The 'Southland' that almost was

The Oct. 18 TV Week cover got pulled Oct. 8 while it was on the press when NBC canceled "Southland" (my editor actually got to say, "Stop the presses!"). Although some of the "Southland" covers got distributed, most of the covers were for BBC America's "Occupation."

(The printer said some other newspapers also swapped out covers but many were not as lucky and had already printed their TV books with "Southland" on the cover before news of the show's demise broke.)

In memoriam for "Southland," which was due to return for its second season on NBC tonight, here are those stories, which may yet run in print if the cop drama gets picked up by a cable network. (Supposedly Warner Bros. is in talks with TNT about a pickup.)

Curiously, there is some hint of mismanagement on NBC's part in this story that was written before NBC killed the show:

BURBANK, Calif. - If you find communication challenges in your workplace, you might be surprised to learn Hollywood is no different.
This summer at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, NBC prime-time entertainment president Angela Bromstad said "Southland" tried to do too much in its first six episodes.
"Instead of re-piloting the pilot" - Hollywood-speak for making early episodes hew closely to the pilot episode - "and letting the audience get more familiar with these characters, it became very serialized and they were a large, large ensemble," Bromstad said. So far, so good, and an absolutely accurate critique. But then...
"It's really going to focus on Regina King and Ben McKenzie, the two sets of officers and detectives and crimes and how they come together," Bromstad said.
This was the statement that seemed to catch "Southland" executive producer and 1979 Carnegie Mellon University graduate John Wells off-guard.
"I think we were all interested in reading what Angela had to say to you the other day," Wells began during a press conference a few days later on the Warner Bros. lot. He acknowledged that when the cop drama returns at 9 p.m. Friday on WPXI it will be less serialized. "Someone who shows up and just watches that episode will fully understand what's happening in the episode."
Director Christopher Chulack defended the serialization, noting it was out of necessity due to NBC's short order of only six episodes.
"We didn't know if we were coming back or not and we had to wrap up certain stories we committed to and that was part of the reason that it got a little serialized," Chulack said.
"Southland" is a Los Angeles-set cop drama - "the Southland" is a nickname for Los Angeles and its surrounding environs - with attention paid to characters and their relationships. In the first season the show's large cast became somewhat unwieldy but the most compelling characters were those played by King, a detective, and McKenzie, a rookie patrol cop with a brusque partner played by Michael Cudlitz.
Wells said the intent is for "Southland" to remain an ensemble show but that NBC requested that both detectives and beat cops be featured in each episode.
"When we originally began planning the series, we had talked about doing episodes that would be solely about one group or one character, and they've asked us not to do that in the future," Wells said. "They would like it to be an ensemble show, which has all the characters in it on a weekly basis."
One polarizing element of the show is the decision to allow the characters to utter profanities and bleep them out as would happen on a reality show. Wells said loyal viewers love the verisimilitude of that approach but it annoys others. As he points out, some of the same viewers may think nothing of bleeps over an episode of "Deadliest Catch."
"It began as the idea of how do you fictionalize a version of ‘Cops'? You get into the car and drive around and it makes you feel like you're actually with cops," Wells said. "And one of the things that breaks you from that world is when you've got to say ‘frickin' a lot. So we decided to try this."
In a copy of this week's season premiere sent for review, I only counted three bleeps, a steep decline from some of the first-season episodes.
"I think a lot of time last year we had episodes with way too much of it and it just became a distraction," Wells acknowledged. "We're trying to find some level where it's integral and feels like it's real but doesn't bug ya."

Here's the sidebar review:

When it began its brief spring run in April, "Southland" (9 p.m. Friday, WPXI) came across as a competently made, character-driven, contemporary cop drama that was more interested in every day police work than in outrageously dramatic scenes.
That remains true in the second season premiere, which has a tighter focus on police work and less emphasis on the personal lives of the show's cops, which makes "Southland" easier to follow. Last season, the show had such a large ensemble that it often became difficult to keep track of the characters and their relationships, especially as it grew overly-serialized toward the end of its first batch of episodes.
The most compelling characters remain Det. Lydia Adams (Regina King) and the team of training officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) and rookie Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie, "The O.C.").
At the end of last season Adams' partner, Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott) was shot. Bad for him, good for viewers, who get to see King's Adams at her empathetic best as she deals with the aftermath.
After patrol officer Chickie Brown (Arija Bareikis) turned in her partner for his excessive drinking on the job, she finds herself paired with a cop with the apt nickname Slug. Young Ben Sherman is perplexed by how fellow cops shun her, especially because his hothead partner is addicted to pills for back pain and he might someday find himself in Chickie's shoes.
There's a cool, no-nonsense attitude about "Southland" that makes it maybe less easy to embrace than some other shows but there are so many strong performances and enough strong-but-nuanced writing that it's easily one of the better dramas currently in prime time.