New show from The Wire creator takes HBO futher into PBS territory

HBO – THE NEW PBS?: There was a time when U.S. public television was known for its quality documentaries and period costume dramas, the latter usually imported from Britain. However, every time I tune in these days they’re showing some dubious motivational speaker holding forth to an audience of retirees about money or health. That's if they're not in the middle of a filmed concert featuring doo-wop or reconstituted classic rock bands performing for an audience of the same retirees who’ve had a chance to change from their sport jackets to those oversized, high-quality t-shirts that look like they’re dry-cleaned.

Last weekend I was leapfrogging up the dial to the local PBS affiliate hoping at least for a rerun of As Time Goes By, only to be treated to the sexagenarian Troggs in the middle of Wild Thing, part of a night of garage and frat rock bands in front of the usual audience of semi-ecstatic grandparents. Not just during fundraising drives but during the balance of the broadcasting year, PBS has become the house network of the AARP.

A stray spark leapt across the synapses this week when I read about the latest show to get the greenlight from HBO. It’s been fascinating to watch the jewel in the crown of quality cable during these last few post-Sopranos/Sex And The City years, as it struggled to restore its vitality and reputation in the face of misfires and executive shakeups while onetime also-rans like Showtime, FX and AMC have stepped into the void they’ve left behind. A massive new hit from HBO would not only be nice for them, it would be the uplifting last chapter to a story about how a commercial entity lost and then rediscovered its creative inspiration against all apparent odds. That’s a 5000-word magazine story I’d love to read.

HBO is going about reviving its mojo in a curious way; a historical miniseries about the largely unsung second president of the United States has been its most recent critical hit, and they’ve taken that as a cue and given the go-ahead to Manhunt, a new miniseries about the 12-day search for John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in the days following the end of the U.S. Civil War.

Manhunt will reunite David Simon, the creator of HBO’s The Wire, with Tom Fontana, the man behind Oz, for the first time since Fontana turned a book Simon had written as a Baltimore crime reporter into the NBC series Homicide. According to a story in Broadcasting & Cable magazine, the new show was originally conceived as an action-oriented thriller featuring Harrison Ford as the cavalry officer who finally corners Booth, but after the option on Ford ran out, Simon and Fontana decided to take the story in a less Jack Ryan-esque direction. “I don't do action,” said Simon.

One can’t help but speculate how far down this road HBO can travel – perhaps a real-time series about the decimation of Galveston, Texas by a hurricane in 1900 (complete with bludgeoning parallels to Katrina, and a groaning comparison of William McKinley to George W. Bush), or a sordid expose of the melodramatic goings-on in the Woodrow Wilson White House during World War One. HBO has about 20 years to kill, after all, until it can start airing concerts featuring reunited grunge bands.