Showtime's Robert Greenblatt on the Return of Dexter, Weeds and Brotherhood -- and the Future of Sleeper Cell
With his fourth anniversary as Showtime's President of Entertainment fast approaching, Robert Greenblatt recently spoke with MediaVillage editor Ed Martin about his roster of acclaimed shows and the success he has had at attracting big name talent to "a relatively small network." An edited transcript of that interview follows. (Second of two parts)
Ed Martin: During your four years at Showtime we've seen the rise of VOD and Internet viewing and other platforms. What has been the impact on the work that you do?
Robert Greenblatt: We see all those things as big opportunities. Showtime on Demand is such as desirable feature of our network for subscribers. We find that people who have it use it and watch our service more than the average subscriber. It's all about making this programming available as widely as possible. We don't want to give away the store, so you always have to balance it by thinking about how much we're giving away versus what we're gaining. The Internet is a huge vehicle for that. We've been one of the first companies to make deals with a lot of Internet portals. We go all over the place, especially with our pilot episodes. We're doing a big Netflix deal with our new comedy Californication in a couple of weeks. We were one of the first companies to be on iTunes. For us it's win-win because we want to get the word out.
EM: Do you feel there is more competition now than when you started from basic cable and the broadcast networks, in terms of adult content in programming, the likes of which once upon a time we only saw on pay cable?
BG: I would say yes and no, which is a great non-answer. A few years ago the networks tried to do Sex and the City rip-offs and Sopranos rip-offs and Six Feet Under rip-offs with shows like Kingpin on NBC and edgy female comedies where they talked a lot about sex. I think that has kind of subsided. The networks have gotten a little savvier with shows like Lost and 24 which feel kind of like cable shows, but those are more the exception than the rule. I don't think the networks are clamoring to develop the kind of niche programming that we have.
EM: What about FX?
BG: Basic cable is a little bit different. AMC has a new game plan doing original programming. FX is in that space, clearly. Nobody else really is. TNT and USA have several shows but they are very garden variety with a big wide audience. The wider the audience the more generalized the show is. That's what some of those basic cable networks go for and they do a good job of it. We're in a more specialized universe. Nobody can really do what we do.
EM: Why don't have one of your signature shows on in late June and July?
BG: One of the things we're trying is, I really wanted to see if we could derive some benefits from putting a couple of shows back to back. We usually run our series one at a time during the year. I wanted to put Weeds and Californication together and look at the sum of these two shows back to back. They will premiere Monday, August 13. A couple of months later we'll be putting Dexter and Brotherhood back-to-back on Sundays. Dexter will be at 9, a time period we have never had a drama series in before. It's the first time we've ever done a lead in and a lead out. Weeds and Dexter are the anchor shows because they're big hits. The way the schedule is laid out, during most of the month of October and a little longer we will have Weeds, Californication, Dexter and Brotherhood all running originals at the same time. We've never had that before. We've arranged things to give a big shot in the arm to the third and fourth quarter with those four shows.
EM: Is Californication as edgy as your other shows?
BG: Yes. David Duchovny plays a novelist who's going through a crisis. He's not able to produce another book, he has recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend and he has a 12-year-old daughter. It's a rich character comedy. He's really in a bad place and very aware of it, which makes you very sympathetic towards him. As the title suggests he's having lots of sex with lots of random women and drinking too much and spiraling out of control yet he tries to do the right thing and redeem himself.
EM: The first season of Dexter largely followed Jeff Lindsay's first book. Will the second season follow his second book?
BG: No. We have moved on from the books in terms of specific stories. Our writing staff has taken over. We will pick up from where the final episode ended. The murder of his brother that Dexter had to do has ramifications, and things get more and more complicated. We departed from the books because they didn't seem to be exactly what we needed to lay out a season. We still have the characters and the essence of what Jeff Lindsay created. The second season is well underway and there are some fantastic things that happen.
EM: Will there be any changes in the second season of Brotherhood?
BG: There are no massive changes. We've added a new character to the show played by Brian F. O'Byrne, the great theater actor. He plays a cousin to the Caffee family who comes from Ireland and is a bit of a troublemaker. It's more of the same of that great family and their complicated lives. We take the two brothers in different directions than you expect. Tommy, the good brother, goes a bit to the darker side as he tries to get re-elected. Michael the bad brother has a brain injury (after the severe beating he suffered in last season's cliffhanger). It's not life threatening, but he ends up moving in with his girlfriend. She's got young children and he finds himself in this interesting domesticated place, contemplating settling down. We also added Janel Moloney (The West Wing) to the show as a character that Tommy Caffee has an affair with.
EM: The second Sleeper Cell miniseries left the storyline open-ended. Is there any chance that you might find a way to wrap it up, maybe with a movie?
BG: We've talked about maybe in a year or so revisiting it and doing another installment of it, like they do with Prime Suspect. Every few years [Helen Mirren] comes back to do another installment.
EM: You just launched Meadowlands. Is that a show that could continue for additional seasons?
BG: It could. Meadowlands is a co-production with Channel 4. I think they have deals with all of those actors to do another season at least. It hasn't even premiered in the U.K. yet, so we have to see what happens there.
EM: What’s next after Californication?
BG: We're doing a show with Tracey Ullman called Tracey Ullman's State of the Union. It won't be on until early 2008. It's her kind of sketch show, where she plays many, many characters. No sketch is longer than a minute and a half. Each episode is a day in the life of the United States. You pop in on people all over the country, really quick visits. You'll go to some famous people. You'll see some recognizable faces and some regular Americans. You revisit characters from episode to episode. You'll go in and out, like the Google map of the U.S., in and out from the outer atmosphere. You'll go to Iowa and visit two women on a farm and then you'll pull out and go to Los Angeles and see Arianna Huffington, played by Tracey, in her boudoir, and then pull out and go to Washington, D.C. and see a woman who's an anchor for the evening news. Tracey will play 90 percent of the characters, men and women.
EM: Good luck with the Emmy nominations. Hopefully they will recognize your shows.
BG: Hopefully! I try to be very Zen about all that. Those are obviously good things for us in terms of publicity and raising our profile. But there are so many shows competing and so many great performances across all the networks. How do you even get to the top five?
