RTD USA?!?
Now here’s a piece of news I’m not quite sure how to digest: Doctor Who/Torchwood/SJA showrunner Russell T. Davies is coming to America (…TODAY!). According to this article, he’s not even doing it on the strength of a deal or contract or a project that’s waiting for him – he’s just going to move over here and “start writing.”
Um…you and everyone else, Russell. See also: “I’m just going to move to Hollywood and start acting.”
Granted, we’re talking about a guy whose name occasionally gets a mention in Daily Variety as if he needs no introduction beyond being the showrunner of Doctor Who; he may actually find that being the creator of the original Queer As Folk gives him more cachet professionally and creatively. Much as I’d like to think otherwise, Who and Torchwood are very much “niche” programming here. Biggest shows on BBC America? Maybe, sure – but what percentage of eyeballs-on-TVs in this country does that represent? It’s rare for a TV writer to get to be a household name in this country; even then, how often do Rod Serling or David E. Kelley get a mention in everyday conversation? Davies is going from a country where he can just about write his own ticket, and documentaries are made about him, to a country where he might wind up being mentioned in the same breath as J. Michael Straczynski or Ronald D. Moore – not exactly everyday watercooler conversation fodder.
Perhaps the key to all this is in this sentence of the article:
Budget cuts are forcing cancellations across the channels.
It might just be that Davies’ ambitions are just too big for a certain small island nation’s showbiz economy. I can grasp that, but perhaps he should’ve looked closely, again, at how things are going over here.
Still, best of luck to him. For all of his past quotes about how every planet in the Stargate universe looks like the woods outside of Vancouver, I think he’d better get used to his universe looking that way too. Either way, there are worse things that could wind up on the air (more reality schlock, for example) than more TV on the air that happens to wear Davies’ heart on its sleeve.… Read more
