Monday (Jan. 16) is an overcrowded day for TV viewers. Please catch my previous blogs on Betty White and Ashton Kutcher; here's the brief story I sent to papers on "Alcatraz":
By MIKE HUGHES
For the people from ”Lost,” the new
series was a bit easier.
This time, they didn't have to make up
the island. Alcatraz – once a prison, now a tourist spot – is
real, just off San Francisco.
“It's so scary, because it's so
close,” said director-producer Jack Bender. It's “a very unique
place in the world (with) almost a contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe
vibe.”
And now it has “Alcatraz,” the TV
series. Like “Lost,” the show has J.J. Abrams as producer, Bender
as principal director (after the pilot), Jorge Garcia as one of the
stars. Like “Lost,” it has a spooky, sci-fi mood; this time, past
prisoners are returning – unchanged and un-aged --after 50 years.
That's bad news, producer Jennifer
Johnson said. “Alcatraz is notorious and the criminals who were
housed there were the worst of the worst.”
The show filmed part of its pilot at
the real Alcatraz, then may return occasionally during the season.
This is partly a catch-the-crooks story, with Sarah Jones, Sam Neill
and others as cops. Dominating the pilot, however, is the menacing
mood of Alcatraz itself.
“It has that kind of creepiness that
an old skeleton has,” Garcia said.
“It feels a little bit like a ghost
house,” Abrams added. “You feel like you;re in this haunted
house.”
It's a haunted house, however, that's
ready for some TV stardom.
– “Alcatraz,” Mondays, Fox
– Opener Jan. 16, is 8-10 p.m.; then
9 p.m.