is that sooner or later you start flapping your wings because a story needs to end.”
So he says, “I kind of applied that wisdom to the construct of this show, which is it’s like the 24 model, because you reset every year.”
And with just 13 episodes, the action can fairly fly. “We don’t have to flap our wings,” Scheuring says, promising “it’s gonna be so dense with information and reveals and mythology that there will never be a sense at all that we’re stalling or trying to find our way.”
“Even before we did the pilot, “ Anthony says, “we’ve been able to do in the last 13 episodes what we’re telling now.”
“Zero Hour,” which also stars Carmen Ejogo, Scott Michael Foster and Addison Timlin, premieres Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Red Widow, which also stars Goran Visnijic, Jaime Ray Newman, Sterling Beaumon, Lee Tergesen and Wil Traval, debuts March 3 at 9 p.m. on ABC.