That headline makes it sound like this will be a super serious blog post about the need to end urban violence. And we should end urban violence. Also, I should lead off 2011 with some sort of serious, tone-setting blog post about the challenges in the year ahead. Instead this post is about television.
About a year ago a few councilmembers, including me, were interviewed by a writer named Veena Sud. She was in town researching detail for a television pilot involving Seattle, murder and city politics. Mostly she wanted to know about how councilmembers and mayors communicate, a bit about how councilmembers are or aren’t involved with police investigations. We talked for a while, then she took off and I didn’t think much more about it. This is Seattle – there are writers everywhere, right? She was up from Los Angeles, I think, where scripts are plentiful. How many actually make it to becoming a pilot and then how many get picked up?
One, at least. Starting in March on AMC you can watch “The Killing,” or as the AMC promos call it “television’s next great original series.” The show is modeled after a Danish one that was huge. The AMC version takes place in Seattle (although filmed in Canada) and spins out from the discovery of a murder in Discovery Park. Check it out:
From what I see in the promo video, no councilmember in her early 40’s with a thing for neighborhoods and land use policy figures prominently. Maybe in season two.