Can 'Under the Dome' bring back the miniseries to broadcast TV?

While Great Britain can be credited with creating the miniseries format in the 1950s - though the term is North American in origin, as the British just called them “serials” - it was not until 1974 that the American networks began experimenting with the format. The idea was basic, though. Take a novel -the early ones were generally historical- give it a fairly large budget, with cast of well known and up and coming actors and air them over successive nights. QB VII, based on the Leon Uris novel, was ABC's first attempt at airing these limited series. At six and half hours, it proved very successful and earned thirteen Emmy nominations. Then in 1976, two miniseries -one historical and the other more modern- helped bring the format home. PBS had began airing I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theater, which was hugely successful in England, it replicated its success in the United States as well. Then ABC aired the 12 hour adaptation of Irwin Shaw's bestselling novel Rich Man, Poor Man in one or two hour episodes mostly on Monday nights over seven weeks. It's success lead to Rich Man, Poor Man Book II in the fall of 1976 -though this one ran as 21 one-hour episodes. But it was ABC's adaptation of Roots in early 1977 that launched the format into the stratosphere of ratings success. 

Then it was a race between the three networks then to air as many as possible, with 1978's Jesus of Nazareth being credited by TV Guide in 1987 as the best miniseries ever. Still, there was a bunch of successful ones, including Centennial, The Thorn Birds, Lonesome Dove, Shogun, North and South, and The Winds of War. The networks also tried their hand at bring science fiction and horror to the same format, with successful ones like 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, and V. But like any huge successful genre, there was also a few big budget miniseries that would flopped and would lead to its demise by the end of the 1980s, including North and South, Books II and III and Winds of War sequel, War and Remembrance and even Roots: The Next Generation proved not to be as successful as the original. While the 1990's and early 2000's produced some rare and terrific short-form shows, today's ones that get billed as "miniseries" are generally laughably bad two-night affairs.

Cable networks, however, like HBO, have had more success with the format over the last decade or so, including John Adams, Band of Brothers and Angels in America. Meanwhile basic cable has done the same, though as I pointed out, most are just just two-part movies -some good, some bad.

But the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones, adapted from George R. R. Martin's sprawling book series, may have given CBS the idea that adapting a novel as a television series can work in today's ever changing market place. What Thrones showed was that a novel can be turned into a episodic format instead of being shown over consecutive nights.

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment brought Stephen King’s mega-best-selling novel Under the Dome to Showtime cable network in 2011 (Spielberg had acquired the rights to the book only a few weeks after its 2009 debut). Showtime entertainment president David Nevins liked the concept but in the end he felt it “was not right for Showtime.” So the project went into turnaround. Still, Spielberg believed in the book so much, he asked Showtime to release the book so it could be shopped to other networks. But in a surprise corporate synergy move, Nevins passed the project to his counterpart over at CBS, Nina Tassler, who was interested. 

Thus CBS will launch a 13 episode series of the book on June 24, to be teamed up with the returning procedural Unforgettable, which was cancelled last May, but was quickly renewed for a 13 episode season that CBS said would air in the summer of 2013. The series will be produced through Amblin Television Entertainment and CBS Television Studio. And like Thrones, word is that some of Dome’s story will be compressed for TV, along with a lot of characters and story-lines dropped or changed in favor of the main ones, which makes sense for the conservative TV budget consciousness of CBS. Still, it is a huge risk to air this expensive series over the summer, which is why, in an deal to off-set the cost of producing the serialized show during the off-season, CBS has made a deal with Amazon Prime to have their subscribers get access to Under the Dome and have unlimited streaming of all the series’ episodes four days after their initial broadcast on the Tiffany Network.

Mike Vogel (Pan Am) has been cast in the lead, as Dale "Barbie" Barbara and while Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) will play the “villain” James "Big Jim" Rennie, politician and owner of Jim Rennie's Used Cars, who seeks to use the dome as a way to gain control of Chester's Mill. Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight Saga, A Gifted Man) has been cast as the female lead, playing Julia, an investigative reporter who takes an interest in Barbie. Other cast members include Colin Ford (We Bought a Zoo), Natalie Martinez (2008 remake of Death Race), and Britt Robertson (Secret Circle). The drama is set in Chester’s Mill, a small New England town suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. Under The Dome is exec produced by Neal Baer, King, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider, Jack Bender and writer Brian K. Vaughan. Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and who also helmed Unforgettable's pilot) will direct the first two episodes.

If the show succeeds, and CBS makes money, this could usher in a new renaissance for limited-run TV shows adapted for source materials like novels. And making deals with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and other could off-set their costs and allow viewers a chance to see all the episodes fairly quickly, which only helps these serialized shows.

Because while Netflix won't say how successful their adaptation of House of Cards is, word of mouth and water cooler conversations (i.e. social media) not heard since the miniseries' heyday indicate they hit a home run with it. Which helps their next series, the long delayed fourth season of the cult series Arrested Development.