Deadline

Network: NBC; Genre: Crime/Mystery; Content Rating: TV-PG (language, adult content, some violence); Available: Sleuth Channel; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)

Before Dick Wolf became married exclusively to the "Law & Order" franchise, he made an attempt to vary it up with "Deadline", a series that takes all of the pavement pounding, suspect interviewing and case building of "Order" and transplants it into the journalism universe.

The always underrated Oliver Platt headlines as Wally, a famous, rule-bending, ego-maniacal reporter for the New York Ledger. Around him are his journalist students as well as reporter Lili Taylor, editor Bebe Neuwirth and his ex-wife Hope Davis all of which's soul job seems to be to keep him under control. I like Oliver Platt and while he is good here, he isn't great on that level that would elevate the tedium of the rest of the series beyond the safe genre trappings that Wolf has set up for himself. Later, Wolf would find a performance that does succeed in elevating one of his shows with Vincent D'Onofrio in "Law & Order: Criminal Intent".

"Deadline" undeniably has a little more spunk and humor than "Order", most of which is provided by the natural comic personality of Platt. It even slips in some witty journalistic observations via Platt's narration. But it is hard to shake the feeling that we're watching the same show all over again. The structure, the tone, the endings - all vintage "Law & Order". "Deadline" also commits the biggest sin on the head of "Order" in terms of the shamefully broad characters of racial, ethnic and just traditional TV stereotypes. The oddly titled camera can't hide that.

In retrospect, the show is forward thinking in some ways and dated in others. In reruns Wolf proves to be more insightful than I'd expect. "Deadline" is one of the few places you'll hear pre-9/11 references to Osama Bin Laden and stories where Wally fights for free speech in the face of corporate censorship feel prophetic.

However, I just can't get over the fundamental premise of the series. Even in 2000, the idea that newspaper reporters are intrepid truth seekers who actively progress through investigations, interview witnesses, go undercover and even step in to right societal wrongs is from a pre-"Network" era so long ago I can't help but look at it in disbelief. After years and years of lawyers and politicians getting a PR makeover on TV it does only make sense that Wolf and NBC would try to turn another one of the most hated professions in America into something heroic.

* ½ / 4

The evil NBC network has cut off the 3rd and the final new addition to the Monday night line-up...the question is, why? I can understand why "Daddio" and "Tucker" got canned (both horrible shows, by the way). Now that this show is gone, the whole new Monday prime time is gone. This makes me as mad as the Presidential election the other day, and that means mad!

Anyway, enough of my griping. Let me talk about the show. This show was perfect in almost every way. From the creator of "Law & Order", this show had to be good, and it was. It's got all the elements arranged in one hour of programming: comic relief, high drama, romance; you name it, you were guaranteed to get it. I'm sure you know the scoop already: Oliver Platt stars as the award-winning writer for the New York Ledger, and it's a playout of "digging up the dirt" which is so important in today's society (especially in tabloids). Platt's character was a "fresh new face" in the TV world, and so was the rest of the cast. I especially liked seeing wonderful actresses such as Bebe Neuwirth and Lili Taylor in a show like this. I was fascinated by the way events were played out in this show, especially the last episode before it was taken off of the air. I looked forward to this show long before the series debut, and looked forward to it every Monday...until now.

The burning questions are sadly unanswered when the show withered away. SO much stuff was left at a cliffhanger for me, because we barely got to know some of the characters. Why did NBC have to cancel such a wonderful show? If another network could buy this show like PAX did for "Mysterious Ways", then I would be content. Otherwise, just leave me hanging off a cliff until you get a show just as good. 9.5/10

Oliver Platt is a genius. One could simply repeat that for 100 lines and sum up this series - and anything else in which this rotund brilliant actor appears. He became Porthos in the bouncy Three Musketeers; he was amazing as Hector in the sadly under-rated Lake Placid; he was the perfect barrister in West Wing. Platt shares an ineffable star quality with Orson Welles and that enviable talent with which Roger Ebert described M. Emmet Walsh which I hereby paraphrase: "No motion picture featuring Olliver Platt can be all bad." In this he joins the company of the great Ian Holm and very very few others. As the star of this sadly-missed series Platt had the chance, for far too short a time, chew the scenery in his own series as a talented, irritating, self-centred, brilliant human being. How much of this is Platt and how much acting is irrelevant. It is simply a pity that the show was so quickly cancelled because, to say it once more, Oliver Platt is a genius.

