TV News: USA Serves Up Culinary Assassins, Dick Wolf Drama

CHICAGO – The USA Network is pretty excellent at taking ridiculous ideas and making them quality entertainment. The network that brought us the OCD Detective Monk and managed to squeeze a Christmas episode out of Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’ is back at the quirky drama cafe yet again after offering up a preview of it’s 2012 Drama slate.

The most scrumptious morsel looks to be the ‘Culinary Action Thriller’ (which, lets face it, we all hope becomes a thing) “Rare,” about a talented chef who has a past in the special forces. Is he as good with a knife inside the kitchen as he is outside? The press release seems to think so, and if the show features at least one crème-roulette to the face an episode, the proceedings could be exciting.

In case you didn’t know, Synthesia is a disease that allows you to see emotions, and it’s also the premise of the new cop drama “Fallen” about a tough, take-no-B.S. cop who suddenly develops the ability to ‘see’ emotions, and becomes a bit more…holistic about his cop work. If the visuals live up to the concept of a tough cop seeing crazy stuff, “Fallen” could almost find itself in the “Rescue Me” mold of personal drama, crazy visuals, and enough snark to stun an ox.

And from a half dozen people who make good television comes “Minefields” which has absolutely nothing to do with the success of “The Social Network,” honest. It follows a hacker who gets dumped by his girlfriend (honest!) and disappears off the face of the earth, only to resurface for the occasional grand romantic digital gesture. “Minefields” looks to be an exciting geek friendly romantic drama from the minds behind “Burn Notice,” “Pushing Daisies,” and, for some reason, Howie Mandel.

Other drama pickups include “Bang Bang,” based on a French novel about contract killers who may kill each other before their target, “We Counted Your Knives,” which is about an ex-medic who becomes a pharmaceutical rep and secretly treats patients on the side, and a so-far-untitled Dick Wolf project about an insurance adjuster who ends up marrying a trophy wife that happens to be a man.

By Paul Meekin
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com