Typical, just when we here in Australia get the show, I find out it's canned. Saw it for the first time last night (new years eve) at like 2am. Excellent show. Oliver platt is a genius, Lili Taylor is one of the most underated actors (and lookers!) around and the show had exceptional writing. I was just about ready to say stuff sleep, stay up and watch it, and I find out it's been dumped. Darn! NBC - FOOLS!

Does anybody still read a newspaper, anymore? I mean, yes, you can go to the websites of just about every printed press still in business and, depending on if they demand you become a subscriber, look at today's top stories, read about the latest entertainment news... even get in a game of Wordle!

But I'm talking about going to a kiosk, plopping down your folding green and your silver, picking up a physical stack of printed paper and reading it.

The fact that we collectively don't do that much anymore, makes this series seem even more quaint than it otherwise might have been.

This is kind of a spinoff series from the "Law & Order" franchise. Series creator Dick Wolf wanted to produce a show that tackled the kinds of stories that were actually seen in the New York papers. Does that fact, in the year 2000, when this show aired, make this the first program that featured stories that were "RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!" Maybe not, but perhaps it was the first to admit it, even as they ran the boilerplate disclaimer that "this story is fiction."

Oliver Platt, always moody, glib and intense, got to use his complete acting palette in the character of Wallace Benton, (he prefers "Wally," thank you very much) a journalist for a tabloid rag called The New York Ledger, which, if you get a good look at the newspaper's masthead, is clearly modeled after The New York Post.

I think they wanted to make Platt's character a kind of Jimmy Breslin type: a hardnosed, hard drinking honcho, who wrote hard hitting pieces with a bit of a hard head. Jimmy Breslin... Wally Benton... I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

There's plenty of reasons for Platt's writer to want to hit the bar. His wife, played by Hope Davis, is divorcing him but she's lingering around, because she continues to work at the Ledger. His editor, played by Bebe Neuwirth, is always against everything he says before he says it. And the the wealthy owner and publisher, played by Tom Conti (and obviously aping Rupert Murdoch - except he's Scottish, not Australian), has higher ideals for the paper, which maybe puts him in line with "Citizen Kane?" Suffice it to say, they didn't get THAT right!

New York is all over this series, top to bottom, and the stories were, like most of Dick Wolf's work, pretty worthwhile, if not a little far-fetched... Like the fact that Benton was also teaching a course on Journalism at Columbia University. He ropes his young interns into helping him investigate his latest story, including cub reporter Lili Taylor.

Even though this would have existed in the L&O Universe (The Ledger was referenced multiple times as a source for info and copies of the paper itself appeared on episodes in that group), this absolutely was a stand alone show and it featured a bit more humor than you would find in those other shows, even as the format of the program followed the standards of all of the other shows in that canon. But maybe that's why it didn't make the cut? If they added in more crossovers (and those would have been completely natural in the course of this series) it could have helped anchor the audience a bit more, early in the run, so they might have had a more solid foundation. A few years before, David E. Kelley did his infamous crossover with "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice" on two different networks, so there was precedence.

Finally, the message of the show might have put off some viewers - that being: print journalists are good-hearted seekers of the truth, wherever it leads them, and are working hard to get the story right. That seems difficult to deal with now, with so many newspapers shuttering their offices and fewer and fewer resources dedicated to that element of news gathering. Where have you gone, Wally Benton... our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo-woo-woo.